Remarks made by Brian Jean, Leader of the Official
Opposition in the Alberta Legislature. The Albany Club, Toronto,
February 24, 2016.
Excellent article from the Calgary Herald
So thank you again, for that warm welcome.
I am honoured to be your guest here at the historic Albany
Club, and so without further fanfare, let me lay out our situation,
and why it matters to you, here in Toronto.
It matters because Alberta’s energy industry is a Canadian
champion, an economic marvel that spreads its wealth right across
Canada, and that benefits ordinary Canadians more than they know, and
it is in trouble. And here’s the thing… any hurt we feel in Alberta
will be felt in the rest of Canada. It will be felt directly in
existing jobs lost, and it will be felt indirectly, in new wealth that
will never be created. So you need to know just how high the stakes
are, and why, therefore, here in central Canada you can’t afford to
ignore what’s happening to us out west.
We have two problems. Obviously, the world oil market has
not been our friend. And sadly, our own provincial government has not
responded well to the challenge of $30 oil. I will save partisan
comments for the Alberta legislature, but,
I will say this to you: policy matters. And in the current
economic climate, a Wildrose government would be lowering taxes for
Albertans, not raising them. We would be reducing government expenses,
not adding costly new programs. And until all serious energy producers
are paying a carbon tax, a Wildrose government would not foist one on
Alberta producers. But all that said, market slumps are nothing new.
And governments can be changed – something in which our Wildrose party
is keenly engaged.
Alberta’s second - and much larger - challenge, is a
permanent one, one that won’t go away on its own as the market
improves. Let me be blunt. In Canada and outside of it, there is a
coalition lined up against Alberta’s oilpatch.
All the players don’t have the same goal. But they’re all
pushing in the same direction. Some, radical activists, often funded
from abroad, think oil should just stay in the ground. And they know
that by undermining every one of the three pipelines that could get
product to market from land-locked Alberta, they could permanently
cripple, perhaps even kill, Alberta’s energy industry. Certainly, they
can limit its growth, and by limiting access to buyers, make sure
Canadian oil continues to sell at a discount in the U.S.
Their campaign is all about torquing up supposed
environmental and safety risks, and by scaring the public, to browbeat
politicians into avoiding decisions, and extending the review process,
so that nothing ever gets approved. Rex Murphy called it organised
procrastination. Procrastination implies something might still be done
one day, if we muddle through long enough. Let me tell you friends,
for people in my hometown of Fort McMurray, and across all Alberta,
this is more like the organised choking-to-death of the livelihoods of
hundreds of thousands of people, in Alberta, and in the rest of
Canada.
There are also opportunistic provincial politicians. They
echo the scare stories that these activists peddle. But, that’s just
bidding up the price. For them, it’s about taking a rent as the oil
goes by. Which isn’t constitutional, by the way, but that doesn’t stop
them from trying, and it does put them in the ranks of active pipeline
opponents.
There are also passive opponents. These are the folks who
refuse to make the connection between the drilling rig in Alberta, and
the gas in their tank. These are the people who tell each other that
our oilsands product is ‘dirty,’ then they turn around and use oil
that comes from some of the worst regimes in the world.
Unfortunately, these are the people who should understand
what Alberta’s energy industry means to the rest of Canada. I’m
talking about our new federal government here, the people who should
be on our side, who aren’t pushing back. In fact, between banning
tankers in the waters of northern B.C., and lengthening the pipeline
review process, the Liberal government in Ottawa has made itself part
of the problem. Between them all, real harm is being done.
Ladies and gentlemen, Albertans are proud of sharing their
prosperity. Proud of it. Glad to do it. But, they are tired of being
treated as a piñata.
We need your support, and to show you what a big deal this
is for all Canadians, here are some facts. There’s nothing secret
here. But it is surprising how little you hear of them.
First, Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of oil
and petroleum liquids, and the biggest part of that comes from
Alberta. Fifth-largest. That makes Alberta a bigger deal than Iraq,
the Emirates, Kuwait or Venezuela. Indeed, thanks to its energy
industry, Alberta, with about a ninth of Canada’s population, was
responsible for nearly a quarter of all Canada’s exports!
No offence to my hosts here in central Canada, but the more
than $90 billion in Alberta energy exports in 2014 was more than half
as much again as Canada’s second biggest export, which is the
very-fine motor vehicles, the cars and trucks that come out of
Ontario’s assembly plants. I’ve bought lots of them over the
years!
It’s also more than three times the value of the machinery,
engines and pumps, we export. It’s five times the value of gems and
precious metal exports, seven times the value of wood products, eight
times the value of aviation exports, and so it goes on.
This may surprise you: Alberta’s energy exports are ten
times the value of all Canada’s exports of cereals!! Which of course,
is something else Alberta sells.
One thing more. For the last decade, Alberta’s energy
industry has been the greatest attractor of international capital into
Canada. This in turn energises the entire Canadian economy. For, when
our energy operators spend their money in Ontario and Quebec, the
fruits of Alberta energy come back to central Canada. That’s where
they buy their heavy machinery, the pumps, the massive process vessels
fabricated in Ontario, their pickup trucks. In Quebec, bus-maker
Prevost sells hundreds of vehicles to the oilsands producers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, speaking of the oilsands alone, there
are more than 1,100 Ontario companies supplying Alberta’s energy
industry. There’s another 170 in Quebec. And altogether, across all of
Canada, more than 2,000 companies outside Alberta are doing business
with Canadian oilsands producers inside Alberta.
These are huge investments. But, they’re more than that.
They’re nation-builders. They’re like the railways in the 19th
century, or the Trans-Canada Highway in the 20th.
Today, eastern Canada should have access to oil from
Canada’s West. What kind of a government wouldn’t think that was a
good idea? We need governments that will put their ideologies second,
and the national interest first.
Anyway, investments. Until recently, oilsands investment
alone was running at $30 billion a year,
and 45 per cent of that was spent in central Canada. And
the investments only stand to get bigger.
To build the three oil pipelines presently under
consideration means an investment of $30 billion with almost $430
billion in economic spinoffs for all of Canada over the next 30 years.
Private investment, I should add, that creates jobs and growth. A
different scale of enterprise altogether, to the piffling $250 million
of borrowed money the federal government means to direct our way,
supposedly as aid, in our new state of dependency.
Look, we lose between $30 million and $50 million, every
day, because we don’t get the world price, because we have only one
customer – our American friends. $250 million doesn’t cut
it.
So, we say this to Ottawa: Keep your borrowed money!
Authorize a pipeline.
Then, Alberta will create jobs. Jobs at home, jobs in the
rest of Canada, tens of thousands of jobs, high-quality jobs,
well-paid jobs!
And let’s not forget, friends, a job is not a statistic.
It’s somebody’s life. Behind every job, there’s a Canadian. Somebody
who’s struggling to pay their bills and glad to be able to work hard
to support their family and to follow their dreams.
So, all this money flows out of Alberta, and around the
country.
You know, in the eighties, we used to have a bumper sticker
in Alberta that read,
‘Oil pays my taxes and feeds my family.’ Well, as surely as
it feeds families in Alberta, it pays taxes and feeds families in
Ontario and Quebec. It comes back to Ottawa as tax revenues, paid on
corporate profits to the federal government. It comes back as income
taxes, paid by the men and women who worked in Alberta’s energy
sector, and elsewhere in Canada, to service Alberta’s energy
sector.
All of these taxes help pay for equalization, and for the
federal services that make life better for all Canadians. That’s often
forgotten: for decades, Alberta has been a net contributor to
equalization – one of the four so-called ‘have’ provinces. In fact,
among all the provinces and territories, only Ontario contributes more
to Canada’s wealth than Alberta. Alberta is a huge driver of our
national economy.
