Hi folks. I'm as surprised by some of the claims that get tossed around here as anyone, but I'm also quite sure personal insults don't improve matters. It's best if you use these comment boards to make your own statement rather than trying to police others.' My preference and my intention remain to do almost nothing to police comments -- consistent with the comments not being a snakepit of insult and recrimination. Most days we're nowhere close to that. So most days, I'm happy not to intercede.
Freeland is starting to remind me of a teacher telling her students on how it is, and Trudeau sounds like he's giving a sermon most of the time he speaks. Being a long time Liberal I'm getting tired of being talked down to when I hear these two. I know this is not the time for more carbon taxes to further lower the standard of living for so many, and I think we should have offered LNG to Germany at a critical time in their need. The Liberal gov't is losing touch with the masses quite quickly in my opinion, and Poilievre is looking better. Time for change.
Sorry Wayne but if you believe the carbon tax rebate is going to offset the rise in all the carbon taxes Trudeau has planned for our future, I have some ocean front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.
I don't like the condescending remarks of the readers against each other in this post. What is going on in this country that we cannot agree to disagree without personal attacks? Leave it to the US and Trumpists.
To Paul - thank you for your insights and hard work.
Anybody who thinks you can "fast track" a huge pipeline project, much less an LNG terminal, in 8 months must never have participated in a large engineering project. My humble experience is the comparatively simple 1-metre water pipelines for the City of Calgary - mere $15M projects that still had to start two years out from ground-breaking, setting up contracts and, above all getting the land, which was the most-frequent source of delay. (We are not China, cannot just seize land.)
There are so many specialized trades, so much specialized equipment that is tightly-scheduled, often flown around the globe doing it's part in 10 pipelines a year. So are the people. Here's a mental exercise: watch ALL of the credits for a Star Wars or Marvel movie, the whole 10 minutes of fine print: then imagine snapping your fingers at Disney and saying "speed it up from 3 years to 2".
I find myself in an odd position on oil and climate: I advocate for great expense and sacrifice to migrate as quickly as possible away from carbon - but also give a pass to ongoing oil fossil infrastructure projects, save the most-stupid and damaging. That's because I read Vaclav Smil, and am realistic about the timelines. Until we have at least carbon-free *options* for steel, concrete, fertilizer, and construction work, Smil will continue to be correct that "every wind turbine is made of steel smelted with coal, in a foundation of concrete baked by natural gas, dug by a backhoe running on diesel".
In this case, we need to beat Russia *now*, and we don't have the green infrastructure to beat them with, so we need the fossil simply for Europe to live their lives, and to build green infrastructure with. And I'm afraid it will be 10 years before any of that changes.
Good points about the technical aspects of getting a serious infrastructure off the drawing board, and assembling the land, material and physical resources needed to complete the project. (Hopefully on time and within budget constraints.)
In Canada, we have the skill set to plan and execute big infrastructure projects. We always have, starting with survey work and building roads and bridges with human labour and horses. Our problem today isn’t know how, it’s political inertia via a densely layered regulatory process. It is designed to discourage anyone from trying to run the gauntlet of the process and the victory at the end can be scuttled by Cabinet decree. The uncertainty literally scares investors away, and I can’t help but think that the current Government in Ottawa likes it that way. Whether Ms. Freeland can turn the boat around remains to be seen.
This doesn’t get mentioned a whole lot but more LNG capacity probably means higher natural gas prices for Canadians. Good or bad it’s something to bear in mind.
Great points! Also great visual with the credits after a movie. I’m not sure most have any idea of the complexity of these projects. Thats not to say we should give elected leaders a pass, but only to understand the context.
Interesting--and intriguing analysis. So we have Trudeau's anti-Alberta stance, Guilbeault's residual-radical environmental posturing, and Freeland's apparent energy realism all in play. The long quote from Freeland's speech is a bonus as I don't have to listen to her patronizing kindergarten-teacher voice...
She adopts such a stilted and unnatural tone when she talks to us (via the press or QP). I expect she has no idea how off-putting this. Why won't she speak naturally?
