PUBLISHED March 6, 2015, THE HILL TIMES

Canada needs to build more pipelines and take advantage of its natural oil resources in order to invest in the infrastructure and social programs Canadians want, says Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.

“We need pipelines. We need them in every direction whether it’s east, west, south or north. They are essential—low prices doesn’t change that my friends, they simply make it even more compelling,” Mr. Prentice, former Conservative Environment minister under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) told attendees of the Manning Centre Networking conference on March 6.

Canada needs to access both the Atlantic through and the Asia Pacific to achieve global prices and higher revenue opportunities that will help the government invest in things that citizens need, he said.

Mr. Prentice, who spoke on a panel with British Columbia Premier Christy Clark and Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski called Energy, the Environment and the Economy, with former Reform Leader Preston Manning as the moderator, said that the issue of the environment is “standing in the way of progress” on extracting Canada’s oil.

“Fairly or unfairly, the energy industry in my province, in particular the oil sands, has been a victim of unfair perceptions with regard to our environmental standards and our environmental performance,” he said, noting when he was Canada’s Environment minister, he understood the consequences and responsibilities of natural resource development. They do not have to be in contention with each other, he said.

“In Alberta, we understand that if you are in the energy business then you are in the environment business. They’re flip sides of the same coin. There’s not one but both,” he said, adding that Alberta has been a leader in taking action on the environmental front. “Ours was the very first jurisdiction in North America with a regime that regulates industrial greenhouse gas emissions with a comprehensive policy that actually places a price on industrial carbon.”

Mr. Prentice said the regime has been successful in reducing industrial GHGs by 51 megatonnes, equivalent to taking 10,000 cars off the road. “To be clear, it is not perfect, but my friends, it is as good as or better than the policy that applies in any other jurisdiction that produces oil and gas,” he said.

One of the greatest frustrations he’s had as a Premier, as well as while he was in the federal government and in the private sector, “is the lack of credit” that Alberta gets for environmental regulations. “I intend to change that,” he said, adding that the “myths that have been allowed to penetrate about our environmental performance have been allowed to grow for far too long. These myths go on to fuel ill-informed prejudices that stand in the way of real economic prosperity that would come from freer trade and greater integration of our North American energy market place.”

U.S. President Barack Obama recently vetoed in Congress that would allow the Keystone XL Pipeline construction to go ahead. “The reason that a lot of environmentalists are concerned about it is the way that you get the oil out in Canada is an extraordinarily dirty way of extracting oil, and obviously there are always risks in piping a lot of oil through Nebraska farmland and other parts of the country,” he said at a town hall on March 6.

Mr. Prentice said he would continue to push for Keystone to get built, however. “ Mark my words, if we are forceful and clear and committed to continued  progress, the environmental attributes that we have in this country and in my province will be one of the defining advantages we have in terms of the global competition that goes on each and every day. You don’t have to travel much to see how our record compares to other jurisdictions,” he said. “In the shadow of President Obama’s veto, the support we have in Washington has never been stronger.”

Mr. Prentice also said that “market-driven solutions are the quickest and most practical solutions to managing climate change” and that “we must move swiftly on these solutions.”

Before finishing his speech, Mr. Prentice joked that the oil prices started declining the day he was sworn in as premier, “around 11 a.m.”

“Lower oil prices are a complication, but they do not change the fundamentals of what I’m speaking about. Alberta will remain an energy power house but we must lessen our public finance dependency on a single commodity and we will,” he said.