Mr. Speaker, this past December, I asked the Liberal government an important and straightforward question: When will the Liberal government finally start standing up for the Canadian energy sector and kill Bill C-69, a bill which absolutely suffocates this critical sector with additional regulation burdens and uncertainty? I received the usual Liberal response of another non-answer.
Tonight, I know the Liberals have no intention of backing away from Bill C-69, even though this bill would have a very severe impact on many of the thousands of Canadians who are employed in the energy sector throughout this country. Instead of working to support Canadians, the Liberal government continues to stubbornly persist in working against Canadians.
We know the policies of the Liberal government when it comes to our energy sector, a sector which represented nearly 11% of our country's normal GDP in 2017. The Liberals, we should be reminded, killed the northern gateway pipeline. They stopped the energy east pipeline by piling on the red tape and additional regulations. They passed Bill C-48 in the House to place a moratorium on the traffic of oil tankers along B.C.'s northern coast. They failed to support the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline. As a result, they had to spend $4.5 billion of taxpayer money to buy the existing Trans Mountain pipeline just to keep the project from collapsing entirely.
It is clear that the Liberals have never had a plan to support the Canadian energy sector. It is clear, through their insistence on passing Bill C-69, that the Liberals do not intend to support our energy sector any time soon.
The Liberal government has a responsibility to look out for the hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers who are employed in the Canadian energy sector, and it is obvious that it is failing to do so. Through the dangerous and reckless policies of the Liberal government, investment in our resource and energy sectors is collapsing like never before. In 2018, Statistics Canada reported capital spending on oil and gas extraction fell for the fourth straight year, decreasing by 12% from the spending of 2017.
Why is the Liberal government doing nothing to protect the livelihoods of the many thousands of hard-working Canadians who actually work in Canada's energy sector? When will the Liberals finally scrap Bill C-69?