You know where your coffee comes from. How about your gasoline?

Albertans generally don't understand the importance of manufacturers like Tenaris to the oil and gas business, and Ontarians don't sufficiently appreciate the importance of the oil and gas sector to Canadian manufacturing.

That was part of the message Gary Mar, president and chief executive officer of Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC), delivered to an audience of Sault business people last week.

"I have a theory that Canada is a nation in spite of its geography," Mar told a Chamber of Commerce luncheon on the resource-energy-manufacturing supply chain. "This is a big country that goes east to west, but in a very real way, all of our trade links in our association go north and south," he said.

PSAC is a national trade association representing service, supply and manufacturing sectors within the upstream petroleum industry.

That includes some 65,000 jobs in Ontario.

PSAC members are involved in pipelines, fracking, cementing, drilling, drilling fluids, environmental services, equipment rentals, industry supplies, manufacturing, perforating, production testing, safety equipment and services, snubbing, trucking, well servicing and other petroleum-related activities.

Mar was here for Friday's announcement of $16 million in federal funding to Tenaris Algoma Tubes Inc.

Speaking later in the day at the Delta Hotels Sault Ste. Marie Waterfront, he argued that people across Canada need to pay more attention to the origin of their petroleum products.

"If we care about global emissions, we should care about where our oil and gas comes from," he said.

"It always surprises me when people talk about the importance of a cup of coffee. We want to make sure that we have fair-trade coffee. We care that the environment's not being desecrated, that people are being paid a fair wage."

"I would make the argument that we should be equally concerned about where our tank of gasoline comes from. You're concerned about your coffee, you should also be concerned about where your oil and gas comes from, because it's going to continue to be developed. Canada should be supplying the world with what we produce."

Mar proposed that Canada is the world's most responsible energy producer.

"It doesn't matter if you measure that through an environmental framework or an occupational health and safety framework or a labour standards framework. Our guys go to work efficiently and effectively bringing energy out of the ground every single day. And they come home safely."

"Because we have the most responsibly produced energy producers on earth, it should be the oil and gas choice anywhere in the world," Mar said.

"If we stop producing it, it we can't get it to market, if we can't have pipelines to take our oil and gas to markets other than the United States, it will be displaced by people who don't operate with the same kind of faith in technology and environment and occupational health and safety. We must continue to have and build out more take-away capacity."

Mar expressed gratitude for Canada's recent approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

"We need to have more of that take-away capacity, because what's good for the oil and gas business will be good for Tenaris."

Global demand for energy is increasing, with world population expected to go from seven to 10 billion people by 2100, he said.

"About 15 per cent of Canadians still get their primary energy for heating using wood. That is a huge contributor to global gas emissions."

"A quarter of our exports come from oil and gas. That is a significant part of the equation of why the standard of living in Canada is so good, is because of the exports of oil and gas from this country."

Other speakers at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon included Guillermo Moreno, president of Tenaris Canada; Catherine Cobden, president of Canadian Steel Producers Association; Mathew Wilson, vice president policy and government relations, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters; Shannon Joseph, vice president of government relations, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Stephen Flewelling, chief development officer of Noront Resources Ltd.

Perrin Beatty, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, spoke to the gathering via a pre-recorded video.