Madam Speaker, I join tonight's energy debate wishing we did not need to have one, but the troubling situation with Enbridge Line 5 dictates that we need to. I also wish that the government would treat it with a lot more urgency than it has shown by its actions up to this point. It is actually a lot more accurate if we call it inaction. The Liberals lack of leadership has brought us near the brink.
As Canadians, we now find ourselves in a difficult position where a major problem is closer to happening than we could have ever imagined. This will be added to everything else Canada has already been facing with COVID-19 and lockdowns for well over a year.
People are tired and they are frustrated, as we all know, but now we are one week away from the Governor of Michigan's imposed deadline for shutting down Line 5. Since the first announcement almost six months ago, Canadians have been left in suspense about their future.
We are dealing with people's essential needs: fuel for getting to places where they need to be or for keeping our supply chains running, home heating, thousands of local jobs and keeping the environment cleaner and safer, just to name a few.
Whenever we talk pipelines, these are the actual issues at stake for ordinary people in their daily lives. This has always been a reality that affects the entire country, but this is the clearest example yet of how Ontario and Quebec will directly suffer as a result of anti-energy ideology.
As soon as we lose Line 5, gas and heat either get even more expensive than they already are or in other cases, it will just be unavailable, yet here we are facing the real possibility of fuel shortages on top of losing thousands of jobs directly and indirectly. Once again, it will in large part come on the back of the lack of leadership from the Liberal government.
Over 6,000 workers in Sarnia plus another 23,000 in the wider region after the effects ripple through the economy, these big numbers are made up of people with families, dreams and personal potential and they are at risk of joining the thousands and thousands of other energy jobs that have already been lost in western Canada under the same Liberal government. In this case, it does not matter if people live and work in the east or in the west.
Under the Prime Minister, they effectively all but cancelled the energy east pipeline through their unsupportive policies and rhetoric, not unlike the later problems of Trans Mountain.
We could use a pipeline exactly like energy east right now, because without it, we have no alternative replacement for moving oil and gas across Canada in the safest and cleanest way we know how to do it. This increased vulnerability in our energy supply was preventable with a worthwhile project well on its way before the Liberals undid it. If the oil and gas stops flowing with Line 5, the much-needed demand for it will not go away and it will have to be supplied in other ways.
The pipeline currently carries around 540,000 barrels per day. It will take 800 rail cars, or 2,000 trucks or nine oil tankers on the Great Lakes per day to make up for it, with increased greenhouse gas emissions combined with greater environmental and safety risks.
When I raised this point with the Minister of Natural Resources at our committee, he wanted to focus on petty politics, saying he did not want to have to answer gotcha questions when I asked some simple questions about the capacity of Line 5, instead of addressing the issue at hand, with all the social, economic and environmental importance. The superficial approach and attitude of the government was on full display.
This is the same cabinet minister who instead of the Prime Minister is supposed to be leading the charge for Line 5 and energy development in Canada. He has been saying he is confident Line 5 will not get shut down. Canadians are counting on him being right.
Following recent media reports that the government's diplomatic approach was “frustrated”, I asked the minister to be absolutely clear that this threatened shutdown would be averted. The parliamentary secretary responded with a canned answer on his behalf, although it was interesting to hear him say, “We are ready to intervene precisely at the right moment.” Sadly, this is not being clear with Canadians.
When exactly is the right time? An ATIP I referred to earlier, a request from my colleague from Battle River—Crowfoot, showed that as of March 10, there were exactly zero briefing notes on record under the control of the Privy Council Office from the Prime Minister dating back to March 1, 2019. To say that this is not even on his radar would be an understatement.
Again, it has been six months since the governor's announcement and we are now one week away from the deadline. This is also not the kind of deadline where a homework assignment can be turned in on the last day. It is quite the opposite. If the minister is confident that Line 5 will not stop flowing on May 13 and that it will continue for a little while longer after at least, that does not mean we are out of the woods whatsoever. For all the government knows, it would only be kicking a can down the road with the same or worse uncertainty wherever it might lead.
We already know that Enbridge, for its own part, plans to continue its operations and take the battle all the way through the courts in the U.S. However, the governor of Michigan just called Line 5 a ticking time bomb and clearly wants to fight back too. That really is not the point. For each month this has been dragged out, there has already been damage done. The mayor of Sarnia has described it as hovering for months.
Anxiety has been building as more time passes and the deadline gets closer. The workers in the wider community have had to live with it all along. Beyond that, it starts to have a broader, chilling effect. This is how the same mayor describes it. He said:
Anytime there’s uncertainty about the source of what drives a particular economy, it does have an impact when you’re trying to recruit companies and industries into the area.... When you’re in the economic development game, you’re always trying to eliminate anything that could be an impediment and the longer this goes on, the more of that anxiety is there.
Considering these wide-ranging effects, the right time to intervene was probably long before the deadline rather than a week before. Even if Line 5 makes it past the deadline while the courts handle the dispute, it could still find itself in a compromised position. As some lawyers have already noted, the perception of defying an order from the state government could somehow be used to undermine their case or political capital.
Hostile, anti-energy groups will certainly enjoy calling Line 5 an illegal pipeline, even though that is misleading and unclear. These are the same activists supporting the governor who are part of a movement that is pushing the same disinformation and anti-development ideology that led President Biden to cancel Keystone XL and our own Prime Minister to hold back other pipelines here in Canada.
We should also remember that there is at least one cabinet minister who actively took part in the anti-energy crusade and apparently has no regrets. These groups uncritically oppose operational pipelines as much as those under proposal, and it makes no difference to them the distinctions the government wants to make in its own positioning.
For years and years, the Liberals have played with fire going along with a lot of this movement's rhetoric. In doing this, they have helped to enable the same people who are behind this attack on Line 5. However, they are not the ones getting burned. The costs and consequences are falling on Canadian families and workers instead.
This should be a wake-up call for all the government. Looking at how this year is going so far, we see the results of a damaging pattern from the Liberal record of mixed signals and carelessness at best, or death by delay tactics at worst.
Back when President Biden cancelled Keystone XL on his first day in office, the Prime Minister said his government was going to fight for it, but it also made sure to quickly add that Joe Biden was keeping a campaign promise and that there were other priorities to work on with him. In other words, it did not take long for it to basically give up and move on.
Will the Liberals eventually do the same thing with Governor Whitmer's campaign promise to stop Line 5? If they say they support Line 5, do they mean it? Are they going to be proactive? Do they really care or understand the urgency? Will they think of other things to preoccupy themselves like they did with Keystone?
When we talk about Keystone, and listening to some of the questions from various members throughout the debate here tonight, there are a lot of questions on the indigenous involvement. When we look at Keystone XL in particular, I always talk about the group Natural Law Energy. The CEO is based in my riding, and he is from the Nekaneet first nation. It has an equity stake in the pipeline project.
We need to look at natural resource development, and we need to look at the continuation of pipelines in operation as an opportunity for indigenous Canadians to continue to be part of the economy, and to advance toward reconciliation and self-determination, because these are extremely important issues to them and, quite frankly, to all Canadians.
The other thing with Enbridge Line 5 that quite a few of my colleagues have spoken quite well about is that this is a national unity issue. What Line 5 does, and what these other pipelines that never got built would have done, is that Line 5 continues to displace the need for foreign oil coming into Canada.
As we are talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, why should we be importing oil with tankers across the ocean into Canada? We have the ability to refine our own oil and to use Canadian oil in Canada and in North America. We need to have a North American strategy and security for our energy production here in Canada. That is what Line 5 does. It unites Canada, and it helps to unite us with our partners across the line and to the south as well.