I hope she is trying to balance out the nonsense coming from Guilbeault and his ilk, but there is no evidence of it to date.
Maybe she is just a PR front to convince various parties (the US, NATO, bankers etc.) that Canada is not being run by idiots but is in safe hands.
But it would be nice if she would just answer an effing question with a straight answer.
Skill in public speaking is pretty much mandatory for election, but a serving official should only be judged on words, not the performance. Try reading.
(An obvious comment, I was mainly testing whether that angle-bracket command actually worked. Pity it doesn't.)
(I was just hoping to terminate further discussion with Wayne, which was getting off the point....)
Not sure of your point...Freeland is more than an official, she has a couple of important posts in the national government, so the way that she and other members of this government talk to us is pretty important.
She is guilty of the same current Liberal-speak that they have all adopted ("I won't apologize for...", "We stand for <fill in the gap>" etc.) plus a 100% refusal to answer any question directly.
She has been strong in promoting the defence of Ukraine and in her recent pronouncements about Russia and China, but delivered with the same (to me - stilted) voice she uses to duck and weave around questions in QP, Committee and elsewhere, it is fair to wonder whether there is anything behind this.
Isn't this post by Paul Wells asking that question? Who's talking when Freeland's talking?
If you're old enough to have seen Chretien at his best, he was the master of getting across his points (talking naturally) we all could relate to even if we disagreed with his policies, and he threw in a little zinger once in a while. Trudeau and Freeland are nice people, I'm sure, but mannequins in comparison.
Tell me it isn't somewhat strange, speaking of energy security, that in the face of an intransigent Saudi regime which has allied itself to Russia because it recognizes a common country when it comes to human rights, the President of the US whose country faces huge deficits in oil shipments from the Saudis, will not say that nearly 8 hundred thousand barrels of crude could flow to his refineries from western Canada if only he would authorize the completion of Keystone? Yet in a recent interview he stated that the US will be taking a different tack in its relations with Saudi Arabia. What does that mean? At the end of the day America is still reliant upon Saudi oil. Canada is financing a share in the Ukraine fight for survival. Canadian oil will help pay for that. Let the Saudis support Russia without the money earned from their shipments of oil to the US. Then there is the problem with oil supply to the east coast. Oh, well if one unties one knot, another one is tied. Tough decisions will be needed.
Keystone XL was about 10% completed when Biden cancelled 20 months ago. Completion of the remaining 1100 miles of pipe was hoped-for at three years, but many described that as "wishful thinking", common to such estimates.
At best Keystone could have contributed, not so much to oil supply itself (Alberta never sold more oil than last year) but to the profits made by the sales. But it would be able to lower American gasoline prices, in a situation like this...by the spring of 2024 at earliest.
We have a government of talkers rather than doers. I don't see Freeland doing much except talk. If she was a real leader she would have fired the incompetent civil servants in Ottawa and hired people who got things done.
The project was underway when JT got in the way. Then he started layering on regulations, playing poker with the owners, Kinder Morgan. What he didn't know is that KM were professional poker players and they looked at the cards that were dealt and folded their hand. JT panicked and - again, professional poker players - KM negotiated a wildly overpriced sale to JT. Then he continued with his regulation, woke this, that and the other thing and the project is now slowly, slowly, slowly working toward completion. Right now, it is (kind of) schedule to be complete in 2023.
So, under Harper the project was approved and had just started but is not yet complete. Not yet.
And that may be; the only problem is that those same "RW liars" neglected to send me the memo. Now you have done so, Given that you don't like that word, what is an appropriate word or phrase?
Thank you, Terry for your response. I do have a couple points.
First, you didn't comment whatsoever on my points about the TMX that you credited (erroneously, to be sure) to JT.
Second, you objected to my use of the word "woke" when In responded as above. In turn, I asked what word or phrase you would use in replacement of that word and you provided a typically "woke" [sorry, I just couldn't resist - old white guy humor there] response.
