Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said he hopes a trip to Washington D.C. to educate US counterparts on the need for greater Canadian-American cooperation will result in more pipelines..Kenney made the comments on Tuesday in a joint press conference with US Senator Joe Manchin, who’s visiting Alberta to discuss energy security in North America. Manchin has invited Kenney to testify at the Senate Energy Committee. .Kenney said he and Manchin agree that most of the senator’s colleagues don’t know that Alberta is a far larger source of American energy imports than the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)..“We have some basic education to do to make our friends in Washington more aware of the critical role that Canada and Alberta play in US energy security,” Kenney said..“Hopefully, from that understanding, we can get the ball rolling on more infrastructure, like future pipelines.”.“The opportunity to raise the profile is hugely important,” he said of the trip..Manchin said the US is hiding behind the cheapest products produced by other countries, including dirty energy and slave labour minerals extracted from China. .“And then we’re buying the product, thinking everything’s great. I’m an environmentalist because I’ve got a car here that was sourced through slave labour,” he said..“Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. So it’s time for us to really man up to what our responsibilities are.”.The senator also said the horrific war in Ukraine is a wake-up call for the free world to rely on each other for resources. Specifically, he said the free world should be relying on the US and Canada to provide the products and the resources it’s going to need..For example, he said 80% of America’s processed minerals are coming from China..“We saw what Putin has done to weaponize energy and how he has used it on Europe,” Manchin said..“I don’t want to see what China could do to us by weaponizing the critical minerals that we’re dependent on.”.Rachel Emmanuel is the Edmonton Bureau Chief for the Western Standard.remmanuel@westernstandard.news
