Madam Speaker, how fitting it is that I would follow the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan reminiscing about his one suit. While he might not think I teased him, I just did not tease him to his face about his single suit. We certainly noticed it and I rib him from time to time. He was a great parliamentary secretary assistant, by the way.
The genesis of my speech tonight for four minutes goes back to four questions that I have asked. I asked the same question four times. I asked it in November, December and twice in February. I got non-answers every time and, interestingly, I got the same non-answer three out of the four times. I am going to read the initial question so everyone will have the gist of it. The initial question was as follows:
Mr. Speaker, there is no one in the world more committed to clean energy production than Canadians working in the oil and gas sector, yet because the Liberal government has made it impossible for the private sector to build a pipeline in this country, we continue to import hundreds of thousands of barrels a day. After the U.S., the top source countries in recent years are Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Algeria.
Could the minister tell us if oil imported to Canada from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Algeria is subject to the same rigorous regulation on upstream and downstream emissions as oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland?
It is a pretty straightforward question. The parliamentary secretary at the time in November gave a laundry list of completely unrelated projects, a completely incomprehensible response. I cannot even call it an answer. I revisited the question on December 11. I will not read the preamble, but the question will sound very familiar. It was, “Can the government commit that the tens of millions of barrels of oil coming from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Nigeria will be subject to the same rigorous regulations as oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland in terms of upstream and downstream emissions?”
This time, interestingly, the parliamentary secretary pretty much read the exact same non-answer from the script that he read the first time I asked the question and threw a couple of things in. He talked about “continuing to make sure we have the highest standards so that when we export, we make sure we have the highest standards in the world.” He added that at the end of the same list that he read off the previous time. As for export, we cannot even get it from one province to another. We are not even talking about exporting. We are talking about the fact that we are giving preference to oil coming from places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Algeria over oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. That makes absolutely no sense to any reasonable Canadian looking at the issue.
I decided, since I did not get any answers the first two times, to ask the question again and I was heartened, actually, because on February 19 when I stood to ask the question, I noticed that the minister was there. The minister is from Newfoundland, so having been briefed about the fact that I had asked this question a couple of times, I thought maybe the parliamentary secretary would be a little sheepish about it. I asked the same question and got the exact same list of projects.
I am going to ask the parliamentary secretary one more time. Could he tell us if oil imported to Canada from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Algeria is subject to the same rigorous regulation on upstream and downstream emissions as oil coming from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland?