Mr. Speaker, I spent a number of years on the natural resources committee in the previous parliament and parliaments before that. I will go back to a 2014 report published by this committee that talked about the cross-Canada benefits of the oil and gas sectors and contrast that with the 2016 report issued by the Liberal-dominated committee.
What have we seen since 2015? The Financial Post states that “The shrinking investment underscores how the energy slump is lingering in a Canadian economy that last year also began to face the additional headwind of growing U.S. protectionism,” and that foreign direct investment in Canada is plummeting to its lowest level in eight years. This is from the Financial Post, published here in Canada. Most of that foreign direct investment is fleeing the energy sector. Are a couple of projects here and there going ahead? Yes. However, I note that over $90 billion worth in projects has fled the capital market in Alberta and western Canada alone.
Why is this so important? When Alberta's economy is strong, Canada's economy is strong. Right now Alberta is suffering under the misguided policies of an NDP premier who has just recently understood, after reality collided with ideology, the anti-energy sentiment the NDP usually fosters in the House. The federal and provincial NDP are actually exactly the same party, such that members of one are members of the other. That said, this collision of reality and ideology had led the premier of Alberta to walk away from the Prime Minister's climate change plan. An NDP premier who was in lockstep with the carbon tax and the entire plan the current government has in place is walking away.
As a matter of fact, the people of Ontario recently voted largely in favour of the ideas put forward by the now-premier Doug Ford, who campaigned against the carbon tax. The Liberals would say that this is because Canadians do not understand the carbon tax. However, Doug Ford won in Ontario because Canadians do understand the carbon tax. They understand exactly what it is going to cost them and their families. They understand what it is going to cost with respect to everything in their lives.
Why is this so? If we look at any of the reports released by the natural resources committee, a number of expert witnesses therein have noted that oil and gas is as important in our daily lives as everything that we may take for granted, such as food and shelter. Members today walk to the House of Commons without knowing the number of underground gas, oil and energy pipelines they may have walked over. Every one of the 338 members of Parliament came here on a plane or train, or in an automobile. How would they have gotten here otherwise, unless they were riding wooden bicycles whittled with a bone knife? They are using fossil fuels. Everything good in our lives and that sets our economy apart from economies that struggle rests on our ability to use fossil fuels in our lives for the cause of good.