‘WE NEED TO PHASE OUT THE OILSANDS,’ SAYS PRIME MINISTER. THE REACTION WAS SWIFT.

PUBLIC LAMBASTING

Justin Trudeau’s “listening” tour turned decidedly political Friday when he talked about phasing out the oilsands.

Asked at a town hall event in Ontario about the federal government’s recent approval of expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, Trudeau reiterated his remarks that he is attempting to balance economic and environmental concerns.

“We can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels but it’s going to take time and in the meantime we have to manage that transition,” he said in Peterborough.

His remarks prompted a torrent of criticism from conservative politicians, with Wildrose Leader Brian Jean calling them a “direct attack” on Alberta.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said, “Alberta’s oil and gas industry and the people who work in it are the best in the world and we’re not going anywhere any time soon.”

Later a statement from the PMO said “the Prime Minister, as he and previous Prime Ministers including Stephen Harper have been saying for a long time, was reiterating the need to move away from our dependency on fossil fuels and his commitment to growing the economy all while protecting the environment.”

However, the most electric moment of Trudeau’s two days on the road, was an emotional from-the-heart plea from Kathy Katula.

The single mother from a rural eastern Ontario community blasted both Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne for driving up the costs of electricity and driving her into poverty.

“I feel like you’ve failed me,” Katula, 54, told Trudeau at a town hall question-andanswer meeting here that was broadcast live across the country by several news networks. “I’m asking you here today to fix that.”

Katula told the crowd of 350 she’d lived a tough life, had a disability, and yet had scrimped and saved to be able to buy her own home and raise four children.

“I lived off Kraft dinner, hot dogs, whatever it took to survive, but I bought that home and I’m proud. But something’s wrong now, Mr. Trudeau. My heat and hydro now cost me more than my mortgage,” she said. “How do you justify ... a carbon tax when I only have $65 left of my paycheque every two weeks to feed my family?”

Katula, from Buckhorn, Ont., was cheered several times in a sustained fourand-a-half minute broadside aimed squarely at the powers-that-be at both Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill.

“I don’t know much about Liberals or Conservatives or any of that,” she said. “I’m just a Christian, single, hardworking mom who lives in rural … Ontario.”

Trudeau appeared at a bit of loss to answer.

But he did try to explain that, at least for now, the federal government was not adding to her woes.

“We haven’t brought in any carbon tax yet, ma’am,” he said. “It doesn’t start kicking in for another few years.”

The high cost of electricity, he said, was something that the government of Wynne would have to deal with. And when a federal system pricing carbon becomes law, Trudeau reminded the crowd that provincial governments will be getting additional revenue which, he hopes, each will use to provide tax relief to those who need it.

For Trudeau, it was a public lambasting the likes of which no prime minister in the last decade has withstood from an everyday citizen in a public setting.

It also underlined a fact stressed by Trudeau’s handlers: None of the attendees at any of his public events were pre-screened and no questions put to the PM were vetted by the party.

Indeed, in Kingston, Ont., where there are many federal government workers, Trudeau took it on the chin for a computerized civil service payroll system which has left thousands of government employees with no paycheques for months.

His day in Peterborough began with a welcome from a local indigenous leader who used the opportunity to remind Trudeau that her community had no safe drinking water and was operating under a boil water advisory.