Madam Speaker, this will come as no surprise, but I do not see how my party can support this bill, especially since it flies in the face of one of the guiding principles of environmental policy, namely the polluter pays principle. This is miles away from that principle.
Before I begin, I want to set the record straight. If I am told I will be given a $10,000 tax credit or a $10,000 subsidy, at the end of the day, it amounts to the same thing. My colleague argued that this is not support for the oil industry because it is not a subsidy but rather a tax credit. It amounts to six of one and half a dozen of the other, since this provides more financial support to one of the industries that already receives the most in Canada.
Getting back to what I was saying, it would be difficult for us to support this bill because it flies in the face of one of the guiding principles of environmental policy, namely the polluter pays principle. As everyone knows, it is up to businesses to cover these kinds of costs. The forestry industry did so in Quebec by paying for the remediation of sites where it operates. I do not see why it should be any different for the oil and gas industry.
There is something about this bill that surprises me. It seems to me that a typical Conservative would think that businesses must be the ones to bear the risk. It seems like that is part of the Conservatives' ideology. However, in this bill, they are trying to socialize the risks without socializing the profits. Businesses do not want to assume the environmental risk because it would cost too much, so it would be up to the government to do so; yet, it is the businesses that would benefit from the profits. I think there is a contradiction there. A red light should have gone off for a typical Conservative.
Simply put, this bill would fund what is likely the most environmentally damaging industry in Canada rather than funding the energy transition. We need to take the energy transition into account in today's discussion, and I think that massive support for the oil industry harkens back to another era, especially today.
I would like to remind the House that the federal government has already announced $1.7 billion in funding to cleanup and decommission orphan wells. That is a lot of money. I would like to maybe come back to that and say what bothers me the most about this bill. My colleague from Lakeland was asking why it should be up to Alberta to pay 100% of the cost of decommissioning orphan wells. That question bothers me a bit because about 22% of Canada's fiscal capacity comes from Quebec taxes.
There is a number that I like to quote and that keeps coming up. Between the early 1980s and 2015, the Government of Canada invested $70 billion in the oil sands. If I go back to the well-known figure of 22%, that means that approximately $14 billion from Quebec was used to fund the oil sands. I feel like asking my colleague how much money from Alberta was used to fund Hydro-Québec, but I believe the answer to that question is zero dollars. I therefore do not see why Quebeckers should have to take responsibility for the environmental fiasco currently happening in Alberta.
My colleague told the Liberals that they have done nothing for the oil sector. That is amazing. Just for fun, I asked research services to find out how much was invested in oil and gas between 2017 and 2020. The Liberals spent $24 billion, including $17 billion on buying the pipeline, but my colleague finds that the Liberals have done nothing for the oil and gas industry. If they did any more it would be obscene.
Allow me to make a comparison. During the same period, Quebec's forestry industry received $950 million, 75% of which was in the form of loans only. In my opinion, these are not direct investments.
My colleague tells us that it is not Alberta's responsibility to cover the entirety of the cost of capping the wells. However, it should be noted that the oil sands are causing other types of adverse consequences that some of our Conservative friends might not want to hear about.
As an example, let's talk about the famous Dutch disease that is well documented by many economists. When the Canadian dollar rises, Quebec's manufacturing industry completely falls apart. From 2002 to 2007, that industry lost 55,000 jobs with the currency rise caused by the Canadian extractive industry.
I am told that Alberta takes on the lion's share of the risk and that Quebec and the other provinces should take a bite out of it. However, if I add up everything I just mentioned, it seems like we have already taken more than a bite and we are starting to get full. We are losing out to this very troublesome industry.
We could propose solutions, since orphan wells are a significant environmental concern. However, before we come up with a solution, we must set the conditions for its implementation. If the government adopts a policy of closing wells, the first condition must focus on an energy transition.
This policy must not become a type of subsidy for an industry that has already gotten too much. We need to focus on the polluter pays principle, and nothing will convince me that tax credits would help us achieve this. That is certainly not the case. We also need clear regulatory measures that do not perpetuate the problem we are seeing now. Ultimately, this policy must be consistent with Canada's greenhouse gas reduction targets.
In my opinion, companies should be responsible, in all cases. I do not see why oil companies should not have to pay a security deposit before embarking on an oil sands extraction project, as is the case in the mining sector.
Let me touch on what I think is the major issue. Before the pandemic, oil prices had dropped rather significantly, and a barrel of oil was priced between $60 and $70. During the pandemic, the price per barrel has dropped as low as $40 or $45.
Members will recall Teck Resources' Frontier mine project. This project depended on a price per barrel of $80 or $90 to be profitable. Since all experts agreed that the price of Canadian oil would never get back to $80 or $90, the Frontier mine project was abandoned.
This shows that the Canadian oil industry is under pressure, because it is not profitable at the current price per barrel, which sits between $50 and $60. Why would we continue to invest in this lame duck? It would be completely irresponsible, especially from an environmental perspective.
In conclusion, orphan wells are obviously a real problem, but it is not up to taxpayers to foot the bill. It is certainly not up to Quebec taxpayers to do so, because they have paid the price in past years. I think we can justify spending public money to deal with the orphan well problem, but only if certain conditions are met, as I said earlier.
The Bloc Québécois will stand by western Canadian taxpayers, workers and families as long as efforts start to be made to free the Canadian economy from its dependence on fossil fuel. I do not think a bill like this one will put us on that path.