Secure: Free from danger or attack; free from risk or loss.
The escalation of hostilities between Iran and the United States brings into focus the need to revive the East-West Pipeline. The hostilities potentially surrounding the Gulf of Hormuz that would shut off shipments of oil from the middle east would greatly impact the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Southern Ontario.
Canada should not be at the mercy of the Mideastern states or actions of the United States. Refineries in St. John, N.B., Montreal, and St. John’s should not be completely at the mercy of receiving oil tanker shipments of crude oil from Saudi Arabia. We can do better. Manufacturing plants that rely on resins produced from crude oil in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia should not be at the whim of foreign powers decisions. Those manufacturing plants should not be impacted by trouble in the Middle East. We have the ability to guarantee job security in places like Sarnia, Montreal, Halifax, St. John in plants that manufacture products from oil.
Canada can do better. The Liberal Government should revive the East-West Pipeline. The government should remove the regulatory hurdles that forced Trans Canada Pipelines, now TC Energy, to abandon the project in 2017. The $15-billion project would create thousands of jobs in construction across the country as the pipeline runs from Hardisty, Alberta to St. John, New Brunswick.
The project would also open up a deep water port that currently receives huge tanker shipments of crude from Saudi Arabia that could then be used to ship western Canadian crude to Europe. Currently, our market for western crude is the United States, making Canada dependent on an unreliable partner in the White House who has shown that he has little or no respect for Canada and his allies.
Creating new markets for our oil, our western Canada grains, our forest products makes us less reliable on one or two nations. New markets will increase our security. It’s time to move forward to create more security across Canada. The Trudeau Liberal government can show true leadership by ensuring energy security across Canada and building the East-West Pipelines for Canadian security. It is in our national interest.
– Jim Cumming
