Taking our message to Ottawa

Last week, I presented to the Senate Standing Committee for Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources on Bill C-69 – the federal government’s bill to overhaul the environmental assessment and review process for major energy projects.

My message was simple: Bill C-69 must be fixed. It cannot pass as is.

For the sake of the country, Ottawa needs to start getting it, and fast. Because when Alberta’s energy industry is hurting the whole country pays a price.

What I told the Senate Committee was this: Bill C-69, as it is currently written, damages Alberta’s economy and, therefore, damages the country.

It also harms Alberta’s ability to continue making progress on climate action, on economic diversification and on important things like tackling child poverty. Something that we have been able to do quite successfully is we have cut child poverty in half and we have by far the lowest child poverty rate in the country even while fighting a recession.

Bill C-69 needs to be re-written.

I reminded the committee that last fall, because of the failure to build pipelines our recovering economy was faced with another crisis. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was over $50 per barrel, while Albertans were getting under $10.

Our government was forced to curtail oil production by almost 10 per cent. I asked the committee to think about that for a moment.

Over in the Maritimes they are importing Saudi oil, in Ontario they are importing American oil at world prices and in the West we’re curtailing production.

I told them, this is not how you build a country and I put forward a series of common-sense amendments that we would like to see taken as a package. These amendments are also paired with industry proposals that we support.

Now, as I said at the committee: I don’t think the system Bill C-69 intends to replace is any better.

The former government’s Environmental Assessment Act was broken, misguided and damaging to our economy. We agree that the process for approving infrastructure projects needs to change. We agree that Indigenous consultation and environmental protection are central to building trust in a modernized approval process. We agree that in ignoring these things, for many years Ottawa failed the country and failed Albertans.

The old way of doing things is not an option.

But we have to get this right. We can’t just swap one broken system for another broken system. We won’t build trust with more investor uncertainty. We can’t replace a “no pipeline” process under the former Conservative government with a “no pipeline” process under a Liberal one.

I also reminded the committee that Alberta comes to the table as nation-builders. For the last four years, we have patiently been building a consensus on the need for pipelines by reaching out to Canadians from all walks-of-life.

And it’s working.

Today, a large and growing majority of Canadians support the pipeline and because of that, the federal government bought the pipeline when it was threatened.

For the sake of our national economy Trans-Mountain must be built. For the well-being of hundreds of thousands of working Canadians, and for future economic infrastructure, Bill C-69 needs to be re-written.

You can read my full speech to the Senate here.

And for more information on the actions we’ve taken, read Alberta’s position on Bill C-69.