Conservative critic touring P.E.I.

Shannon Stubbs says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau owes Canadian workers an explanation.

The Conservative Party of Canada’s critic for natural resources, who is touring Prince Edward Island over the next few days, says the new USMCA trade deal offers more pain than gain for Canadians. The Trudeau government has yet to provide MPs with a full text of the agreement.

“Our main concern is what the Liberals conceded on, whether or not they achieved any gains in return,” Stubbs said.

The MP said the provisions in the deal, such as dispute resolution and cultural protection, had already been included in the previous NAFTA agreement.

“Really, what they’re doing is celebrating measures that were already in place under NAFTA and had been in place for 25 years,” she said. Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer has criticized the new trade deal, reached by U.S. and Canadian trade negotiators earlier this week, and has stated the deal’s provisions allowing expanded market access for U.S. agricultural goods gave Trump “exactly what he wanted.” Stubbs, who was meeting Friday with Island dairy farmers, said she is seeing increasing support for the Conservative leader in Atlantic Canada. She said her visit was also intended to bolster support for the Conservatives ahead of the next federal election.

On Thursday, Stubbs met with the mayor of Kensington and a local crime watch representative. The town council helped sponsor a private member’s bill, introduced by Stubbs in the House of Commons, calling for a study of rural crime. The bill passed in June.

As rates of reported crime have begun to increase in rural areas, Stubbs said local law enforcement are facing increasing pressures in smaller municipalities. “The main issues they were talking about today were the amount of area and population that is covered by very few officers and a lack of support staff,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs said Western Canada, the Territories and parts of New Brunswick have experienced the greatest increases in criminal activity, mostly in terms of property crime.

Stubbs also said she was hopeful that a new government in Quebec might signal a revival of the Energy East Pipeline.

The pipeline was scuttled last year after the oil giant TransCanada pulled out of the $15.7 billion project. Although Francois Legault, the newly-elected leader of the Coalition Avenir Quebec party, did not support the pipeline during the election campaign, he has stated in the past that he would support the project if the province was paid adequate royalties. Stubbs said government regulation in the oil and gas sector hobbled the project, eventually contributing to its demise. She said the cancellation of the project was “heartbreaking” for workers in Alberta and Atlantic Canada.

“There were so many delays over the course of a year,” Stubbs said.