SAPPING ENERGY?
Scheer takes aim at Liberals
Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told an Edmonton business luncheon Monday that the Liberals are out to end the energy industry.
The opposition leader said he has no faith that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will be built, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has politicized the decision-making process.
Scheer pointed to the Northern Gateway — a project approved by the National Energy Board, but later nixed by Trudeau.
“(It) was opening up a whole new market for Western Canadian energy, and that was killed not because of science, not because of objective data, but because of politics,” Scheer said.
As we enter the dog days of summer, Scheer is zigzagging across the country — Northwest Territories on Sunday, Alberta Monday, British Columbia Tuesday — in preparation for the fall session in Ottawa.
Along the way, he’s collecting feedback from business owners and entrepreneurs on proposed federal government changes to small business taxes.
In Edmonton on Monday, he stopped at the Matrix Hotel downtown, at an event organized by the Alberta Enterprise Group.
“We’re going to count on you,” Scheer told the room.
“We need to be able to get up in the House of Commons (with) ... stories from people who say if these tax changes go ahead I’ll be OK, but the seven guys who work in my shop, the person I just hired at the front counter, that’s who it’s going to hurt.”
Scheer’s talking points hit his party’s standard fare — the importance of a strong economy, jobs and the follies of the Liberal government’s ideological governance.
Scheer wouldn’t take questions from reporters, but said federal Liberal policies amount to an attack on business, and its borrowing will hurt future generations.
He also took aim at the proposed federal carbon tax.
“The Conservative party of Canada under my leadership will always oppose a carbon tax,” he said to applause.
“It hits those hardest who can least afford it.”