Hon. Daryl S. Fridhandler: I’m going to follow up on my colleague Senator Youance’s question on pipelines. With the recent development regarding Keystone, it’s starting to look like a bit of a Snakes & Ladders game to me on which one is going where, what goes up and what goes down.
When Trans Mountain commenced its operation, it was a welcome addition to the ability to get oil to tidewater and to achieve world market prices, a major milestone. I know we still have capacity there, but when we bring Keystone back, we start looking back to the old days of continental, constrained U.S. pricing, which was discounted to what we could get at world market prices. What are your thoughts, if Keystone did go forward, of still maintaining world pricing in the face of that?
Hon. Tim Hodgson, P.C., M.P., Minister of Energy and Natural Resources: As you may know, I sat on the board of a major oil company. The key is not where the spot differentials are between Henry Hub and AECO; the key is what the producers are achieving if they have take-away capacity to egress. If they have pipeline capacity that gets them to the Gulf Coast or the West Coast, they can achieve world prices, and we’re not actually being stung by the differential.
I’m not going to comment on the specifics. The key — no pun intended — on Keystone, or any other, is whether Canadian producers have egress from Alberta to the coast. If they do, they are getting world prices. What we need to do is maintain sufficient egress so Canadian producers are always getting world prices. For example, the TMX has probably made Canada $15 billion since it was expanded by reducing the differential that Canadian producers got because they had egress all the way to the coast.
Hon. Daryl S. Fridhandler: On another topic, as a senator from Calgary, Alberta, I would like to thank you and your colleagues for choosing Alberta to be the Major Projects Office and also congratulate you on getting Dawn Farrell to accept the role of leadership, one of the more capable women corporate leaders in this country, I believe.
What is going on in terms of operationalizing that office? I know you’re not the minister responsible, but you would have a lot to deal with, given what is going on there.
Mr. Hodgson: As a sidebar, when I was with major leaders of the business community in Calgary and we announced Dawn, the response was overwhelmingly, “Wow. You guys are serious.” This is the most serious person you could place in this role.
We are incredibly fortunate. Dawn is the type of person who does not need this role. She could easily retire and do many other things. She is choosing to do this because she loves this country and wants to see it do better.
She has stood up a team incredibly quickly, and we are hard at work.