Madam Speaker, the member asks a very good question. That assumption of $55 for a barrel of oil is another example of the Prime Minister grasshopper who thought the sun would always shine and that winter would never come. He, as a result, spent the cupboard bare and squandered the good times, leaving us weak and vulnerable for the bad times.
Those bad times may have arrived. The oil price the member mentioned, West Texas Intermediate, is the best possible price we could imagine, that and Brent. Of course, we do not get WTI in Canada because we do not have enough pipeline capacity, so we get the Western Canadian Select price, which is lower still.
The result, of course, is that western Canadians will be devastated by this latest economic phenomenon. Hammered with anti-development laws, pipeline blockages and blockades of railroads that would otherwise be delivering agricultural goods, westerners are already suffering. This is another blow.
The government has imposed austerity on western Canadian workers with its anti-development agenda and now they will suffer more. That is precisely why the Conservative plan would repeal anti-development legislation, approve major projects and unleash the fierce power of the free enterprise system that built the prairie economy over generations. That is how we get through this winter.