There is not a single study anywhere that tells us Kinder Morgan would be a long-term job creator

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, although we are debating Bill C-68, I cannot leave the comments the member for Prince Albert just made unchallenged. I participated as an intervenor in the review of Kinder Morgan before the National Energy Board. There were two pieces of evidence. One was from Kinder Morgan that completing the expansion would create 90 new permanent jobs, 40 in Alberta and 50 in British Columbia, and that during construction, it would create 2,500 jobs a year for two years.

The other evidence about jobs came from the largest union representing oil sands workers in Alberta, Unifor. Its evidence was that completing the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion would threaten Canadian jobs and cause a loss of jobs, with a direct threat to the remaining refinery in Burnaby, and losing, through opportunity costs, the jobs that could be created by having the product refined in Canada. Unfortunately, the National Energy Board ruled that jobs were not inside its mandate. It did not want to hear anything about jobs, and refused to hear the evidence from Unifor.

In fact, there is not a single study anywhere, despite all the rhetoric and propaganda, that tells us Kinder Morgan would be a long-term job creator in Canada. Again, the evidence the NEB refused to hear from the largest union involved was that it was a threat to jobs.

Randy Hoback – Member for Prince Albert

Mr. Speaker, I hope the member was open minded when she attended those hearings, and actually listened to all sides. Kinder Morgan is just one part of the whole sector. We needed Kinder Morgan to deliver the oil we were developing and for which we had a market. The oil sands and other oil fields needed that pipeline to get the oil to market. If we cannot get it to market, then there is no reason to have those companies operating. If we are pulling a product out of the ground that has nowhere to go then we do not pull the product out of the ground. Those are the jobs that are lost, and those the jobs were not accounted for.

Therefore, when the member talks about direct jobs in building the pipeline, that is true. When she talks about maintaining the pipeline, that is also true. However, that is just one segment of the whole industry. If we do not have that pipeline, if we do not deliver that product to market, we lose the rest of it behind it, and that impact thousands of jobs right across Canada. It impacts the type of social benefits we can provide to all Canadians.