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Lashing back at critics who call the NDP job-killers, Premier Rachel Notley hotly defended her party’s position on pipelines during the bumpy question period that kicked off the new legislature session.

“I want to make two things perfectly clear,” the new premier told Wildrose energy critic Leela Aheer, one of 70 rookies in the new legislature.

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“First of all, our position on the Keystone (pipeline) was that if we ship unprocessed bitumen to Texas, according to this government and to the American government, we will give tens of thousands of Alberta jobs to Texas — not to Albertans — and that’s not what Albertans want to see.”

Notley also pushed back at critics who attack the NDP for pressing for stringent environmental standards for energy development.

“Albertans have been trapped in a discussion where when you stand up for our air and our land and our water, you are accused of being a job killer, and what that does is that contributes to the very record which is actually inhibiting our ability to access markets,” she said.