Prime Minister Mark Carney said he’s willing to reconsider strict environmental legislation implemented by his predecessor that prevents Western provinces from producing oil. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, with the help of its coalition agreement with the NDP, had passed Bill C-69, a bill that bans new pipelines from being built, Bill C-48, which bans oil tankers on the West Coast and a proposed emissions cap on oil production. “We will change things at the federal level that need to be changed in order for projects to move forward,” Carney told CTV in an interview Tuesday night, hours after his cabinet was sworn in. He was asked directly if that includes C-69 or the emissions cap. “Absolutely it could include both. But I’m not going to do it conceptually. I’m going to do it on specifics, do it for moving forward.”The federal crackdown on the LNG industry was a significant talking point for Tory leader Pierre Poilievre during the election campaign — Carney, conversely, maintained his resistance to repealing Bill C-69 and others throughout the campaign. .His book, Values, repeatedly emphasizes the imposition of a carbon tax in order to redeem the planet. When asked by Vassy Kapelos about his insistence in the book that “extensively talks about a reorientation of the market around the climate imperative,” Carney said he wasn’t going to kill the carbon tax, broadly speaking, just the consumer carbon tax.The solution, argued Carney, is to tax big polluters, like corporations. He failed to acknowledge the trickle-down impact such a law would have on consumers.“Are you going to build that pipeline, if the consensus exists?” asked Kapelos.“I've said repeatedly, yes,” replied Carney.“Remember, I've got extensive experience. It's not just a concept to me. I have been involved with major energy projects for over three decades in the private sector.”.Carney says Canada can both become a global energy “superpower .. in both clean and conventional energies” while simultaneously working toward Net-Zero (which means no carbon emissions whatsoever).“So the point of building a pipeline, the point of building out carbon capture is to get the results, to get those barrels to the market, to get carbon down,” he said.“You can do both.”“The federal government will play a role, the province of Alberta, other provinces, indigenous people, have to come along for almost all of these projects in order for them to actually work.”Carney said he’s had “constructive conversations with [Saskatchewan] Premier [Scott] Moe in this vein, also with [Alberta] Premier [Danielle] Smith in this vein.”“So the next stage of that is to sit down across premiers and other groups and start to refine that list and move forward, and we will change things at the federal level that need to be changed in order for projects to move forward,” he said..The new energy minister, Tim Hodgson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., former director of Ontario electricity utility Hydro One Ltd. and Canadian oil producer MEG Energy Corp., is set to head West “very soon” to work with Alberta and Saskatchewan on such projects.“We look forward to building, and I look forward to digging in. We have a lot to do,” said Hodgson on his way to Wednesday morning’s cabinet meeting.“And I will be going out West very soon,” he told reporters.
