Will he, or won’t he support building oil and gas pipelines to Atlantic Canada?
Maybe.
That’s the emphatic answer for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on the issue of an east-west pipeline to New Brunswick despite dismissing it out of hand in Ontario a day earlier.
Speaking on 880 CHED in Edmonton on Wednesday, Singh said he’d be open to the idea if it met specific criteria — all but guaranteeing it would never get built if he were prime minister.
Namely, he he insists that any future projects must have community support, protect the environment, create “good jobs” and meet indigenous consultation standards, he said on The Courtney Thériault show.
Oh, and it would have to have “social acceptance” namely from provinces like Quebec — although he didn’t explicitly mention La Belle by name. He didn’t need to.
“My first priority is, I think we need to do a lot more to refine and add value to the raw resources in Canada, a good economy, a developed economy, is one where we're not just ripping stuff out of the ground and shipping it, but we're actually adding value in our country,” he said.
“So that's one of the things I want to prioritize with all of our energy and all of our natural resources, we need to really emphasize developing our economy where we actually add value. So we refine oil and gas in our own country, we add value to lumber in our own country. We're adding that value instead of sending the raw goods to somewhere else and then buying it back once it's been refined.”
Singh, whose party has never won a federal election and currently sits far behind the Liberals and Conservatives in national polling. With little chance of forming the next government, his proposal remains more of a talking point than a viable plan.
That said, he is once again promoting ways to reduce Canada’s reliance on energy exports to the United States, even if it means turning off Alberta’s oil taps.
“One of the things that we learned in contract law, and we learned in negotiations, is that you don't take anything off the table. You got to have all options on the table so that you can fight hard,” he said.
“You don't take anything off the table so that you can you want to weaken your position or to negotiate and to fight back. In this case, we got to fight back. And I think we need every single tool on the table as a threat.”
As Singh continues to outline policies unlikely to be enacted, the leaders with a realistic path to victory are setting the tone for Canada’s energy debate.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who made a major policy speech in Ottawa on the weekend, has made it clear he would prioritize an east-west pipeline to move oil and gas across the country and make resource project approvals easier.
Liberal leadership frontrunner Chrystia Freeland, hoping to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has pledged to make Canada an ‘energy superpower’ by expanding hydroelectric power and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.
Singh, by contrast, continues to focus on policies that appeal to NDP supporters but are unlikely to be implemented given the party’s historically weak electoral performance.