Elizabeth May
Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on the assertion from the member of Brandon—Souris that this will create thousands of jobs.
I was an intervenor in the Kinder Morgan review before the National Energy Board. In that review, Kinder Morgan, and I refer the member to volume 5B of its submission, claimed 2,500 jobs per year for two years. There are 90 permanent jobs in B.C., and there has been no support for more jobs than that, which is part of the reason the major unions of Alberta, Unifor and the Alberta Federation of Labour, oppose this project. They recognize that shipping raw bitumen out of Canada ships out the refinery jobs with it.
Could the hon. member refer us to any study that supports the claim that this will create more jobs than it kills?
Mr. Larry Maguire
Mr. Speaker, her own union said that it would produce 2,500 jobs. That is thousands of jobs. I have worked in the oil industry and agriculture all of my life. When we can move product, process it, take it even from a oil well to a battery, that is process and it creates jobs. It creates jobs all over Canada, not just in the oil field.
We have seen that particularly with Fort McMurray. Jobs are made in the Maritimes. They are made in the member’s home town. They are made in all of southern Ontario. Canada is the beneficiary of the movement of these products into the export market, just the same as I have dealt with all of my life in regard to the grain industry. Sure we would like to have more of it processed in Canada. Part of that was the development of a larger livestock industry in the Prairies because it cost too much money to ship raw materials like that to our foreign ports.