Regina – “The Trans Mountain Pipeline is going to get built. It’s a project in the national interest,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters at Regina’s EVRAZ steel mill on March 14.
The Prime Minister was in Regina as part of a national tour in support of the aluminum and steel industries which had been threatened by tariffs from the United States government. Those tariffs have been held off, for now, for Canada, Mexico and Australia, pending ongoing negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The EVRAZ steel mill in Regina produces both steel and steel pipe. It has been the primary producer for steel pipe for almost every major pipeline in Saskatchewan and Western Canada since the early days of Inter Provincial Pipe Line, when its second pipeline was built in the 1950s. The pipe was made by what was then Prairie Pipe Manufacturing Co, later IPSCO, then EVRAZ. The company also supplies pipe to the United States, and trainloads can routinely be seen passing through Weyburn and Estevan on its way south on the Canadian Pacific Soo Line.
“It is part of our approach on a national climate plan, because we’re going to be getting our resources to market safely, securely, through this new pipeline. We’re going to create new markets for it across the Pacific, which is important to not be uniquely beholden to the American market for our oil. At the same time, we’re moving forward on world-class oceans protection and we’re moving forward with a national price on carbon. These are all things in the national interest, and they go together. We have a national price on carbon across the country so we can get a pipeline built to get it to markets across Asia. Those things go together, and we’re going to stand up for the national interest across the country,” Trudeau said.
While in Regina Trudeau met with Mayor Michael Fougere and steelworkers at EVRAZ.
“We know a good deal is possible. We won’t accept a bad deal, but, because we know a good deal is possible for everyone, we know we’re going to get there,” he said about the NAFTA negotiations, which the Donald Trump administration has tied to potential tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
