Mr. Speaker, the provincial government under Premier Moe has laid out a very concise plan to reopen its economy in three phases. The first phase starts with having over 70% of 40-year-olds vaccinated. They are actually there already, so phase one is going to reopen on May 30. Three weeks after that, if 70% of people 30 and over are vaccinated, they can go to phase two, where there will be more opportunities and businesses can open and have more clients and customers coming through their doors. If we get 70% of people 18 and over vaccinated, hopefully in mid-July, we can get back to a little of the normal life we all are hoping to get back to this summer, sooner rather than later.
Some of how to safely reopen our economy is missing from the budget, and that is what we look at from an economic development point of view. One thing that I have seen, and once again this is a positive thing for the member for Kingston and the Islands, is that in the Regina area we have had almost a billion dollars' worth of private investment over the last month. That is great news for agriculture and manufacturing. Viterra has said it is going to bring one of the largest canola-crushing plants on earth to Regina. That is fantastic. We just spoke with a person from Cargill. That company is investing in having a canola-crushing plant come to Regina. Federated Co-operatives Limited just bought True North Renewable Fuels, and it is going to be expanding and setting up a renewable diesel refinery in the Regina area.
There is good news on the horizon in Regina, but there has not been much from the federal government side. It has been private business. The Government of Saskatchewan has set up an economic atmosphere of success, and that is what I want to talk about toward the end of my comments. We need to create more opportunities in our major industries. One of the industries that continually gets left behind by the government is the oil and gas sector. Through the economic downturn in 2008, what brought us back faster than any other G7 country were our oil and gas sector, our manufacturing sector and our agriculture sector.
I want to talk about that, being a member of the agriculture standing committee. We just finished work on how to increase processing capacity across the nation, and the government had lost out on a major processing facility from Maple Leaf Foods. Actually, the chair of the agriculture committee, who is a Liberal member, asked a VP from Maple Leaf Foods why the company did not build in Canada instead of building its new processing plant in Indiana. The VP of Maple Leaf Foods said it was because of the uncertainty in regulations and the changing atmosphere of the regulatory system in Canada. He said that it seems like whenever someone is going to be investing big private capital in Canada, the goalposts keep moving.
It was there in black and white in the Hansard, and it is happening on way too many occasions with the current government. It continues to change the goalposts when it comes to regulatory guidelines and what it needs from people when they invest in Canada. It happened to Teck Frontier, and it happened again here with Maple Leaf Foods. What we need to see from the Liberal government is more certainty, and that is why I will be voting against the budget.