Moe to attend premiers’ meeting

Notley staying away over B.C. pipeline strife

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley dropped out, but Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe will be attending the Western Premiers’ Conference this week in the Northwest Territories.

On Monday Notley announced she would be staying away from the meeting to work on securing a deal for the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Her government, and Saskatchewan’s, are in favour of the expansion project, but British Columbia, led by Premier John Horgan, is opposing it.

Moe, who came to national attention for walking out of climate change talks in Ottawa while he was environment minister in 2016, is still attending the meeting.

“We feel that it is important to directly and in person express our serious disagreement to Premier Horgan over the actions of the B.C. government to obstruct the Trans Mountain pipeline,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

The company responsible for the project, Kinder Morgan, set a deadline to mothball it if political interferences are not dealt with by the end of May.

“It would be surreal and exceptionally tone deaf for anyone to think we could politely discuss pharmacare and cannabis when one of the players is hard at work trying to choke the economic lifeblood of the province and the country,” Notley said on social media Monday. She is calling on the federal Liberal government to get the project to move forward.