Kenney and Trudeau discuss pipelines

Premier-elect Jason Kenney has stated that he spoke to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shortly after his victory to discuss the state of Canada’s pipelines.

Throughout his campaign, Kenney criticized Alberta’s former NDP premier for being too close to the PM, and frequently lambasted the “Trudea-Notley alliance” which he blamed for the failure to successfully develop pipeline infrastructure.

“He called to offer his congratulations. We spoke for about 15 minutes. We had a respectful conversation about a number of issues, including the need to get Canadian energy to foreign markets,” said Kenney about his conversation with Trudeau.

Further one-on-one meetings between Alberta’s premier and the PM are in the works after Kenney and his cabinet are sworn in on April 30th.

The federal government featured prominently in Kenney’s victory speech on April 16th after his government secured a majority government in a sweeping provincial election.

“We Canadians have been had and in Ottawa we have a federal government  that has made this bad situation much worse by killing two major pipelines including Energy East,” said Kenney. “That same federal government is imposing new laws that will make it impossible to get pipelines approved in the future.”

Currently, Bill C-69, a legislation intended on further regulating approval for energy development projects is currently making its way through the senate. The bill which was put forward by the Trudeau government, is seen negatively by most Albertans. According to an Abacus poll, 58 per cent of Albertans see the legislation as going in the wrong direction.

Kenney, who hopes to pressure the federal government to further develop Alberta’s oil industry has also promised to work with the province of Quebec.

In recent news, Quebec’s Premier, François Legault has indicated that he is willing to work with Kenney on developing natural gas pipelines but won’t support the development of oil pipelines.