Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise and to speak to our opposition day motion. I will be sharing my time with the great member for North Island—Powell River.
It is particularly significant that I am speaking today because, for those who do not know, oil was first discovered in North America in my riding. That is right. In Oil Springs, in 1861, the Fairbanks bought the property, there was a huge gusher, and it was the start of the oil industry in North America. The precursor to Imperial Oil was Standard Oil. The companies trucked that oil from Oil Springs right to Standard Oil, which became Imperial Oil. They took the technology developed in my riding to 86 countries. There is the Oil Museum of Canada located in Oil Springs, where people can see all this amazing technology and where it all began.
I am going to start there, and then I am going to say, “I love pipelines.” I love pipelines not just because I am a Conservative. I love pipelines because, as an engineer, I have built pipelines and operated pipelines, and because pipelines are the key to prosperity and for Canadians to have the social services that we all value so much. That is why I am happy to rise today and speak to this motion.
This motion is important. Basically, we know that in the past, the Liberals cancelled pipelines. They cancelled the northern gateway pipeline, and they cancelled the energy east pipeline. They cancelled 18 LNG projects that were on the books in 2015 when I was elected. We know that at the time, the current Prime Minister actually testified at the industry committee that he was supportive of cancelling northern gateway. When he now comes and says that the Liberals are going to build the unimaginable at speeds we have never seen before, and that the government now has an MOU with Alberta to build a pipeline to take our oil to the west, we can understand why Canadians are a bit skeptical. Why the flip-flop? Is it ever really going to happen?
We know there is huge division already within the Liberal caucus. The climate caucus is saying that this is a total violation of the climate plan that the Liberals had and of the fact that they said, even in the budget, that they would not subsidize fossil fuels anymore. We had the convicted felon, the former minister of Canadian identity and culture, step down from his position because he saw the total flip-flop. People cannot believe that there is sincerity there, especially when there is a different message being sent to B.C. from the one being sent to Alberta and to the rest of the country. The Liberals are saying to the B.C. folks, “Do not worry about it. It is never really going to be built. There is a lot that has to happen for it to go on.” To everyone else, it looks like they are building a pipeline. That is why we are here.
We have brought the language from the MOU. The motion states:
That the House:
(a) take note of the Memorandum of Understanding between Canada and Alberta of November 27, 2025; and
(b) support the construction of one or more pipelines enabling the export of at least one million barrels a day of low-emission Alberta bitumen from a strategic deepwater port on the British Columbia coast to reach Asian markets, including through an appropriate adjustment to the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, while respecting the duty to consult Indigenous peoples.
All day, during the debate, we have had excuse after excuse. This is the Liberals' MOU. It is their language, and they are saying, “We really cannot support the motion, because the Conservatives did not put the whole entirety of the MOU in here.” Well, for Canadians, the question is simple to answer: Do they want to build a pipeline, yes or no? Either they do or they do not, and the rest of it is just word salad.
Now, how did the Liberals cancel all these previous projects? They did it through regulations that take six years to get a project approved and cost billions of dollars. There was Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill. We warned the Liberals for 10 years that this was going to be disastrous, that foreign investors would leave and that nothing would get built, and here we are. Then the Prime Minister had to ask the Conservatives to support him to put across Bill C-5, which allows them to exempt any project in the national interest from all of the horrible legislation that the Liberals put in place over the last 10 years, including the tanker ban, the “no more pipelines” bill, the industrial emissions cap and all of these kinds of things that have discouraged the kind of prosperity that oil and gas has brought to Canada and the money that we need in order to keep supporting systems that are struggling, like our health care system.
If we look at what could be done, what we could build that is unimaginable, at speeds never before seen, well, we could be like Germany, which permitted and built an LNG terminal in 194 days, or about seven months. This government has been here eight months, and it has not built anything. In fact, the things it has announced are things that were already in the pipeline. I am sorry about the pun, but they were already on the way.
We had offers to give our LNG to other countries. Germany wanted us to provide it with LNG so that it could get off heavy oil and coal from Russia. It was going to pay us $60 billion a year, but we said there was no business case, so Australia took that deal. Then Japan came and wanted to give us $60 billion a year for our LNG, but again, we said there was no business case, and Qatar took that deal. Then the Netherlands came and offered us $60 billion a year for our LNG, but the Saudis took that deal, because we did not. Can members imagine having $180 billion a year more revenue into the country?
We talk about the deficit, and we talk about its inflationary effect and how it is going to burden generations in the future. There is a solution to that, which is to increase revenue so that we can actually afford the social services and so that we can pay down this deficit, yet we said no to all of those things. It also would have helped the planet. LNG replacing heavy oil and coal cuts the carbon footprint by a factor of four, and that is significant.
In terms of this MOU, there are lots of things in it, such as getting rid of the clean electricity regulation and getting rid of the emissions cap. They did agree to raise the industrial carbon tax, which I am not a fan of. I think that just increases the cost of everything. The people who pay the industrial carbon tax just pass the cost on to the consumer, so I do not agree, but in order to get the pipeline approved, Alberta has said yes to that.
Now, there is resistance rising up already, as there always will be. If we want to have 100% of Canadians, indigenous people and B.C. always give their consent to everything, we will never build anything. That is why, according to the law, the power to build something that goes between provinces is exclusively the Prime Minister's power. He can do this, especially with the exemptions that Bill C-5 allows. He has the ability to do it if he has the will to do it, and that is what the debate is about today: Does he really have the will, or is it all smoke and mirrors, just another bait and switch?
We know there is a lot at stake. We have lost 3,000 jobs in the auto sector and 1,000 steelworker jobs, and 34 paper mills have closed, all at Christmas time. The future of our social safety net is at risk. We have an increase in poverty in this country, homeless encampments, food bank lineups, and seniors who cannot afford to eat and heat, yet there is still a doubt as to whether anything is going to happen here. Even with this MOU, they are talking about how, in seven months, they will have a consultation to start something in two years. Well, that does not sound like build, build, build at unimaginable speeds. That sounds like zero progress or lots of delays and negative acceleration.
What are the Liberals waiting for? We are tired of the hypocrisy, and we are tired of hearing them talk out of both sides of their mouth, so the official opposition today is going to force them to say, “Yes, we want a pipeline,” or “No, we do not want a pipeline.” Are the Liberals serious, or are they not?
We, on this side of the House, do want to expand oil and gas. We believe that building a pipeline to get our oil to Asian markets will increase revenue by $30 billion. We could use that. The country needs it. Canadians need it.