The last time your friendly scribe sought an interview with Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources, he was turned down flat. It was February last year. Oliver had made a series of impolitic remarks about the efforts to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which, if it’s ever built, would import oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast — and which Canadians believe that the United States would be nuts to reject.

“I referred to the fact that some U.S. environmental groups were sending money to Canada to advance their anti-pipeline, anti-hydrocarbon agenda, and I just felt that that effort was working against Canada’s national interest,” is how he puts it now. But shortly after Oliver began speaking out, Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, told his cabinet to refrain from making any remarks that might be construed as commenting on the upcoming presidential election. Hence, no interviews with American columnists.

Which is not to say that Oliver — and Harper — didn’t have other means to send a message. After President Obama, looking to shore up his base, temporarily delayed the Keystone pipeline — an action that stunned Canada — the Canadian leaders jetted to China for a series of meetings with Chinese officials. Thanks to the Alberta sands, Canada is sitting on the third largest oil reserves in the world after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. “That oil will be sold,” says Oliver, “if not to you, then to somebody else. That is not meant as a threat. It is just a fact.”

As you can tell by now, Oliver is talking again. With the election over; with a presidential decision on Keystone imminent; with the pipeline rerouted to mollify the concerns of Nebraskans; with the State Department having issued a recent report saying there are no environmental impediments — with all of that as the backdrop, Oliver came to New York and Washington earlier this week to preach Canada’s energy message.