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WASHINGTON — In a whirlwind visit to Washington this week, Opposition leader Tom Mulcair is bearing an entirely different message from that brought by the parade of Conservative leaders who recently invaded the U.S. to sell the Keystone XL pipeline.

In meetings with U.S. lawmakers and business executives, Mulcair is telling Americans the Canadian government is “playing people for fools” by claiming that its environmental record is world class and that it cares about climate change.

Mulcair’s message is that the Canadian government’s environmental record is terrible, that it has “gutted” environmental assessments for energy projects and that climate change is not at all among its priorities.

“In the U.S. people know how to read,” he said in an interview. “They know that Canada is the only country that has withdrawn from Kyoto. They know that the Conservatives can’t possibly meet their Copenhagen targets (on greenhouse gas emissions) precisely because of the oilsands. They have to stop playing people for fools.”

The Mulcair-led NDP opposes the 1800-kilometre pipeline that will bring 830,000 barrels of Canadian bitumen a day to Texas refineries.

“According to object studies, Keystone represents the export of 40,000 jobs and we think that is a bad thing for Canada,” Mulcair said in an interview. “We have never taken care of our energy security. We tend to forget that a 10-year supply to the U.S. is a 100-year supply to Canada. We are still going to need the energy supply to heat our homes and run our factories, whether it comes from the oilsands or it comes in the from natural gas. Fossil fuels are always going to be part of the mix.”