Madam Speaker, I got a Liberal member to react by talking about poutine. That is good.
Business people are no dummies. What these big oil companies are saying is that Ottawa should be assuming the risks. If we want low-carbon oil, it will not be the greedy oil and gas sector that will take on the risks, it will be the federal government. Taxpayers are the ones who will have to assume the risks on behalf of the oil companies, which have been raking in record profits since the end of the pandemic. It that is not indecent, I do not know what is.
What we know about carbon capture and sequestration strategies is that their effectiveness remains unproven. However, there is a consortium of corporations known as the Pathways Alliance. Many have probably heard of it already. It is a consortium comprising all the big oil companies. In fact, in a moment of rare lucidity the Leader of the Opposition said that these people were harmful and served no purpose. For once, I had to agree with the leader of the official opposition. I hope he keeps repeating that message.
The Pathways Alliance is an oil consortium that was investigated by the Competition Bureau for false advertising. It even had to remove from its website statements claiming that it was able to make the oil sands carbon neutral. The Pathways Alliance, whose greenwashing practices were revealed in 2024 and which was forced to remove false statements from its website, wants almost $16 billion in funding from the federal government for carbon capture and sequestration projects.
The government would bear the costs. The Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister of Finance announced their intention to reach an agreement with the consortium by 2024 through the Canada growth fund, or CGF. The CGF falls outside Ottawa's accounting purview. We have no control over it. The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General can do nothing. In addition to the CGF, the government would use tax credits available only to oil-producing provinces to achieve its goals.
In my opinion, this amounts to throwing public funds out the window. There are, however, interesting critical minerals initiatives. I am thinking in particular about phosphate. The government agreed to put phosphate on the list of critical minerals, but without the associated tax credits. What is the point? I will not even mention hydrogen. The federal government was forced to lower its projections on hydrogen by 80%.
I am ready to answer my colleagues' questions. I will end my speech by saying, “turlututu, chapeau pointu”, what absolute nonsense.