Third, you seem to not like "angry old white guys" so I must query you further: have you never been angry? Your response certainly seems anger to me; perhaps I am reading too much into things. "White" - hmmmmm.... racist, no? Oh, sorry, that's right only we whites are allowed to be racist so that is what? Pot calling the kettle .... again, you got me there. "Guys" - sexist, no? Or am I allowed to use the word "sexist?" Perhaps "genderist?"
All in all, Terry, you disappoint me, above all because you did not respond to my comments on TMX and JT's mishappen [I seem to have coined a word there: a combination of an unhappiness and a mishap, combined, to be certain, with incompetence] role in the very sorry TMX saga. It seems that you could acknowledge your error; in fact, I did that very thing earlier tonight with a correspondent in Quebec where I was (without realizing it) a bit too broad in my commentary and he pointed out my error so I thanked him for his information and acknowledged my error. You might try that sometime. It's good for the soul.
Wayne she speaks down to people, it’s condescending. This is not a misogyny issue it is he tone. So does her Boss. Some how the concept that we hired them as employees to work for us seems to have been lost. Always voted with them but not again
I haven't read elsewhere, the implication that Freeland was taking chances, advocating positions that were ahead of the rest of the government. That can be very career-limiting.
But if so, it's not been much-discussed how Vladimir Putin has just made certain that Freeland is the party's next face. There aren't many better things you can do for a political career than to take a chance that others will not and turn out to be right.
Never mind the others in her party that were softer, most of the leaders of Europe were putting their heads on Putin's chopping block, while she cried warning.
Freeland is not actually contradicting Guilbeault, because he is only promising meaningless stuff. "Standards will not be lowered" he assures us. But the LNG prospects have all of their federal approvals, and the pipeline approval process was stripped back by Harper... while Trudeau conveniently forgets the 2015 and 2016 to put a climate change lens into the pipeline application process.
Steven Guilbeault is just the ventriloquist's dummy.
All that said, Freeland only has a mandate to push her Liberal Hawk vision. The government may or may not buy in.
I liked the observation about Ms. Freeland getting out over the Government skis. Regarding the serious need for improvements to the regulatory process and license issuing for the export of natural resources, let’s hope that Trudeau, Wilkinson and Guilbault get some ski wax for Christmas and catch up.
After 7 years punishing the oil and gas industry into submission, we have a lot of catching up to do.
Terry, please reference that 800,000 bbl per day pipeline if JT ever gets it built. It is now scheduled - maybe, of course, because it is a government project - for 2023.
As for the NGL plant, again, please call back when the plant actually gets to being able to ship any JGL.
Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24. That is almost 8 months and nothing from the Canadian government about "fast tracking" anything. If they really thought it was a crisis they could have started to build some pipelines and LNG facilities on the east coast by now. Maybe not completed, but started. The Canadian government and all the other Western governments talk like this a war and a crisis, but they sure don't act like it.
The conservatives under Harper did nothing on pipelines especially to the east. He had a chance. Now the First Nations will not allow them on their land, Quebec is against a pipe, No one is willing to pay for one even if the obstacles were removed.
Please, Miles, I have heard this disinformation about the Harper government for years. The fact of it's repetition does not make it so.
In fact, during the Harper term in office the following were completed:
a) The non-XL version of Keystone, from Alberta to Nebraska approved in 2006, completed in 2010;
b) The Alberta Clipper to Wisconsin, approved in 2008 and active in 2010;
c) The changeover of Line 9 taking oil west to east was approved and activated; and
d) The Anchor Loop, a modest expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
In addition the Energy East project was under way, at least in terms of the bureaucratic approval process, at the time of change in government in 2015, as was the Northern Gateway project. The Energy East project died when the proponent, TransCanada (now TC Energy) withdrew it's application after the JT government threw up such an incredible blizzard of new and inexplicable requirements (the intersection of gender, and whatever, etc.? Really!?!). The Northern Gateway project was also in the application process but collapsed when the JT government arbitrarily decided to ban west coast tanker traffic.
So, you claim that nothing happened under Harper, huh? Not like you are correct or anything.
