Proponents decide to cancel projects for market and internal reasons: Petronas LNG

Elizabeth May

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have this tendency of listing off projects where the proponents decided for market and internal reasons of their own to cancel a project.

I think it was a travesty that the Liberal government gave a permit to Petronas LNG to build on Lelu Island, but the Malaysian state-owned enterprise, Petronas, decided not to proceed with LNG there. The member cannot lay that at the door of the Liberal government. I wish he could. I would respect the government more had it looked at the evidence that the Petronas LNG facility would wipe out our Skeena salmon fishery.

The same claim has been made about energy east over and over again here today. TransCanada made its own decision that it could not support it as there was not a market for two pipelines for the export of raw bitumen. Therefore, it picked Keystone, which has approvals from Canada and the U.S., although in the U.S. there are court cases still trying to stop Keystone, and I hope that they are successful.

The jobs that I would like the member for Calgary Shepard to consider are the jobs in Canada that we used to have when we had 40 refineries in this country, when we used to regard our own domestic requirements as a market instead of only creating those overseas.

Tom Kmiec – Member for Calgary Shepard

Madam Speaker, on the refining capacity in Canada, it is true that a lot of refineries have started to close down, but it is for economic reasons. There is opposition to a carbon tax on large emitters. It happens to be the refineries and upgraders that are some of the largest emitters. If we want to refine the product, it is not free, either in GHG emissions or carbon, or NOx and SOx, as we call them. It is not free. Either it gets done in Canada or it does not. When we impose huge regulatory costs, when we impose a carbon tax, when we basically wrap a project up in so much red tape that the people who are proposing it on behalf of shareholders and other Canadians who are investing in it to get a return, we are telling them not to do it as they will not get their money out of it, and they will not be able to retire on this investment.