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During last year’s election campaign, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre held a press conference at the Port of Saint John, the country’s second-busiest port and the proposed eastern terminus of the Energy East pipeline, which was cancelled in 2017. Had the pipeline been completed, it could have enabled the export of up to 1.2 million barrels of oil per day to European markets. 

This week, U.S. President Donald Trump approved the joint South Bow and Bridger crude oil pipeline project, which is poised to increase Canada–U.S. oil exports to 1 million barrels per day.

On Friday’s Rebel Roundtable livestream, Sheila Gunn Reid and David Menzies were joined by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Kris Sims to discuss this latest pipeline development — and what Canada could do moving forward to secure more favourable trade outcomes with the United States. 

Kris Sims noted that outcomes like this tend to occur when diplomats engage the United States with diplomacy rather than animosity, an approach she argued has been lacking from the Canadian federal government. She pointed to recent efforts, such as Danielle Smith’s visits to the U.S. and King Charles III’s courteous gift to Donald Trump, as examples worth following.

“Right now, taxpayers and everyday Canadians are suffering from this trade war, because tariffs are trade taxes,” she said. “And, unfortunately, our federal government isn’t getting the job done right now. Regardless of ideology, they had to have gotten this job done, and they haven’t done it yet.”