Now, as for the First Nations claim. I suspect that you are referencing the Coastal Gas Link mess where a few (I think it is four or five) guys who claim that they are "hereditary chiefs" of the particular nation have unilaterally decided to say "no" when the elected governments of the particular nation and the vast majority of citizens therein have said "yes." Of course, the terrorists are getting the press approval.
Ah, yes, Quebec! No more "dirty oil" says Francois. Just send your dirty money. Yup, we really do have an obstacle there.
So, you want to have a pipeline to the east? Tell that to your friend JT. You want a pipeline to the west? Tell that to your friend JT. Oh, yeah, he already has a pipeline (kind of) to the west. He played poker with Kinder Morgan and they simply cancelled the project - pretty poor poker player that JT was. He panicked and wildly overpaid to buy the project and then, allowed all sorts of incredibly "woke" conditions with the result that it is still not built and wildly, wildly over budget but it will be completed. Sometime. Perhaps 2023. Believe it or not, it will actually still be economic even with his mismanagement.
So, go ahead and blame Harper. You'll be wrong, but go ahead.
Her remarks remind me of Madeleine Albright at her best. I also think it is sound strategy for a PM who is persistently upbeat and positive to have a DPM who will remind us that the world is not fair and this will be hard. It is certainly more reassuring that being told, "You can have control back!" As if anything were ever under control lol
In Covid hearing Pfizer director admits vaccine was “never tested to prevent transmission”. European Union. See this latest bombshell. Now ask what the truckers knew the so-called government did not.
Hi folks. I'm as surprised by some of the claims that get tossed around here as anyone, but I'm also quite sure personal insults don't improve matters. It's best if you use these comment boards to make your own statement rather than trying to police others.' My preference and my intention remain to do almost nothing to police comments -- consistent with the comments not being a snakepit of insult and recrimination. Most days we're nowhere close to that. So most days, I'm happy not to intercede.
Freeland is starting to remind me of a teacher telling her students on how it is, and Trudeau sounds like he's giving a sermon most of the time he speaks. Being a long time Liberal I'm getting tired of being talked down to when I hear these two. I know this is not the time for more carbon taxes to further lower the standard of living for so many, and I think we should have offered LNG to Germany at a critical time in their need. The Liberal gov't is losing touch with the masses quite quickly in my opinion, and Poilievre is looking better. Time for change.
I assume that you quickly cash your "carbon tax" rebate check or tick off your tax deduction?
Gas prices are not raised by the levy. Period.
Sorry Wayne but if you believe the carbon tax rebate is going to offset the rise in all the carbon taxes Trudeau has planned for our future, I have some ocean front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.
I don't like the condescending remarks of the readers against each other in this post. What is going on in this country that we cannot agree to disagree without personal attacks? Leave it to the US and Trumpists.
To Paul - thank you for your insights and hard work.
Kathleen
Anybody who thinks you can "fast track" a huge pipeline project, much less an LNG terminal, in 8 months must never have participated in a large engineering project. My humble experience is the comparatively simple 1-metre water pipelines for the City of Calgary - mere $15M projects that still had to start two years out from ground-breaking, setting up contracts and, above all getting the land, which was the most-frequent source of delay. (We are not China, cannot just seize land.)
There are so many specialized trades, so much specialized equipment that is tightly-scheduled, often flown around the globe doing it's part in 10 pipelines a year. So are the people. Here's a mental exercise: watch ALL of the credits for a Star Wars or Marvel movie, the whole 10 minutes of fine print: then imagine snapping your fingers at Disney and saying "speed it up from 3 years to 2".
I find myself in an odd position on oil and climate: I advocate for great expense and sacrifice to migrate as quickly as possible away from carbon - but also give a pass to ongoing oil fossil infrastructure projects, save the most-stupid and damaging. That's because I read Vaclav Smil, and am realistic about the timelines. Until we have at least carbon-free *options* for steel, concrete, fertilizer, and construction work, Smil will continue to be correct that "every wind turbine is made of steel smelted with coal, in a foundation of concrete baked by natural gas, dug by a backhoe running on diesel".
