“Get out of the way Carney”: Poilievre ahead of Alberta ultimatum

Conservative Leader Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney “get out of the way” of Canada’s energy industry and scrap the Liberals’ “nine bad laws”.

Source: Facebook (Pierre Poilievre)

Conservative Leader Poilievre is demanding Prime Minister Mark Carney “get out of the way” of Canada’s energy industry and scrap the Liberals’ “nine bad laws,” backing Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s ultimatum to remove the policies by Thursday.

Poilievre was asked during a press conference about the failures of the latest Liberal budget, specifically regarding Smith’s ultimatum to Carney. The premier demanded Carney allow new pipeline development in Alberta to transport oil and gas to tidewater, and scrap the government’s “nine bad laws” that hinder resource development in the province.

Smith gave Carney until the start of the Grey Cup on Thursday. She threatened to sell more oil to the U.S. amid a tariff war if the Liberal government fails to permit new pipelines to get Alberta oil and liquid natural gas to tidewater, allowing trade instead with Asia and Europe.

Poilievre’s message: Get out of the way and scrap the anti-energy laws holding Alberta back from getting energy to market.

“They keep telling us that something is going to happen tomorrow. Mark Carney has been Prime Minister for eight months, promising to move at ‘unimaginable speeds,’ and yet there is not a single project that he has launched that was not already in the making or approved before he took office,” Poilievre said. “Mark Carney needs to do only one thing for us to get a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. Get out of the way.”

Poilievre claimed there were trillions of dollars of international investment “crying out for the chance to build that pipeline.” He argued the pipeline could be built “without any government support” and that the federal government is the only reason it has not been developed.

“Get out of the way and repeal the nine bad laws that block energy projects…remove the ban on shipping oil off the northwest coast of BC, a ban that only applies to Canadians,” he said. “American tankers could travel between Alaska and California in those very same waters. So why not allow Canadians to do the same?”

He called on the federal government to repeal the Liberals’ industrial carbon tax, to produce “enough oil to fill a future pipeline.”

“We don’t need Mark Carney to put on a hard hat and hold another photo op. He’s had many, countless photo ops in the last eight months, while investment flees and our industrial sector leaves for the United States of America,” Poilievre said. “He has not, he’s not got shovels in the ground on anything. Now, I suspect there will be some sort of ‘memorandum.’ You know something? Memorandums don’t pay the bills. We need shovels and ground.”

Poilievre demanded that Carney announce an exact date for “shovels in the ground to build ‘a new million-barrel-a-day pipeline from Hardesty, Alberta, to Prince Rupert or Kitimat, British Columbia.’”

“That’s all he’s got to do. Give us the date. Show us where the shovel will hit the ground, and tell us when it will happen,” he said. “That is what we need to have. Get out of the way, Mark Carney.”

Carney is scheduled to announce a “second-wave of nation-building projects” on Thursday, but an early leak indicated that Alberta oil pipelines wereomitted from the plan.