NDP Leader Tom Mulcair told a business audience Thursday that he will never speak out against the oil sands but that the way they are being developed is destabilizing Canada's economy.

In a wide-ranging speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa, Mulcair laid out his views on the state of Canada's economy and on the Conservative budget tabled last week. The approach he presented to the audience for tackling problems in front of a government includes considering the environmental, economic and social consequences of any solutions.

A theme of his speech was sustainable development and he used Alberta's oil sands as an example of how it's not happening often enough in Canada.

"You'll never hear me speak against the development of the oil sands, it wouldn't make any sense, it's 10 per cent of our economy," Mulcair said, but, companies are being allowed to use them as "an unlimited free dumping ground" and future generations will have to clean up the mess.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is failing to apply the basic rules of sustainable development, Mulcair said, and the result of their economic management is an artificially high dollar.

Sustainable development was the theme of NDP Leader Tom Mulcair's speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa on Thursday. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

"Instead of having a very prosperous economy that can base itself on a sustainable basis on these great resources that we do have, we're actually hurting ourselves," he said.

Mulcair said you can no longer oppose environment and economy. "You have to look at the environmental effects, the economic effects and the social effects at the same time whenever the government looks at a problem, of any nature," he said.

The development of Alberta's oil sands is not a question of east versus west or whether they should be developed at all, the NDP leader said. The question is how they are being developed, and currently, "it's destabilizing our economy, it's not just adding wealth."

Mulcair said that new laws and regulations aren't necessarily required, the government should simply be enforcing the ones that already exist.

He also commented on the Keystone XL pipeline project and said that it amounts to the exportation of jobs, not resources.

Mulcair also talked about trade and said his party will fight for labour and environmental protection provisions for any new deals.

The NDP leader pitched his party to the audience as the one with a solid record of management while the latest Conservative budget raises questions about their "fundamental incompetence."

"These are choices that don't make any sense in the overall scope of that budget," he said about the cuts to food and air safety departments.