That was fast.
The show of solidarity between Canada’s premiers to reduce barriers to interprovincial trade in the face US president Donald Trump’s tariff threats lasted less than eight hours.
Speaking to reporters following The Donald’s gesture to delay what amount to crippling economic sanctions on Canada’s export industries, Quebec Premier François Legault said his province was willing to do anything to prevent the imposition of tariffs in the future.
Well, almost everything. Except approving the Energy East pipeline to take Alberta crude oil to tidewater in Saint John, New Brunswick. Although he isn’t personally opposed to the idea, Legault told reporters there’s no way it could pass through La Belle on the way to markets in Europe and beyond.
“There's no social acceptability for this kind of project right now in Quebec,” Legault said, speaking in English.
“But of course, situation, the economy and what Mr. Trump is doing may change the situation in the future. So if there's a social accessibility, but right now, there's no social acceptability.”
The Energy East pipeline was was first proposed in 2013, but was ultimately cancelled after opposition mainly from Quebec, and specifically the city of Montreal that worried it would have contaminated drinking water despite it pumping millions of gallons of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River every year.
If approved, the $12 billion line would have transported 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day to refineries and export terminals in Eastern Canada — mainly the Irving refinery in New Brunswick — and helped circumvent the situation Canada finds itself in by relying on the US as the sole customer for more than 90% of its oil exports.
In addition to providing a much-need eastern export outlet, the pipeline would have replaced some foreign oil imported by tanker and rail — most of it from the US — mainly into Quebec itself.
But the pipeline faced opposition from climate justice and indigenous rights movements due to alleged impacts on a beluga whale habitat. Environmental Defence argued that the pipeline threatened the drinking water of nearly five million Canadians, mostly in the metro-Montreal area.
The entire length would have been 4,600 kilometres — the longest in the world — with approximately 70% consisting of existing pipe that would have been converted from carrying natural gas.
TransCanada — now TC Energy — proposed the project in response to then-president Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011. It was cancelled outright in 2016 after the election of the Trudeau Liberals.
Because it is entirely within Canada’s borders — unlike the existing Enbridge line which traverses Wisconsin and re-enters Ontario via Michigan — Canada would have been essentially self-sufficient in oil.
More recently, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has expressed support for reviving it in light of Trump’s threats. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has made her support for her fellow premiers’ calls to use energy exports as a means of countering those tariffs contingent on removing inter-provincial barriers for projects such as pipelines.
“"If we want to stop being so reliant on a single trading partner, we've got to take down internal trade barriers between Canadian provinces, start looking at how we can do major nation-building projects to our east and west coast(s)," she told reporters last week.
"Why wouldn't we talk about Energy East?"