I hope this note finds your family well and getting back into the hustle and bustle that always marks the start of the new school year. We are headed back to the legislature shortly for what I am sure will be a fast-paced session.
Oil and Gas issues remain top of mind for me as your MLA. Many of our friends and neighbors in Calgary-West are (or, unfortunately, were) employed in the oil and gas industry. We are working continuously in the legislature in Edmonton, alongside our opposition counterparts in Ottawa, to move Alberta and Canada forward as attractive places of investment for oil and gas companies.
You may have read about Bill C-69 before the House of Commons in Ottawa which significantly changes the process for pipeline and oil and gas project approvals. The realities of this bill are stark. In the words of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, “This makes it difficult to imagine that a new major pipeline could be built in Canada.”
The changes in Bill C-69 were also applied to the Energy East Pipeline retroactively and resulted in it being scrapped. We need to help put pressure on the government in Ottawa to reverse these changes which will be disastrous to our oil and gas industry. I encourage you to contact friends and neighbors who live elsewhere in the country than Alberta to help share Alberta’s energy story – that our energy is clean and produced in a manner which is environmentally conscious and socially responsible. We won’t change this law in Alberta – we need to help bring the rest of Canada on board.
Mike Ellis, MLA
Calgary-West
