Keystone foe links Harper to U.S. shutdown
OTTAWA — An anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusader has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, suggesting Canada’s aggressive lobbying for the project played a part in the government shutdown south of the border.
Tom Steyer, a San Francisco billionaire who’s a major Democratic party fundraiser, chastises Harper for saying he would not “take ‘no’ for an answer” from U.S. President Barack Obama on TransCanada’s Keystone XL. “This won’t be final until it’s approved and we will keep pushing forward,” Harper said last week in New York.
Steyer took issue with those comments.
“Have your government, your government’s lobbyist and/or agents representing TransCanada communicated with House Republicans about including Keystone in the original litany of demands put to President Obama?” Steyer asks in the letter to Harper sent Friday. Steyer notes TransCanada is launching a new advertising campaign aimed at stakeholders in Washington, D.C.
“News of this advertising campaign comes in the context of House Republicans having closed down the U.S. government as well as threatening to oppose the extension of the country’s debt limit unless certain demands were met,” Steyer writes. “Included in the original list of House Republican demands was that the Obama administration grant approval for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.”
The combination of the ads and Harper’s comments “raises the question of whether your office is working hand-in-hand with TransCanada to try to exploit the current situation in Washington, D.C., at the expense of the American people,” Steyer writes.