While premiers from across the country are in Washington, D.C. to try to drum up business and opportunities for companies back home, it sure looks like Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are doing all they can to send the wrong message.

Canada, it seems, is closed for business.

Distroscale

Alberta’s Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe spent Thursday morning selling their province to an American audience at the Wilson Center in the American capital. Ford spent Thursday afternoon speaking to the Canadian American Business Council and a group of executives about what Ontario has to offer.

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Ford’s meetings included top guns from pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly, TEVA and Amgen as well as tech stalwarts PayPal and Cisco. There was even an appearance by General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, Betty Crocker and other iconic brands. Kenney’s meetings focused on the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute.

These are the types of meetings we need premiers to be having — we need them to be selling their regions as places for foreign investment and expansion.

Yet how much of the premiers’ work is being undone by the PM and his policies?

Did you hear that the cost to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has shot up by 70% in large part due to government delays? This is the pipeline that Kinder Morgan was going to build with their own money. The Trudeau government bought the project, and an existing pipeline from the company, after government indecision and other delays saw the company walk away.

Now the build costs have jumped from an estimated $7.4 billion to a new estimate of $12.6 billion. And we still don’t know that the pipeline will actually get built.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that Trudeau’s Liberals are looking to put together an “aid package” for Alberta because they are seriously considering rejecting a new oil sands development. You read that correctly, the federal government is considering an aid package to Alberta, like we send to poorer countries after a natural disaster, because they may turn down a viable energy project that has been approved by the National Energy Board after meeting strict environmental and scientific hurdles.

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This may seem like just a concern for oil rich Alberta, and there are plenty of Canadians who will foolishly say, let them keep the oil in the ground, we don’t need it. The problem is the signal that the Trudeau Liberals are sending to the world is that Canada is actually closed for business, that big projects can’t get approval.

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Can you imagine being one of the business leaders listening to these premiers, hearing all the things they are doing in their provinces to develop an environment where businesses can create jobs and then you look up and see Trudeau? Carbon tax, his attacks on businesses as tax cheats, the unstable and uncertain business environment.

During a fireside chat that Premier Ford had with the Canadian American Business Council, he spoke about the need businesses have for certainty. He’s right, businesses can put up with bad policy but they need certainty — they need to know the rules.

They don’t have that with the Trudeau Liberals in power.

If the government had to buy a pipeline, and still can’t guarantee it will be built, if they will even consider turning down a $20 billion project like Teck Frontier that will create 7,000 jobs, then what kind of chance does their project have?

Would you build a new manufacturing facility in Canada or would you look stateside as GM recently did? Would you consider any kind of natural resource project given that Trudeau and his cabinet could find a way to interfere and shut it down?

The premiers are doing good work in Washington, it’s too bad Trudeau and his gang just keep getting in the way.