Poilievre’s key energy policy: a National Energy Corridor for pipe, power and rail

 

 

SAINT JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK – On Monday, March 31, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced his party’s signature energy plank in its election platform – an east-west national energy corridor involving pipelines, electricity and rail. A Conservative government would, if elected, go through the regulatory steps, including consultation with First Nations, to ensure that projects brought forward by private enterprises could feel confident in building such projects.

The choice of location was no accident – it was the terminus of the proposed but defunct Energy East pipeline project. 

A few hours later, Poilievre’s right hand, Regina Qu’Appelle MP and candidate Andrew Scheer, was the guest on the Pipeline Online Podcast, where he elaborated on the Conservative’s energy plans. You can find that podcast here.

 

From west of Moose Jaw through Manitoba and a third of northern Ontario, there already is a de facto energy corridor. The TC Energy Mainline, CPKC mainline, and TransCanada Highway are all within a few kilometres to a few hundred metres of each other for most of that distance. (The pipeline does get up to 20 kilometres separation near Indian Head, and up to 40 kilometres separation west of Brandon before tightening up considerably). There’s a reason for that – you need roads and rail to build the pipeline. 

There is no continuous power transmission line along that corridor, however. And in northern Ontario, the highway and pipeline run in close parallel until you get close to Quebec. 

The problem is getting a pipeline built through Quebec, and to a lesser extent, New Brunswick.

Here is Poilievre’s speech, verbatim:

 

Here we are in Saint John, not by any coincidence. We’re in this place because it symbolizes both our long history and our optimistic future.

This is the place where we come to move our products over the Atlantic to the world.

It is one of the great cities of the Atlantic that will be greater still and bigger and bolder into the future.

It’s here today that we reflect upon the great east-west nation that John A McDonald dreamt of and began building. That’s why Louis St. Laurent built the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to open up the Canadian Heartland to the world. These projects boosted our economy, and guaranteed our economic independence.

But I have a question: Do you think we could get the St Lawrence Seaway open today? Do you think we could build the Canadian Pacific Railway today? Really – think about it. There’d be some environmental extremists like Steven Guilbeault, or maybe, maybe Gregor Robertson, the new Liberal candidate, former Vancouver mayor, would be chaining themselves to a tree to prevent it from happening. And it would take a decade to go through a bureaucratic process that would never lead anywhere.

How many projects have the Liberals killed already? Sixteen major energy projects, $176 billion that we know of. There were 18 LNG liquefaction plants proposed 10 years ago, when the Liberals took office. Not one has been completed. The only one that’s close was approved by the previous Harper government.

 

They blocked two major pipelines with both the Energy East and the Northern Gateway pipeline. Mr. Carney testified in committee against the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have allowed us to move a half million barrels of oil to Asia every single day. Now that oil goes to the Americans at a discount, making us even more dependent on what is now a very aggressive southern neighbor.

 

It is time to reverse the lost Liberal decade of blocking projects and moving money out of the country. It is time to take back control and relaunch our economy, to unleash our energy sector and bring home our jobs and powerful paychecks. It is time to turn Canada into an economic fortress that puts our country first for a change.

With Donald Trump threatening our country with tariffs, we need big projects that link our regions, east to west. We need to be able to get our resources across Canada, bypassing America, so we can trade more with each other and sell our resources to the world. Under the Liberals, this kind of big thinking has become impossible. The average time it takes to get a mine approved is 17 years, 23 per cent longer than Australia, 38 per cent longer than in the US. Canada now ranks 23rd in the World Bank’s ease of doing business. We’ve fallen seven places. We’re the second slowest country in all of the 36 nation OECD to get a building permit. The second slowest.

The Liberals radical keep it in the ground agenda killed 16 major energy projects and many billions of dollars.

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And then think of the number of businesses around the world who don’t even bother proposing a project in Canada, because it is a waste of time and money under the Liberals’ keep-it-in-the-ground economic policy.

Since the Liberals killed the Energy East pipeline, and let’s make no mistake, they did kill the Energy East pipeline. You know, they’ll claim that Trans Canada just changed its mind. Really. So the company spent a billion dollars on getting the project approved only to sort of one day say, “Oh boy, the price of oil has gone down this week. We’re going to cancel the whole thing?”

Give me a break. This is 100 year investment. It doesn’t get canceled because the weekly price of oil went down. It got canceled because the Liberals changed the rules in the middle of the game. And let’s be clear, Liberal, No New Pipelines law C-69 will make it impossible for any other project to ever get approved in this country.

And Mark Carney could have repealed that law. I encouraged him to reconvene Parliament after he won the Liberal leadership race and quickly, under emergency conditions, repeal C-69. He didn’t do it. So it doesn’t matter what he says about the law, now. We know he doesn’t mean it, because he could have done it. It is a Liberal law that they passed, that they brought in, and that they have defended, and it is the same Liberal ministers, same Liberal MPs, same Liberal strategists, same Liberal promises that they made 10 years ago.

If you vote the same, you will get the same by reelecting the same Liberal gang.

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The only difference, now, is they have a weaker and more compromised Liberal leader. While Mr. Carney was advisor to Justin Trudeau, he supported all of the same radical keep-it-in-the-ground policies. But not only because he supports it, he believes in it, because he profited from it by pushing resource projects out of Canada. His investments overseas and in the States become more profitable. Less competition from Canada means globalist elitists like him get richer and fatter. He supported his entire business career, so-called business career, was about defunding Canadian energy, convincing banks to stop lending to Canadian energy companies.

