REGINA - How the recent federal election results will impact the oil and gas sector in Saskatchewan was on the minds of those attending the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference this week.
Premier Scott Moe spoke to those attendees Tuesday in a keynote discussion the day after the election, which saw Mark Carney’s Liberals returned with a minority government.
During that one-on-one interview with Jeff Lawson of Cenovus, Moe was asked what his plan was going to be for navigating the federal government. The indication from the Premier was there was need for the federal government to be willing to compromise on items such as Bill C-69 — dubbed the “no new pipelines” bill.
When it comes to discussions, Moe said there was “going to have to be a very willing and open conversation on making changes to Bill C-69 so that the projects that we are building — not only (what) you guys are building in the energy industry, but the mining industry, the transportation industry, whether that be corridors for pipe and power lines, whatever that might be —- there's going to have to be changes to that.
“There's going to have to be an openness to remove the production emissions cap. There's going to have to be an openness to ensuring that when provinces are making decisions around keeping their electrical supply for generation affordable and reliable, as we find ways to lower the carbon content over the next number of years. Those conversations are going to have to happen.”
Moe said his own government was “going to have to work, make every effort, to work with the federal government to find some level of understanding, to find some path forward for us to succeed as a province. And I would say for selflessly looking at Saskatchewan: when Saskatchewan is successful, it very much is contributing to the success of Canada.”
Moe also indicated that amongst the provincial premiers, there would be some “challenging conversations over the course of the next number of weeks and the next few months” amongst themselves, and with Prime Minister Carney and his administration.
“Everyone is going to have to be very clear about what the path forward looks like from their perspective, but also be willing to work with the compromise so that it's working for the betterment of Canada.”
He also noted there were other challenges as a nation.
“Supply chains around the world, for various reasons, are entirely upset and changed. And people are getting their products from different places than maybe they did a decade ago… We have the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine that's happening. The realization, then, of the European Union that they were not energy secure — they were buying a third of their natural gas from Russia, who also didn't have an industrial carbon tax on that gas.
“It's a very, very different world than it was a decade ago, both within Canada, within North America, and globally. And it is going to take, I think and I hope, some very serious, frank conversations in our nation, starting with our nation, between the federal government, the same federal government, and the provincial government, etc.”
Moe also pointed to his own government having to adjust after the most recent provincial election last fall “when we very much ran on a campaign of affordability.”
Their government realized shortly after that, he said, that there was “a certain percentage that voted for some change as well. And so we very much were focused on significant investments in healthcare, access to healthcare providers, access to surgeons, which benefit all of us, and benefit all the folks that work in this industry.” He also pointed to additional investments made in education, community safety and access to recovery.
“We, in fairness, had to make some shifts after our provincial election because of what we heard. And I think that might be safe policy for the incumbent Prime Minister and his administration.”
As for what he thought he could do with the new federal government to have a better alignment and better engagement with them, Moe responded a “lot of talk,” and for those to be “very frank with respect to what the path forward looks like from Saskatchewan's perspective, and how we are going to continue to grow, drive, and attract investments and provide opportunities for Saskatchewan people. Other premiers, I would encourage them to do the same.”
