Trudeau seeks “fresh start” with U.S.,

Trudeau looks forward to work with Washington on climate

OTTAWA— Canada’s role as a global energy power entered a new chapter after U.S. President Barack Obama capped a seven-year cross-border drama by rejecting the Keystone XL project.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who favoured the proposed pipeline to carry oilsands-derived crude oil from Alberta to the U.S., said he felt let down by the rejection, but signalled Ottawa’s willingness to work more closely with the Americans on energy and climate change.

“We are disappointed by the decision but respect the right of the United States to make the decision,” Trudeau said in a statement.

“The Canada-U.S. relationship is much bigger than any one project and I look forward to a fresh start with President Obama to strengthen our remarkable ties in a spirit of friendship and co-operation,” he added.

At the White House, Obama said senior U.S. officials would quickly open talks with their counterparts in Canada in an effort to step up co-operation on energy and global warming.

This could open the way for a breakthrough on collaboration between Obama and Trudeau on ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals in advance of the make-or-break the UN Conference of Parties (COP21) climate change talks in Paris next month.

Obama, who is building his presidential legacy around the environment, has embraced the Paris conference as a way to affirm U.S. leadership in a hopedfor international agreement on global warming. And Trudeau views the UN meeting as an important starting point for the Liberals’ avowed priority of creating an aggressive climate change strategy in Canada — something the Liberals say was sorely neglected by former prime minister Stephen Harper.

“Prime Minister Trudeau and his government have delivered the message to the world that Canada will be exemplary with respect to environmental protection,” Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion said Friday.

“We want to work very closely with our friends in the United States and Mexico and we see the COP 21 coming in Paris as a great key step to go ahead together,” Dion said.

Obama’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline first proposed by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. in 2008 was expected.

The pipeline became a lightning rod for the debate over climate change, with a powerful U.S. environmental movement arguing that pipelines that enable carbon-intensive oilsands production worsen global warming.