OTTAWA — Albertans may want to see more pipelines across the country, but Quebec politicians are still arguing about whether their constituents will welcome them.
“Where are the projects that are profitable for Quebec? If there were any, we would have known about it a long time ago. This is not the case currently,” said Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Paradis at a press conference Tuesday.
Premier François Legault’s comments last week in an hour-long podcast interview with host Stephan Bureau are still resonating in the National Assembly and in Alberta.
“Quebecers are saying, ‘There’s no way Trump is going to control the oil we produce in Alberta.’ So, can we export it to Europe through Quebec instead of being stuck with Trump? There’s openness. I feel things are shifting,” Legault said. But he also suggested that a potential project could pass through the northern part of the province and end at the port of Sept-Îles.
“There are projects like that which would have been unthinkable before Trump,” Legault said.
Some Quebec politicians don’t agree. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said that “we could discuss at length what constitutes openness among Quebecers or not.” Paradis argued that “there’s one poll showing a certain openness, but to what? ”
Making matters even more contentious, only a few public polls have been conducted on this question.
The most frequently cited one
dates back to February, during the tariff war with the United States.
At the time, a
SOM-La Presse poll
suggested that 59 per cent of Quebecers would be in favour of a new Energy East project.
Another one by
Nanos Research
, conducted in April, found that nearly half of Quebecers said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea of a trans-Canada pipeline, the lowest rate in Canada.
Legault later told reporters that “we’re a long way from a concrete project” and that any potential environmental assessments would not be skipped.
“We remember there have been past projects that crossed several rivers. We need to look at the impacts and then look at the benefits. What’s positive in each of the projects, if any concrete ones are put forward,” Legault said.
Nonetheless, his comments infuriated separatist parties in the province.
While the Parti Québécois is asking “what’s in it for us” and “what are the proposed projects on the table” — so far, there aren’t any — the leftist separatist party Quebec Solidaire attacked the premier for making the mistake of “thinking that pipelines are the solution to the Trump tariff crisis.”
“It’s completely insane. It’s even dogmatic to think that,” said QS parliamentary leader Ruba Ghazal.
She said that pipelines “are destroying our environment,” that there are environmental, social and economic “risks” and that “it’s not profitable.”
She also echoed comments made last week by federal Liberal minister Steven Guilbeault about a peak in oil demand in the coming years, both in Canada and globally.
“When we look around the world, particularly in Europe, where there will be a decline in demand for hydrocarbon energy in the future, well, we’ll find ourselves with infrastructure that we won’t need later,” said Ghazal.
Those comments by separatists came as the PQ was tabling a motion in the National Assembly that called on the government “to use the fiscal means at its disposal to reduce the unfair gap in the price of gasoline with the border provinces, by June 24, 2025.”
The Quebec Liberal Party said that “people are now more open-minded than a couple of years ago.”
“The objective is to increase our independence with respect to the United States energy, with respect to the energy. So, that being said, again, it has to be an analysis project by project, with the environmental criteria being at the forefront,” said interim leader Marc Tanguay.
On Saturday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called Legault’s comments a “massive breakthrough” on her
weekend morning radio program
.
Smith said she believed the world’s perspective on natural gas and foreign demand may have swayed the Quebec Premier.
“I think there is a world understanding that natural gas is an important transition fuel. I think it’s a destination fuel, personally, but when you use natural gas, it means you’re not using other high-emitting fuels like coal and wood and, in some cases, even dung,” Smith said.
However, Legault’s comments were not about an LNG pipeline, but rather an oil pipeline.
The GNL Québec project was blocked by the Quebec government in 2021 due to environmental concerns. It was a $14 billion natural gas pipeline with a terminal in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.
Also, the premier’s office indicated Tuesday that any opening on the government’s part is conditional on the submission of “serious projects,” concrete economic benefits for Quebec and social acceptability.
There aren’t any proposed pipelines involving Quebec. A decade ago, Energy East, a 4,500 km pipeline that would have carried 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from Alberta to the Irving refinery in New Brunswick, was abandoned due to regulatory hurdles in Canada and strong opposition from environmental groups.
The $15-billion project was also unpopular in Quebec. The provincial government never signed on to it because it saw few benefits and the pipeline route would have to cross several rivers, which raised concerns among Quebecers.
National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.
