Mr. Speaker, with regard to the issue of getting a better price for our resources, we hear this all the time from the government, from the Conservatives and from industry that we need this pipeline to tidewater to get a better price. That pipeline has been at tidewater since before I was born, in 1953. Very little beyond a token test amount has ever been shipped to any other place than the United States. Why is that? Because we get the best price from the United States.
There was a great article in an Alberta oil magazine, which might be called “Alberta oil”, on why California was the place we should be selling our oil. That is where the refineries are built for our type of oil. It is where refineries are getting short of oil from other sources such as Mexico, Alaska and California. We would get a very good price there compared with any price we might get in Asia.
We only have to look at the price Mexico gets for its oil. It is the same heavy, somewhat dirty oil we have, and it sells its oil at a discount because people around the world, the markets, do not really want that kind of oil. Therefore, it is sold to California.
We have to regard that argument as somewhat specious and realize that selling oil to the United States is not a bad thing. We are required to sell oil to the United States through our NAFTA agreement and the proportionality clause. That is something which should be taken away from this discussion.