In this case, we need to beat Russia *now*, and we don't have the green infrastructure to beat them with, so we need the fossil simply for Europe to live their lives, and to build green infrastructure with. And I'm afraid it will be 10 years before any of that changes.
Good points about the technical aspects of getting a serious infrastructure off the drawing board, and assembling the land, material and physical resources needed to complete the project. (Hopefully on time and within budget constraints.)
In Canada, we have the skill set to plan and execute big infrastructure projects. We always have, starting with survey work and building roads and bridges with human labour and horses. Our problem today isn’t know how, it’s political inertia via a densely layered regulatory process. It is designed to discourage anyone from trying to run the gauntlet of the process and the victory at the end can be scuttled by Cabinet decree. The uncertainty literally scares investors away, and I can’t help but think that the current Government in Ottawa likes it that way. Whether Ms. Freeland can turn the boat around remains to be seen.
The thing is- Germany still wants the LNG even if it takes 5 years to get it.
This doesn’t get mentioned a whole lot but more LNG capacity probably means higher natural gas prices for Canadians. Good or bad it’s something to bear in mind.
Great points! Also great visual with the credits after a movie. I’m not sure most have any idea of the complexity of these projects. Thats not to say we should give elected leaders a pass, but only to understand the context.
Interesting--and intriguing analysis. So we have Trudeau's anti-Alberta stance, Guilbeault's residual-radical environmental posturing, and Freeland's apparent energy realism all in play. The long quote from Freeland's speech is a bonus as I don't have to listen to her patronizing kindergarten-teacher voice...
How would you like this well educated woman to speak? Should she talk like a recalcitrant wife or should she bow and scrape for you?
Is she too patronizing for you? One could catch a whiff of misogyny in your post.
Trudeau is not anti-Alberta. The right wing hegemony in Alberta is anti Albertan.
She adopts such a stilted and unnatural tone when she talks to us (via the press or QP). I expect she has no idea how off-putting this. Why won't she speak naturally?
I hope she is trying to balance out the nonsense coming from Guilbeault and his ilk, but there is no evidence of it to date.
Maybe she is just a PR front to convince various parties (the US, NATO, bankers etc.) that Canada is not being run by idiots but is in safe hands.
But it would be nice if she would just answer an effing question with a straight answer.
What is naturally? I really think you have a problem, of course that is none of my affair but in stilted language gfy.
Not sure this is the level of comment that Paul Wells is hoping for, but he can be the judge of that.
<thread terminated>
Skill in public speaking is pretty much mandatory for election, but a serving official should only be judged on words, not the performance. Try reading.
(An obvious comment, I was mainly testing whether that angle-bracket command actually worked. Pity it doesn't.)
(I was just hoping to terminate further discussion with Wayne, which was getting off the point....)
Not sure of your point...Freeland is more than an official, she has a couple of important posts in the national government, so the way that she and other members of this government talk to us is pretty important.
She is guilty of the same current Liberal-speak that they have all adopted ("I won't apologize for...", "We stand for <fill in the gap>" etc.) plus a 100% refusal to answer any question directly.
She has been strong in promoting the defence of Ukraine and in her recent pronouncements about Russia and China, but delivered with the same (to me - stilted) voice she uses to duck and weave around questions in QP, Committee and elsewhere, it is fair to wonder whether there is anything behind this.
Isn't this post by Paul Wells asking that question? Who's talking when Freeland's talking?
If you're old enough to have seen Chretien at his best, he was the master of getting across his points (talking naturally) we all could relate to even if we disagreed with his policies, and he threw in a little zinger once in a while. Trudeau and Freeland are nice people, I'm sure, but mannequins in comparison.