He supported C-69. He still supports the energy cap. Just last week, one of his ministers said that he wants that they were going to keep in place a cap on Canadian energy production that doesn’t apply in the United States, even more billions will leave the country under that policy.

Mr. Carney says he supports an industrial carbon tax, again, a tax that applies on Canadian businesses, but not on American ones, which will – this is another area where Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump agree. Both want to tax Canadian industry. With Carney, it’s a carbon tax. With Trump, it’s a tariff, but the effect is the same. It will drive tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars south of the border, because there is no such tax on the on the US side.

Mr. Carney supports the same policies that have driven a half a trillion dollars out of our country over the last decade of a lost Liberal period. And he will say anything he has to. You know, he lied about the fact that he plagiarized 10 times in his thesis in order to get his degree, he lied about having moved his headquarters from Canada to the US just six days after Trump threatened tariffs on our country. So you can count on him to say whatever he has to say, in order to hold on and get the Liberals that fourth term in power.

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But under the Liberals, applications are lengthy and the economy is crashing. Why would any other company invest in this country with a long Liberal record of high taxes and blocking projects?

But the good news is we don’t have to after this last lost Liberal decade, we don’t have to elect them to a fourth term. We can choose change by putting Canada first with a new conservative government that will axe taxes, build homes, unleash our resources and bring home paychecks and production so we can stand up to the Americans from a position of strength.

 

National Energy Corridor

Today I’m unveiling yet another concrete proposal to bring about that vision. Today I’m announcing the Canada First National Energy Corridor, a pre-approved corridor that will allow our incredible businesses to build pipelines, transmission lines, rail lines, and countless other kinds of infrastructure that we need to break our dependence on the Americans, ship our resources to ourselves and overseas markets, bring home powerful paychecks for our country and stand up for ourselves in a position of strength.

Here’s how it would work: First, we would use the model of the shovel-ready zone. That is to say, the permits would be pre-authorized. After consultations and environmental research, we would find the path that is safe for our citizens and for nature.

Second, we would consult with First Nations, as is our duty under the constitution of Canada.

Third, we would lock down the permits, and we would publish specifications and standards that companies have to meet, so that they would do so, do the projects in a responsible way that keeps everyone safe.

Then the permits would be pre-published online and legally binding. In other words, the government would not have the legal right to reverse course and change its mind. This would remove the uncertainty. I understand why businesses, after the lost Liberal decade, would not want to take the risk of starting an application process that could cost them billions of dollars if they thought that maybe a future government would reverse course. That’s why pre-approval is so important. Pre-approving the project would mean that the companies could invest with certainty, knowing what they have to do and what they can build.

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This certainty will allow the private sector to do the building. It will allow our businesses to invest, hire and grow. It would also allow us to become independent from the Americans, going around them, directly to ourselves and to others. We can build pipe Canadian pipelines with Canadian steel to deliver Canadian energy to a Canadian refinery, perhaps right here in, Saint John, and that will cause a massive economic boom. Billions of dollars will flood into our government coffers from the resulting economic growth, money that can be used to improve our failing hospitals and our schools, building roads and other infrastructure we need, defeating poverty and lifting up our people. Giving new jobs to our young trades people, 350,000 of whom we’re going to train up through our boots, not suits plan. It will mean a new era of prosperity, and it adds to a broader plan that we’ve been systematically unveiling.

For example, just yesterday, I announced the Canada first reinvestment tax cut. Zero capital gains tax, if you reinvest in Canada. You sell your business and you reinvest in a Canadian stock that funds Canadian economic growth – zero capital gains tax. You sell a rental property and reinvest it in building a new home in Canada – zero capital gains tax. You’re a company that wants to sell a vacant piece of land to reinvest in building a new factory in Canada – zero capital gains tax.

You want to take your money out of Canada to a foreign jurisdiction, you will pay capital gains tax. That’s why it’s called Canada First. We’re going to be bringing home hundreds of billions of dollars and unleashing a boom. This will be economic rocket fuel for our Canadians to launch above and beyond the Americans.

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We will cut income tax by 15 per cent for the average worker and senior. That means that more of your pension and your paycheck will go home to your family, rather than into government coffers.

And speaking of home, we’ll get rid of the GST. We will axe the federal sales tax on new homes, saving you up to $65,000 on a purchase, or $3,000 a year in lower mortgage payments.

And we will axe the carbon tax. But unlike the Liberals who brought in the tax and who are just going to hide it for the next month leading up to the election, we will axe the tax for everyone, for everywhere, for good, for real, for a change.

We will unleash an incredible economic boom that will turn Canada into a fortress. We will honor the legacy of John A. Macdonald and Louis St. Laurent, by adding pipelines, power lines, roads, rail that bind the nation together. One nation bound together into a united country, self reliant, sovereign, standing on its own two feet and standing up to the Americans from a position of strength.

The choice is clear, after the lost Liberal decade, of costs and crime up and the economy down under the American thumb. Can we afford to give Liberals a fourth term? Or is it time to put Canada first for a change with a new conservative government that will axe taxes, build homes, unleash our resources to bring home our job so we can stand up to the Americans from a position of strength, Canada first, for a change, let’s bring it home.

 

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