Article content continued

Both politicians have done nothing to get a pipeline built to “tidewater,” said Notley, Singh by doing all he can to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline now, and Kenney by failing to get one built when he was part of the federal Conservative government: “He (Kenney) has a record, interestingly his record looks like somebody who’s aligned with Jagmeet Singh, not somebody who’s in favour of Kinder Morgan.”

Notley is exasperated with Singh for all kinds of reasons. When asked about his suggestion that Central Canada look to other nations to replace oil from human-rights laggard Saudi Arabia, Notley laughed out loud. The obvious answer, she said, is to have Central Canada get more of its oil from Alberta.

“It struck me that that was a thing that maybe he should have thought through before he said it.”

Of course to get more Alberta oil to Central and Eastern Canada would mean building more pipeline capacity and Singh is defiantly anti-pipeline.

He’d apparently rather have Quebec buy more foreign oil than Canadian oil.

Notley wonders, though, if there might be a silver lining for Alberta in the diplomatic spat between Canada and Saudi Arabia.

It might make Central Canadians, particularly in Quebec, more amenable to the idea of a new pipeline project, call it Energy East 2.0, that would pump Alberta oil east for domestic, not foreign, consumption.

But Notley said governments need to jump-start the process.

“Rather than letting the private sector just sort of hurl itself into the abyss and hope for regulatory approval however long down the road, I think it would behoove provincial and federal governments to think about this from an infrastructure point of view and going forward,” said Notley.

She chose her words carefully, not suggesting governments go so far as to put up the money for new pipelines as Ottawa has done for Trans Mountain. But …

“It’s too much to be left to an organic solution to be found within the market. I think that all governments that are impacted need to sit down and think about how we can do this differently.”

To do that Notley would be glad to talk with any provincial or federal politicians.

Just not, apparently, Jagmeet Singh.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/graham_journal