Tell me it isn't somewhat strange, speaking of energy security, that in the face of an intransigent Saudi regime which has allied itself to Russia because it recognizes a common country when it comes to human rights, the President of the US whose country faces huge deficits in oil shipments from the Saudis, will not say that nearly 8 hundred thousand barrels of crude could flow to his refineries from western Canada if only he would authorize the completion of Keystone? Yet in a recent interview he stated that the US will be taking a different tack in its relations with Saudi Arabia. What does that mean? At the end of the day America is still reliant upon Saudi oil. Canada is financing a share in the Ukraine fight for survival. Canadian oil will help pay for that. Let the Saudis support Russia without the money earned from their shipments of oil to the US. Then there is the problem with oil supply to the east coast. Oh, well if one unties one knot, another one is tied. Tough decisions will be needed.
Keystone XL was about 10% completed when Biden cancelled 20 months ago. Completion of the remaining 1100 miles of pipe was hoped-for at three years, but many described that as "wishful thinking", common to such estimates.
At best Keystone could have contributed, not so much to oil supply itself (Alberta never sold more oil than last year) but to the profits made by the sales. But it would be able to lower American gasoline prices, in a situation like this...by the spring of 2024 at earliest.
In the current Canadian political state of affairs 'fast-tracking' something simply means you talk about it more until people forget about it again.
We have a government of talkers rather than doers. I don't see Freeland doing much except talk. If she was a real leader she would have fired the incompetent civil servants in Ottawa and hired people who got things done.
Respectfully, Terry, you are wrong.
The project was underway when JT got in the way. Then he started layering on regulations, playing poker with the owners, Kinder Morgan. What he didn't know is that KM were professional poker players and they looked at the cards that were dealt and folded their hand. JT panicked and - again, professional poker players - KM negotiated a wildly overpriced sale to JT. Then he continued with his regulation, woke this, that and the other thing and the project is now slowly, slowly, slowly working toward completion. Right now, it is (kind of) schedule to be complete in 2023.
So, under Harper the project was approved and had just started but is not yet complete. Not yet.
And that may be; the only problem is that those same "RW liars" neglected to send me the memo. Now you have done so, Given that you don't like that word, what is an appropriate word or phrase?
Thank you, Terry for your response. I do have a couple points.
First, you didn't comment whatsoever on my points about the TMX that you credited (erroneously, to be sure) to JT.
Second, you objected to my use of the word "woke" when In responded as above. In turn, I asked what word or phrase you would use in replacement of that word and you provided a typically "woke" [sorry, I just couldn't resist - old white guy humor there] response.
Third, you seem to not like "angry old white guys" so I must query you further: have you never been angry? Your response certainly seems anger to me; perhaps I am reading too much into things. "White" - hmmmmm.... racist, no? Oh, sorry, that's right only we whites are allowed to be racist so that is what? Pot calling the kettle .... again, you got me there. "Guys" - sexist, no? Or am I allowed to use the word "sexist?" Perhaps "genderist?"
All in all, Terry, you disappoint me, above all because you did not respond to my comments on TMX and JT's mishappen [I seem to have coined a word there: a combination of an unhappiness and a mishap, combined, to be certain, with incompetence] role in the very sorry TMX saga. It seems that you could acknowledge your error; in fact, I did that very thing earlier tonight with a correspondent in Quebec where I was (without realizing it) a bit too broad in my commentary and he pointed out my error so I thanked him for his information and acknowledged my error. You might try that sometime. It's good for the soul.
Don't know what you are talking about.
Wayne she speaks down to people, it’s condescending. This is not a misogyny issue it is he tone. So does her Boss. Some how the concept that we hired them as employees to work for us seems to have been lost. Always voted with them but not again
I haven't read elsewhere, the implication that Freeland was taking chances, advocating positions that were ahead of the rest of the government. That can be very career-limiting.
But if so, it's not been much-discussed how Vladimir Putin has just made certain that Freeland is the party's next face. There aren't many better things you can do for a political career than to take a chance that others will not and turn out to be right.
Never mind the others in her party that were softer, most of the leaders of Europe were putting their heads on Putin's chopping block, while she cried warning.
I like to think that she's remains a pain in Putin's ass. The notion of her becoming SG of NATO is delicious.
Thank you for your comment Paul. I am concerned this post will end up twitter=like. I joined you to receive information not quibble.
