Finance committee  Well, I'll agree with your calculation in the premise of the statistic that you're showing, but—

Finance committee  Well, the Northern Gateway pipeline would allow us to get international pricing for our commodities, and that certainly is going to be beneficial to all Canadians.

Finance committee  That's income that we can put into different social programs and other things that run our country.

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  In particular, if the United States becomes energy sufficient and secure, it certainly is going to be a huge problem for Canadian crude producers.

Finance committee  Well, we have a systemic labour problem in western Canada, and there are just not enough people to run our operations.

Finance committee  I think it's because we have an obvious lack of infrastructure that could supply the various markets in Canada.

Finance committee  At the end of the day, I think diversifying and getting multiple customers for your product just makes sense.

Finance committee  Those types of questions are the reason why I brought Doug. Do you want to address that?

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons finance committee. Your job is to recommend to the government measures that will strengthen the economy. I can do that for you in two sentences. We want a government that will defend and promote

Finance committee  There are approximately 160 drilling rigs working today, out of a fleet of about 750. In terms of comparison, there were about 300 at the same time last year, and then in 2014 around 500.

Finance committee  There were about 500 rigs.

Finance committee  That's a difficult question to answer. I would say that at the current market price, there are very few fields in western Canada that are competitive at $30. If we do not see a significant turnaround in terms of overall commodity pricing, this is just not a sustainable business i

Finance committee  No. In fact, when you look at just the drilling industry, you see that our operations range right across western Canada, from southern Manitoba across Saskatchewan and Alberta and into northeast British Columbia. Then, of course, we also represent the offshore drilling rig indust

Finance committee  We have come out publicly in support of an initiative that Premier Wall has presented. It's what I think is a very targeted program that would inject activity into the specific industry and the very small businesses that are in desperate need right now. I think programs like this