Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has repeatedly attempted to gain legitimacy for her tough-on-oil initiatives, such as raising royalties and promoting more refining and upgrading in the province, by claiming she’s merely following on the footsteps of the province’s beloved late premier, Peter Lougheed.
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The Globe and Mail reported Friday that the deal balances some premiers’ desire to focus on environmental issues with others’ support for expanding oil and gas extraction from Alberta’s oil sands region.
“We are pleased that the premiers heard this call from Canada’s nurses and pushed back on the damaging position taken by this Conservative government”, said CFNU President, Linda Silas. The Canadian Energy Strategy is the culmination of a project begun in Alberta under Alison Redford.
“For me, it becomes about how do we get the work done, not how do I score points against the federal government”.
But today, Wall says the premiers had some “pretty frank discussions” that led to his marked shift in tone.
Leaders of the country’s provinces and territories will discuss and potentially finalize the Canadian Energy Strategy at a three-day meeting this week, according to government officials familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.
JOHN’S, N.L. – Canada’s premiers have announced a national energy strategy supporting both project development and the need for emission cuts, ending two days of sometimes tense talks on how to balance the two. The deal will list principles, and won’t help companies build pipelines any faster or provide firm new climate targets, the officials said.
“We had a meeting”, Wall told reporters.
He said it would create thousands of jobs and give a much-needed boost to the economy of his province and the rest of the country.
He says the strategy does not acknowledge there’s a trade-off between growing the oilsands and reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Canada’s provinces agreed to ensure that regional, Canadian and worldwide infrastructure exists for sending energy products to domestic and worldwide markets.
“Oil and gas are not four letter words”, he said.
He expressed his concerns that the strategy did not recognize the importance of the oil and gas industry to Canada’s economy and was tilted too much toward addressing climate change issues, which could have put up roadblocks to pipeline expansion, for example.
“Wildfires in British Columbia, a severe drought in California and more extreme and unpredictable weather all underscore the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a meaningful energy strategy to tackle carbon pollution”, the group declared in a statement.
“If the energy strategy is simply about expanding market access, we aren’t going to be getting at those questions of climate change”.
But Wall says he was won over by a chapter of the strategy concerning the movement of oil across the country.
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A communique was released after the premiers met in St. John’s. There is no potential for Canada to play the increasingly important role we should in supplying the world with energy if we don’t have a common commitment to make it happen.
