I apologize, Madam Speaker.
In 2016, the Prime Minister told the World Economic Forum “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. Well I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.” While that is a cute thing, let us look at how that has worked out. In 2019, natural resources accounted for 14.9% of Canada's economy, dropping from 19.5% in 2015. At the same time, Canada's prosperity began to decline, as measured by GDP per capita, and it is now the worst in Western democracies. By the way, Klaus Schwab apparently has resigned from the head of the World Economic Forum, so there is a job opening for the Prime Minister.
Why is productivity important? When productivity rises, it means that more output is generated with the same number of hours worked, which boosts profit for business and creates wage growth without lowering business profitability. The growth and export of Canada's natural resource sector not only is the driver to restore our productivity and prosperity, but also is the most important factor in restoring Canada's productivity. It is our competitive advantage globally.
The challenges that the natural resources sector has faced are because of the specific Liberal government policies, which are the key driver of Canada's overall economic decline. The policy choices of the Liberal government with its unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act, which is basically a no-capital-back act, has diminished our ability to get things to market. The Liberals do not recognize that the policy choices they have had on Canadians are driven by their decisions.
According to a report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, displacing only 20% of Asia's electricity that is generated by coal with clean Canadian liquefied natural gas is the equivalent to eliminating all of Canada's emissions globally. Our goal should be to displace 40% of Asia's coal generation, which would remove two of Canada's carbon emissions from the globe while driving more powerful paycheques at home as Canada resumes its place in the world as an energy superpower. Why would the NDP-Liberals think that destroying this industry is anything but harmful not only to Canadian prosperity but also to reducing carbon emissions? They will have to answer this to voters, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
However, there is good news. Common-sense Conservatives would proudly restore Canada's competitive advantage by developing all of our renewable and non-renewable resources. Canada's productivity recovery begins with our resource sector. It also begins with restoring fiscal sanity to our finances. We would fix the budget, reduce spending and ensure new spending is matched dollar for dollar with spending reductions. Common-sense Conservatives know that the value of Canada's competitive advantage is our natural resources, and we will get projects permitted in under 18 months.
Does the Liberal budget do anything to get clean, ethical, liquefied natural gas to Asia to replace harmful coal generation? There is not a word, not a peep, not a sentence in the bill on that. This is not a serious budget, since it would not do anything to improve our productivity, and it would do nothing to improve the world's climate issues. However, there is hope on the way and hope for the planet, and it is called an election, which cannot come soon enough for Canadians.