Canada is making life too difficult for private sector players that want to build pipelines, which is an important component for the country’s sense of unity, according to Maxime Bernier.

“It must not be the role of the federal government to build pipelines,” the leader of the People’s Party of Canada told BNN Bloomberg Tuesday. “We must have an economic environment that will help the private sector build pipelines and right now we don’t have that.”

Bernier ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2017, but lost out to Andrew Scheer, who later removed Bernier from his role as the party’s innovation critic in June 2018, after he posted a chapter about supply management from his book to his personal website. Bernier then founded the People’s Party last year.

He added that if elected, his party, which currently sits in last place according to the most recent polling data from Nanos Research, would use section 92 (10) of the Constitution to give the federal government full control over the approval of pipeline projects.

“By doing that, the federal government will have the full responsibility, the full jurisdiction over pipelines, and it would be able to approve pipelines after consultations with provinces,” he said. “But if we cannot please every province, we will have to go ahead. It’s too important for the prosperity of our country, but also for the unity of our country.”

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government had challenges with energy projects like the Trans Mountain expansion project as it attempted to balance economic and environmental concerns. The Liberals ended up buying Trans Mountain from Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd. last year for $4.4 billion after the company threatened to scrap the project amid frustration over numerous legal and regulatory hurdles.

Bernier told BNN Bloomberg he’s in favour of reviving the Energy East project, which was cancelled by TransCanada, now TC Energy Corp., in October 2017. The pipeline would have helped ship diluted bitumen from Alberta to Saint John, N.B.

“I hope the private sector would think twice,” Bernier said of Energy East. “But I understand they don’t want to build pipelines right now because the political environment is not so good with the Trudeau government.”

Bernier also stressed the importance of promoting Canada’s energy industry across the globe.

“We think that we must be able to build [Energy East] and use that energy for Canadian consumers, but also consumers from all across the world.”

For an overview of where the major parties stand on important financial issues, go to our election platform tracker. BNN Bloomberg has requested interviews with the party leaders and we hope to bring you more interviews before Oct. 21.