Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague. It is 11:30 at night here, so he will have to excuse me. I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member of Parliament for Don Valley West.
As I was mentioning, this is an important industry to our country. It is our largest industry. It is our number one export. As parliamentarians, we cannot get around the fact, and we should not be afraid of the fact, that Canada is the fourth-largest producer of oil and gas in the world. As a parliamentarian, I was disappointed in the decision the Biden government made, in part because of the impact it is going to have on the workers and their families. Members of Parliament in the House tonight have spoken about that, in part because this project was already started.
I would say that this was about creating regulatory certainty, whether it is in the United States, Canada or anywhere in the world. If companies are going through those processes, we need to be able to move those forward.
As was already articulated by my colleagues, this is not just an issue for Alberta and Saskatchewan. This is an issue from every end of the country. As the member of Parliament for Kings—Hants, I have many constituents who have had their start, built their livelihood and worked in these sectors. They either still transition between western Canada and the Maritime provinces or have made their start, come back home, and used their trade and the skill set they learned to contribute to our economy in Nova Scotia, pay their mortgage and make their living.
Sometimes I hear too much of the narrative from members of Parliament that this is a regional issue. No, this is important to workers and families across the country. Indeed, the impact of this industry has important benefits, paying for public services from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland. I want to make sure that is on the record.
It is important to note that despite the fact that this is a setback and the fact that the Biden administration has not approved Keystone, the relationship remains important. As I understand it, about $100 billion of energy exports cross our national borders every year. This relationship that we have with the United States will remain important. Right now, 23% of the crude consumed in the United States comes from Canada. We certainly play an important role in energy security for North American markets.
I had the chance to tune in at different times tonight before I had the floor, and the narrative became that the government has “failed” to drive this project forward. Often it is members from the opposition ranks who like to suggest that government fails on issues that sometimes are completely outside the control of the Government of Canada. Of course, world oil prices are not dictated by the Government of Canada. I remember with Teck Frontier that some of the conversation there was around the future of the oil and gas industry. There was a lot of narrative that the government was not doing enough to support it, but of course we do not control world oil prices.
In terms of what we could do to work with the United States, our ambassador has been on this, as has the Prime Minister, from day one, in terms of engaging on this issue. If members do not want to believe me, the Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, as early as last week, talked about his support for the work that was going on behind the scenes to advance this project.
At the end of the day, the United States is a sovereign country. We have a strong relationship and the Government of Canada can do its utmost, as we have, but we do not control those decisions being made outside our national borders.
The suggestion that is being made is that we should retaliate, that we should create a trade war of sorts, not unlike what we saw from the last American administration, a trade war with what is both our closest economic partner, because of its proximity and its market to Canada, and also one of our most important partners from a security perspective. I do not think the suggestion that we should retaliate brings any benefit to oil and gas workers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, or anywhere in this country. That could only jeopardize the existing relationship of that $100 billion that goes back and forth every year and is crucial to our supply chain in North America.
I want to touch on a point the member for Foothills made. I have to be fair and make sure I am balanced in my remarks tonight, because I thought the member for Foothills spoke quite eloquently. I thought he was convincing on many points, but he talked about appeasing social activists almost as though the government is moving in a direction just to appease a small group of individuals who might be very prominent on environmental issues. The member for Victoria, or perhaps it was someone else, might have spoken about the fact that global financial markets are focused on investing in industries and companies that are moving in this direction. In fact, Canadian energy companies understand this. They are moving in this direction.
On the suggestion that this is appeasing social activists, we have international agreements to be able to move on this. This is not about appeasing social activists; this is about recognizing we have work to do in the international community. Energy companies know that they have a social responsibility to get there. I think there is a way to balance both, and I will get to that in a moment, but I found that comment to be a bit unfortunate in what was otherwise a quite good speech.
There is a lot of finger pointing, but we also have to compare and contrast to the last government as well, a Conservative government under Stephen Harper, our former prime minister. In terms of the legacy the Conservatives left behind, they were not able to advance the projects we have been able to advance, and I will go through some of them in a moment, but there is a lot of blame being sent toward our current government that fails to recognize the existing record that they had.
One Progressive Conservative former prime minister, Mr. Joe Clark, who actually was briefly the member of Parliament in Kings—Hants in the early 2000s, said, “One of the real problems that I think lingers over [Keystone] is, before the pipeline question arose, the [Harper government] deliberately went out of its way to be seen as an adversary of environmentalists.” That is perhaps similar to the comment made by the member for Foothills today, and for Mr. Clark it was problematic. That is the type of Progressive Conservative thinking we need to see more of in our opposition party, which is about balancing environmental interests along with economic ones. That is certainly what our government is doing.
To talk about our record, we approved TMX and bought it when it was necessary, and we are building it. It has created over 7,000 jobs. We have approved NOVA Gas, and a thousand more jobs will be created in Alberta. Line 3 has been approved, which is another 7,000 jobs created. As well, $1.7 billion has been provided to the western provinces to help with abandoned and inactive wells, which is helping reduce emissions and keep oil and gas workers on the job. Closer to my end of the country, in Atlantic Canada there has been $320 million to support workers and lower emissions in Newfoundland's offshore.
I wish I had more time to go on, but my point is that it is similar to when we talked about Teck Frontier. We have certain members of Parliament in this House who do not believe our oil and gas sector plays a prominent role in the days ahead and we have members of Parliament who fail to recognize that we also have to move on our environmental record. Those two can co-exist. Our government is the one to make that happen.
We will work in the days ahead with industry, as they are already doing, to make sure they are sustainable and that there is a future for this important sector in our country.