Mr. Speaker, we are gathered here tonight to debate the future of a pipeline that has been in operation for over 60 years. I think we must start that debate with a recognition of the fact that Canada and the planet are facing a climate emergency. We have known this for a long time. We are beginning to see the effects of climate change. They are already happening.
As people have tried, whether here in Canada or elsewhere, to push for meaningful action on climate change, it has driven a very polarized debate about pipelines and about the oil and gas sector. On the one hand, some people say we need to completely get rid of all oil and gas extraction. On the other hand, there are boosters of the industry who continue to advocate for what appears to be a limitless expansion and an increase in the rate of extraction of oil and gas. I am not sure that Canadians or anybody on the planet, frankly, has been well served by the extreme polarization of that debate.
Certainly, New Democrats have been very clear that when it comes to that kind of unbridled expansion and lack of critique of the oil and gas sector, or thinking that things can go on as they have for decades without any kind of meaningful change, that is not what is going to get us out of this climate emergency. We do need to change course. We need to think more critically about the oil and gas sector and how to transition successfully toward a low-carbon economy in a way that does not leave workers behind.
Right now we are in a debate where the imperatives of a large company that has known there has been opposition in the State of Michigan and elsewhere to its operations for a long time has refused to act. Instead it has lobbied to create political pressure for the company to be able to continue its operations as it has been doing for some time.
We need to get to a point where we can get concrete action on climate change and transition toward a low-carbon economy. Those companies that have the ability to get politicians like us all together advocating for their interests, when the money is not there to be made anymore can quickly turn their backs and walk away. Who is left holding the bag? It's their workers.
We have a lot of people in Canada who have made their living in the oil and gas sector. As the economy and market forces are driving people away now from fossil fuels, it is incumbent on us to make a plan for what the next stage of our economy will look like so that those workers are not left holding the bag, and so that they do not face economic disaster when those companies move into other more profitable pursuits.
However, we are not talking about that expansionist drive here tonight. We are not talking about pipelines like the Keystone XL pipeline or the TMX pipeline. We are talking about a pipeline that has been in operation for over 60 years. When we talk about that transition, I do not believe it is a transition to zero oil and gas here in Canada. Even if we transition all of our home heating and our transportation away from fossil fuel use, there will continue to be a role for the oil and gas sector. This Parliament is brought to those at home by plastics, among other things, and those require oil and gas for their manufacture.
The question is this: What does a reduced oil and gas industry look like in Canada that can support a number of good paying jobs, albeit not what we saw at the height of the boom in Alberta? The answer has to be that for every ounce of oil and gas extracted from the ground here in Canada there are more value-added jobs like the refining capability that is in Sarnia.
The Line 5 pipeline debate is different from the debates around Keystone XL and TMX in a couple of key ways. One is that we are not talking about more extraction. We are talking about the extraction that has already been going on. Two, we are talking about transporting oil and gas to a place where the very kind of work that we would like to see happen in Canada, the value-added work that creates more jobs and more value here in Canada for every ounce of oil and gas extracted, takes place. Those are the kinds of things that Canada needs to be thinking far more about.
In the time that we have seen massive increases, not in the last five or six years when the oil and gas sector in Canada has been hit very hard, but over the last 20 years when we saw a huge expansion of our oil and gas infrastructure, we also saw a dramatic decline in the refining capability of the country. There are various reasons for that in terms of the market, and that is what happens when we do not have a government with its hand on the tiller, that is actually trying to make a plan for how Canadians themselves, not just international shareholders, can benefit the most from the oil and gas that is taken out of the ground.
With respect to shutting down Line 5 in the next couple of weeks, New Democrats have been very clear that this is not a good thing. It is going to impact thousands of workers in Canada, both on the supply end and the receiving end where there is value-added work being done.
That said, we understand the frustration of folks who have legitimate concerns about the Great Lakes, who want to see real action get taken. It is not like these concerns are new, and so there is a lot of frustration that a company that has been hearing these concerns for a long time could continue to get away with doing business as usual. They are talking about a corridor underneath the Great Lakes that could replace the existing pipeline. That sounds like a good thing in terms of eliminating one of the environmental threats, but that replacement is also not going to get built in the next two weeks. Therefore, the question is, what do we do in the meantime?
What we would like to hear from our own government and governments in the U.S. who, like New Democrats, support the ongoing operation of Line 5 is a plan for how to mitigate those environmental risks in the meantime. We would like to hear how we get to a place where we have another option that does not involve massive shipments by rail and by truck to these refineries in Canada, and that is something that has been seriously lacking. We owe that, not just to what Conservatives like to write off as environmentalists; these are concerned Canadian and U.S. citizens on both sides of the border. We also owe it to indigenous people on both sides of the border, whether it is the Bad River Band or it is the Wiikwemkoong on the banks of Lake Huron who are concerned, not just about what it means for the lake in a general environmental sense but also what it means for local economies who depend on the Great Lakes.
I appreciate that people do not have a lot of faith in Enbridge. They have every right not to; they should not. We should demand more. We should demand governments that have a plan for how to transition to a low-carbon future. We should have governments that take public interest regulation and enforcement seriously. If we had a stronger culture of that, then some of the issues around this pipeline would have been addressed much sooner. We need to be building a culture, not of saying yes to the oil industry any time it asks because it happens to employ a lot of people, but a culture that impresses upon that industry its responsibility, with governments who understand their own responsibility and are willing to enforce public interest regulation to ensure that these powerful companies do not just get away with anything and it is not just business as usual. That has to be there.
There is a governor in Michigan now who clearly feels that sense of exasperation and is putting pressure on Enbridge. We need to find a way to keep Line 5 open for now without dissipating that real and important pressure on Enbridge to do the right thing by the environment and by local people whose economies depend on the success and the health of the Great Lakes.