Alberta is quite simply the crown jewel of Canada’s
economy. And that’s why I’m telling you that if such a high performing
part of the Canadian economy has a problem… if Alberta, a province
that attracts so much investment, generates so much revenue, creates
so many jobs for Canadians in other parts of Canada, especially here
in Ontario, has a problem…. If that Alberta has lost a hundred
thousand high quality jobs, if in a world awash with capital, no one
is bidding on productive assets from bankrupt oil companies, or
looking for bargains in Alberta’s energy industry, if nobody wants to
bet on Alberta…. If Alberta has problems like that, then the rest of
Canada has a share of Alberta’s problems. A huge share. And it doesn’t
matter that you’re here and we’re there, you will feel our
pain.
So, what’s to be done?
Two things. First, we have to make sure Canadians know the
facts. Second, our governments must take a pro-Canada approach to
industry in Canada. Let me say a few words about both.
We must counter the distortions, with the truth. For
example, if climate change is your issue, Alberta is not your culprit.
The oilsands represent just eight per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas
emissions… Our GHG emissions are 0.15 per cent of the global total.
Meanwhile, we’re developing innovative ways – incredibly innovative
ways – to help Canada meet its carbon-reduction goals, through
efficient processes, and carbon sequestration. The prime minister
wants resourceful? Albertans are resourceful.
Or maybe you’ve become alarmed about pipeline safety. Then
let me tell you that in Alberta, we have 415,000 kilometres of
pipelines, pipelines of all sizes. That’s half of all the pipelines,
in Canada. And every day, they move oil and gas around Alberta, and
around Canada, reliably and safely.
How reliably? How safely? Ladies and gentlemen, no
technology is perfect. But, since 2000, Canadian pipeline spills have
been miniscule: it has been calculated that proportionately, they are
equivalent to three teaspoons dripped out of a gasoline nozzle over
the course of 50 fill-ups of 50 litres each.
There is no safer way to transport oil, than by pipeline.
Safer than trucks. Safer than rail. Safe, for as long as Canadians
want to drive cars, fly between cities, or eat foods grown on other
continents.
Ladies and gentlemen, the facts are with us. It is up to
Albertans to make the case. What we plead from the rest of Canada is
an open mind and a fair hearing.
The second thing we want is governments to do what they’re
there to do, which is to support Canadians, in their legitimate
efforts to make a living and to build our great country.
A prime minister is not a referee. He’s there to make
decisions and get things done. And while he’s prime minister, he needs
to remember whose side he’s supposed to be on. For the Prime Minister
of the fifth largest oil producer in the world to go to Davos and
actually tell the world that this is not something we want to be known
for, is profoundly insulting. It’s shameful, and unworthy of his
office.
In fact, it suggests to us that Mr. Trudeau, who in 2010
said that Canada’s problem was too many Albertans in government, still
feels more at ease in the company of foreign celebrities than with his
fellow Canadians, and is generally in better agreement with
them.
I’ll tell you ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud of our
province, but we’re even more proud of Canada. So what we find
offensive, is when our elected leader talks long and loud about what
Canada and Alberta ought to be, when he doesn’t even understand what
we are.
I’m from Fort McMurray. And I’m proud of what we do for a
living. The truth is that in all of Canada’s long and remarkable
history, Alberta, and its energy industry, have been among the
greatest generators of wealth and prosperity, for millions of
hard-working Canadians, right across the country. They still are. For
now.
What we want to hear is some respect from Ottawa. Some
acknowledgement of what we mean to Canada, and when foreign-funded
agitators are spreading fear and loathing about Alberta, then we’d
like to hear a full-throated defence of our province, our industry and
our way of life.
It’s time for the federal government, to start saying ‘yes’
to the oilpatch, yes to some pipelines, and yes to building a greater,
stronger, more prosperous Canada.
Finally, friends, to get Canada back up to speed, Alberta
has to get back up to speed. So, this is not just Alberta’s fight,
it’s a fight for all Canadians. We will not shirk our part. We just
ask that you be our friends in this.
