Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday that he has instructed his finance minister to enter negotiations with Kinder Morgan to “remove the uncertainty” hanging over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
Prime Minister Trudeau also said federal legislation is coming that will “reassert and reinforce” the fact that the federal government is well within its jurisdiction to approve the project and ensure it goes ahead regardless of resistance from any one province or territory.
“Ideally, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now,” The Prime Minister told a news conference Sunday after a closely watched, last-minute meeting with B.C. Premier John Horgan, who is blocking Trans Mountain, and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who desperately wants to see it go ahead.
“The rhetoric and actions by the B.C. government would not have led to the concerns of the company, that got approval to move forward on a project that is in the national interest,” he said.
Prime Minister Trudeau, whose political ambitions have a lot riding on the multi-billion dollar project, spent more than 30 minutes at the podium following Sunday’s meeting, much of it spent in an effort to depict Canada as a unified country with complex needs and interests, all in an effort to ease the tensions in Western Canada and elsewhere over the disputed pipeline expansion that would carry Alberta oil to B.C.’s coast.
Prime Minister Trudeau’s cabinet approved the pipeline in 2016, following an interim environmental review process that included assessing things such as the emissions that will be created from producing additional fossil fuels that will flow through it. The Prime Minister has argued repeatedly his government has put in place the environmental protections and policies needed to reduce the risks of an oil spill, and that building the pipeline to get Canadian resources to market is necessary for the Canadian economy.
