Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for North Vancouver.
I welcome this opportunity to discuss an issue that is critical to all Canadians in all parts of the country, an issue that speaks to how we leverage the energy resources we have today to deliver the clean energy solutions for tomorrow.
We are talking about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, an issue we have been fully engaged with really since we were elected, and certainly since I have become Minister of Natural Resources, meeting with indigenous groups in their territories, holding regular discussions with counterparts in British Columbia and Alberta, travelling across the country and beyond in the past 18 months to meet with the proponent and investors, and talking with Canadians across the country hearing their views.
Before outlining the importance of TMX, let me just quickly remind the House about the facts of the project.
Very early in our mandate, we established a set of interim principles to hold major resource projects to a higher standard, increasing consultation, creating certainty for investors, and avoiding the issues created by the Harper Conservatives that led to the dismissal of pipeline approvals by the Federal Court. Let me be clear. We did this to ensure that pipelines were not just approved; we did this to ensure they would be built.
A set of guiding principles included expanding public and indigenous consultations and putting TMX into the broader context of the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change. The National Energy Board considered all of these criteria and recommended that we approve the project, subject to 157 binding conditions. These are very stringent conditions that will, among countless other things, strengthen spill response and ensure critical habitat protection and restoration.
Then we went further. To enable even more voices to be heard, I appointed a special ministerial panel to hold additional hearings.
Why did we do all of this? Because the Federal Court of Appeal in the northern gateway case quashed the approvals. It was not that Enbridge, the proponent, had not consulted, not that the National Energy Board had not consulted, but that the Harper government had not sufficiently consulted indigenous people. Therefore, the panel held 44 public meetings, hearing more than 600 presentations, receiving some 20,000 submissions by email, and for the first time, we posted a record of those discussions online for all Canadians to see.
We also did something that no other Canadian government had ever done. We co-developed a historic Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee to help oversee this project through its entire life cycle. As a result, indigenous voices will be heard, their counsel sought, and their knowledge valued in ways they never have before. As Chief Ernie Crey of the Cheam First Nation said, “Indigenous people won’t be on the outside looking in. We’ll be at the table and on site to protect our land and water.”
Even with the 157 conditions imposed by the NEB, we understood that more could be done to protect our coast. Again we acted, making a generational investment in the health of our oceans and the safety of our coasts.
I have been listening to the speeches from the members opposite in the Conservative Party, and I cannot recall references to the coasts and protecting marine safety. I hear only vague conversation about the environment. However, our government knows that without environmental stewardship, without economic growth and jobs, and without proper consultation with indigenous peoples, there will be no pipelines built in our country. As members opposite will know, during their 10 years in office not one kilometre of pipeline was built to tidewater, not one. If in subsequent interventions they want to correct the record, I invite them to do it.
The $1.5 billion in an ocean protection plan is making navigation safer by strengthening the eyes and ears of the Coast Guard to ensure better communication with vessels, adding a new radar site in strategic locations, and putting more enforcement officers on the coast.
The plan strengthens our capacity to respond in the unlikely event of an accident by adding more primary environmental response teams to bolster Coast Guard capacity, by investing in new technologies, and by conducting scientific research to make cleanups more effective. As well, we reopened the Kitsilano Coast Guard station that was shuttered by the Harper Conservatives.
In approving TMX, our government also looked at the economic benefits it would bring to Canadians, and they are significant. This is a $7.4-billion infrastructure project that will create thousands of good-paying middle-class jobs right across the country.
The Prime Minister and I were in Fort McMurray just a number of days ago. We met with workers onsite. We met with CEOs. We met people, Canadians, from coast to coast to coast who were in Alberta using their energy and using their capacity to help what we believe to be true. It is that the future of the energy sector in Canada is vital for our growth as a nation.
We also need to expand our world markets. Ninety-nine percent of all of our exports in oil and gas go to one country, the United States. The Trans Mountain expansion will enable us to open up new markets in the world at a better price, which will benefit not only the people of Alberta but also all those Canadians who understand that attracting public investment from other places is in the interests of our economy and of our future. The benefits to the GDP will be staggering.
Those are the reasons we approved TMX. Those are the facts that led us to decide that this project was good for Canada.
It will not be news to members of this House that pipelines, any pipelines, are controversial. These are not easy issues, and good people, in good faith, can disagree. The truth is that many Canadians understand that there must be a balance. They understand the economic benefits but want assurances that the environment will be protected. They see both sides.
I understand and appreciate the views put forward by the governments of both British Columbia and Alberta. They are elected to represent the interests of their constituents as best they see them. However, there is only one Government of Canada, and the Government of Canada has determined that this project is good for Canada and is in the national interest.
The stakes are high, and we are determined. We will not give up the wealth that TMX will create for Canadian families and communities. We will not leave Canadian resources without access to world markets. We will not continue to accept less than fair value for Canada's energy. We know that most Canadians will agree.
As well, we will not sow uncertainty among global investors contemplating resource projects in British Columbia or elsewhere in Canada. We must be steadfast in our commitment not only to protect the environment but to grow the economy, and we are clearly signalling that Canada is open for business.
Just as importantly, we will not forgo the vital role TMX can play in making Canada a leader in the clean growth century. Instead, we will use this time to Canada's advantage, building the infrastructure to get our resources to global markets and using the revenues they generate to invest in our energy future. The project is too important a part of that plan.
So too is ratifying the Paris Accord, putting a price on carbon, investing in clean technology and infrastructure, accelerating the phase-out of coal, creating a low carbon fuel standard, regulating methane emissions, and, together with our provincial and territorial colleagues, developing a national plan for combatting climate change.
We believe that this project is vital for the future of the Canadian economy to give confidence to investors that Canada is a place that understands the balance between environmental stewardship and economic growth, a country that understands that energy and the capacity to harness energy in all of its diversity that we are blessed as Canadians to have inherited will put us in a place to lead the world.
