Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said pipelines are still the safest way to transport oil and gas despite what she called an unfortunate incident.
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Canada’s premiers have reached a deal on the long-awaited Canadian Energy Strategy that officials describe as aspirational.
Insiders say that Mr. Wall received no support from other premiers for his strong views; Friday morning he met with reporters and had significantly toned down his rhetoric.
“The strategy allows for more oil pipelines”.
The notion of a Canadian energy strategy came about in 2012 under then-Alberta premier Alison Redford.
Davis said earlier in the day that it’s more important to get a national energy strategy right than to get it done quickly.
“The problem is that the energy strategy itself is so vague that it’s all things to all people”, he told The House.
The new energy strategy is a conflicted mix of environmental protection strategies and energy growth initiatives.
Erin Flanagan, oilsands analyst with the Pembina Institute, a national non-profit energy think tank based in Calgary says the energy strategy must be as much about climate change as it is about energy supply.
Wall, who took an aggressive stance in support of oil and gas development heading into this week’s meetings, sounded a milder tone as he arrived Friday.
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said Canada has a responsibility to act on climate change if it’s to look credible on the world stage.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have limited markets for their land-locked oil, with environmentalists opposing pipelines that have to go through other provinces to reach the Pacific or Atlantic oceans.
The strategy even drew criticism from the United States, where the Natural Resources Defence Council called its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions “tepid”.
Together, Canada’s provincial and territorial labour federations give voice to over three million workers, represented by the Alberta Federation of Labour, British Columbia Federation of Labour, Canadian Labour Congress, Manitoba Federation of Labour, New Brunswick Federation of Labour, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour, Northern Territories Federation of Labour, Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, Ontario Federation of Labour, Prince Edward Island Federation of Labour, Federation des travailleurs et travailleises du Quebec, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and Yukon Federation of Labour.
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“Facilitating pipelines means committing to expand tar sands development, which is utterly inconsistent with Canada’s professed commitment to join the worldwide community in combatting climate change”, Anthony Swift, the director of the NRDC’s Canada Project, said. “When we don’t have every premier in the country agreeing we need to reduce our carbon pollution in absolute terms, we’re at a standstill”.
