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In her resignation letter to Trudeau, dated Dec. 5, she points out that she’s one of the few young women working in the oil industry.

“What I can tell you is they are not bad people! In fact, they are the first people I would call if I needed anything,” she wrote. “They are my friends and family. Many of them I am not related to; however, when you spend more time with the people you work with than your own family, they become your family.”

Wheale spoke to the National Post on Wednesday about why she quit.

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Why did you resign?

I am one of these construction workers that go into these rural communities. That’s my entire community. That’s kind of our world — we are one of those communities that do bring in people to work on our infrastructure projects, like pipelines and highways. So it was a matter of, how am I going to address this? And what am I going to be able to be comfortable with? What decision can I live with, ultimately? And that was the decision I had made. I did talk to some staff prior to submitting the letter, and it came down to that was the best way that I could support my community and the people that I felt I was representing and be able to live with the decision.

Was this the last straw?

Yes, there’s been many things — and I’ve been more than happy to have the conversation with the prime minister and other cabinet ministers as well — but this was one thing where, I am one of those people. I’ve sat around the table trying to advocate and give the firsthand experiences about it, trying to show the rest of the country that might not be as knowledgeable in it what it’s like. And I thought that, you know, I was doing a pretty good job at that and then this happened and I was quite taken back by it. I was a little bit heartbroken. I felt it just wasn’t appropriate and it lacked a lot of knowledge; it didn’t touch on the real experiences from the people. I was really disappointed by that.