Madam Speaker, I am happy to be here this evening to maybe get some more answers to the question I asked in question period before we rose last spring.
We had an election and an election campaign, and a lot of commitments were made by the Liberal Party about building infrastructure. There was a lot of talk about pipelines during the campaign but not a lot of action after.
The Prime Minister has been in office for six months now, and he has finally announced his Major Projects Office. However, the big, breathless announcement that the Liberals ran out to make was about five projects that were already being looked at and already halfway to getting regulatory approval. I can think of one, Foran Mining in Saskatchewan up by Creighton. I have a friend who works for Foran Mining. It has been working on its project for four years now, so I would not say it is a new project.
The question I asked in question period was about building pipelines and about the hard-working men and women at Evraz steel in Regina, where, at the peak, when products and pipelines were being built, there were 1,100 or 1,200 people working at the steel plant. They are now down to about half or even fewer than half of that many employees. These are hard-working families that depend on the good jobs at Evraz steel to make ends meet, and these men and women are now struggling to get by, living paycheque to paycheque. I wonder if there will be a pipeline project in the next tranche of major projects that will be announced. Perhaps more projects will be reannounced.
In Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of natural resources. I have seen polling done throughout the provinces, and there is a desire to get major projects built in the country once again and to get people back to work in industries like steelmaking and pipeline building. A lot of good, hard-working unionized employees in the building trades are looking to see if the government's actions will follow the talk. Is it going to talk the talk or actually walk it? That is what people in Regina are asking about regarding the Liberal government.
A lot of promises were made, as with the slogan “build back better”. There have been a lot of slogans from the Liberal government over the last 10 years. I have been here since 2019, and I have not seen a lot of projects being built.
I will end with one last comment. For some projects that were being built, the issue was the dumping of cheap steel. Canadian steel is not being used in some of the projects that have moved forward. China, India and other countries are flooding the market with cheap steel that is not as environmentally friendly and is not as good quality as what is being built in my city of Regina, in Hamilton and in Canada.
I would love a response from whoever is going to take the question. When will projects be built? When will new projects be announced, not old projects being reannounced? I would love to make sure the projects that get built use good, environmentally sustainable Canadian steel.