Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon member for New Brunswick Southwest.
There is a war on the working men and women of this country. If people do not believe me, just ask the 7,000 would-be workers at the now cancelled Teck Frontier mine in northern Alberta.
If people do not believe me, ask the thousands of workers who would be on site now, finishing the construction of the northern gateway pipeline.
If people do not believe me, can ask the 200,000 out-of-work Canadian energy employees who sit staring at their phones, waiting for it to ring with a job offer across northern Alberta.
If people do not believe me, ask the more than 20% of young males in the province of Alberta, who are unemployed and desperate for opportunity.
If people do not believe me, speak to the 14 first nations communities around the perimeter of the Teck Frontier mine, whose leaders had signed agreements for that mine to provide opportunities for their young people to escape the clutches of poverty.
If people do not believe me, then talk to the steelworkers who would have provided steel for the energy east pipeline, which is now cancelled, ensuring that the insanity of selling our oil on the cheap in the west, while buying it at a premium in the east, will go on for an indefinite period of time.
If people do not believe me, look at the footage of the fitness instructor in Victoria, B.C., who arrived at a blockade and begged protesters, saying to them over and over again, “I've got to get to work. There are 40 people expecting me to teach a class. Can you please get out of the way and let me do my job. I don't even know what your political cause is about, but surely it can't be about blocking a middle-class fitness instructor from going to work.”
If people do not believe me, ask any of those thousands of people if there is a war on the working men and women in our country.
Let us be clear about what this dispute is not about. First, it is not about the environment. The blockaders who are stopping the Coastal GasLink pipeline, many of whom think it is an oil pipeline, are standing in the way of the construction of the pipeline and the LNG Canada plant, which would ship Canadian natural gas to China and other Asian markets to replace coal-fired electricity and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, by some estimates as much as 30 million tonnes per year. That is because natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases for each unit of electricity that it generates versus coal.
Canada is perfectly positioned to reduce global emissions by shipping our natural gas. Why? We have 1,220 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. We have a cold climate, which makes it easier to cool and therefore liquify and transport natural gas. We supply our LNG facilities with clean, green, emissions-free British Columbia hydro-electricity. We are closer to the Asian markets, significantly closer, than the Gulf of Mexico, which would be our principal competitor.
In other words, we are perfectly positioned to ship clean, green Canadian natural gas and reduce global emissions, but these blockaders do not want us to. They would rather see coal combustion in Asia pump millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, coal being the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions anywhere on planet earth. However, these protesters would like to continue to see dirty foreign coal, as long as it demobilizes our population and prevents our people from getting to work.
No, it is nothing to do with the environment. Nor was it anything to do with the environment when they, along with the help of the government, shut down the Teck Frontier mine, which had agreed to zero-net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In fact, the company has already lowered its emissions to below the intensity of other competitors around the world. That oil will still be produced, it will still be burned, it will just come from outside of Canada.
It is not about the environment and it is not about first nations land rights. When it comes to the Coastal GasLink, 20 elected councils for first nations had supported and signed agreements to profit and benefit from that GasLink. They all support it. In terms of the hereditary leadership, many of them, too, support it. In referenda by local communities, there has been overwhelming support for these projects of which the blockaders are standing in the way.
With respect to the Teck Frontier mine, there are 14 first nations communities around the mine and all 14 support the project. The cancellation of that mine went not only against the wishes of the regulator, which recommended its approval, of the Alberta government, which has supported it, but all 14 first nations communities. Therefore, no, it is not about first nations land rights.
In fact, it is very clear that the cancellation of this project did not have the free, prior and informed consent of those first nations communities. The protesters and ultimately the government that killed the project went directly against the wishes of first nations people. First nations are being used as an excuse by anti-energy and anti-working class protesters and their friends in the government, by downtown, urban-dwelling Liberal elites who look down on the working class people of our country.
If members do not believe me, look at the Prime Minister's own remarks. He said that he wanted to phase-out Canada's energy sector. He did not say he wanted to phase-out global petroleum. He said that he wanted to phase-out Canada's oil sands. He is not concerned about increased production in the United States, where oil production has more than doubled in the last 12 years. He is not concerned about increased oil and gas production in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya and other places. Those places can go on producing and burning oil. It is Canadian oil and gas he wants to phase-out.
However, it is not just oil and gas. He said that he believed southwestern Ontario should move away from manufacturing. He said, when he was abroad at a fancy conference, that he thought construction workers brought negative gender impacts to rural communities. That is the attitude of the downtown, internationalist, globalist elite who look down their noses at the working people of our country.
I will conclude on an optimistic note. Canadians are proud of working-class people and they are increasingly prepared to stand up and fight back. I believe we will have a renaissance of the working class in the country when we remove the government obstacles that stand in their way, unleash the unmatched power of free enterprise, remove the obstacles so projects can go ahead and our industries and our energy sector can come roaring back to life to give those young people the opportunity to put their God-given talents to work, to give indigenous people the opportunity to trade again in commerce and to exploit natural resources again in our country. I say again, because that had been the tradition of first nations people for thousands of years before Europeans arrived on this continent. That is the future we will fight for as a Conservative opposition and it is the future that Canadians, together with us, will win for our country.