Kathleen
Freeland is not actually contradicting Guilbeault, because he is only promising meaningless stuff. "Standards will not be lowered" he assures us. But the LNG prospects have all of their federal approvals, and the pipeline approval process was stripped back by Harper... while Trudeau conveniently forgets the 2015 and 2016 to put a climate change lens into the pipeline application process.
Steven Guilbeault is just the ventriloquist's dummy.
All that said, Freeland only has a mandate to push her Liberal Hawk vision. The government may or may not buy in.
I liked the observation about Ms. Freeland getting out over the Government skis. Regarding the serious need for improvements to the regulatory process and license issuing for the export of natural resources, let’s hope that Trudeau, Wilkinson and Guilbault get some ski wax for Christmas and catch up.
After 7 years punishing the oil and gas industry into submission, we have a lot of catching up to do.
Terry, please reference that 800,000 bbl per day pipeline if JT ever gets it built. It is now scheduled - maybe, of course, because it is a government project - for 2023.
As for the NGL plant, again, please call back when the plant actually gets to being able to ship any JGL.
Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24. That is almost 8 months and nothing from the Canadian government about "fast tracking" anything. If they really thought it was a crisis they could have started to build some pipelines and LNG facilities on the east coast by now. Maybe not completed, but started. The Canadian government and all the other Western governments talk like this a war and a crisis, but they sure don't act like it.
The conservatives under Harper did nothing on pipelines especially to the east. He had a chance. Now the First Nations will not allow them on their land, Quebec is against a pipe, No one is willing to pay for one even if the obstacles were removed.
Please, Miles, I have heard this disinformation about the Harper government for years. The fact of it's repetition does not make it so.
In fact, during the Harper term in office the following were completed:
a) The non-XL version of Keystone, from Alberta to Nebraska approved in 2006, completed in 2010;
b) The Alberta Clipper to Wisconsin, approved in 2008 and active in 2010;
c) The changeover of Line 9 taking oil west to east was approved and activated; and
d) The Anchor Loop, a modest expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
In addition the Energy East project was under way, at least in terms of the bureaucratic approval process, at the time of change in government in 2015, as was the Northern Gateway project. The Energy East project died when the proponent, TransCanada (now TC Energy) withdrew it's application after the JT government threw up such an incredible blizzard of new and inexplicable requirements (the intersection of gender, and whatever, etc.? Really!?!). The Northern Gateway project was also in the application process but collapsed when the JT government arbitrarily decided to ban west coast tanker traffic.
So, you claim that nothing happened under Harper, huh? Not like you are correct or anything.
Now, as for the First Nations claim. I suspect that you are referencing the Coastal Gas Link mess where a few (I think it is four or five) guys who claim that they are "hereditary chiefs" of the particular nation have unilaterally decided to say "no" when the elected governments of the particular nation and the vast majority of citizens therein have said "yes." Of course, the terrorists are getting the press approval.
Ah, yes, Quebec! No more "dirty oil" says Francois. Just send your dirty money. Yup, we really do have an obstacle there.
So, you want to have a pipeline to the east? Tell that to your friend JT. You want a pipeline to the west? Tell that to your friend JT. Oh, yeah, he already has a pipeline (kind of) to the west. He played poker with Kinder Morgan and they simply cancelled the project - pretty poor poker player that JT was. He panicked and wildly overpaid to buy the project and then, allowed all sorts of incredibly "woke" conditions with the result that it is still not built and wildly, wildly over budget but it will be completed. Sometime. Perhaps 2023. Believe it or not, it will actually still be economic even with his mismanagement.
So, go ahead and blame Harper. You'll be wrong, but go ahead.
Her remarks remind me of Madeleine Albright at her best. I also think it is sound strategy for a PM who is persistently upbeat and positive to have a DPM who will remind us that the world is not fair and this will be hard. It is certainly more reassuring that being told, "You can have control back!" As if anything were ever under control lol
In Covid hearing Pfizer director admits vaccine was “never tested to prevent transmission”. European Union. See this latest bombshell. Now ask what the truckers knew the so-called government did not.