Ottawa, ON — Clifford Small, Conservative Shadow Minister for Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, and Shannon Stubbs, Conservative Shadow Minister for Natural Resources, released the following statement on the shelving of the Bay du Nord offshore oil project: 

“After 8 years of Liberal red tape and anti-energy legislation and rhetoric, the first deep-water project in Canada is being mothballed. And the Liberal government couldn’t be happier.  

“The Trudeau government has mired Canada’s energy industry in costly, complex and time-consuming red tape and blocked Canadian energy exports. They have made it nearly impossible to ever build major energy infrastructure again in Canada.  

“So it was a significant achievement when the Bay du Nord project made it through the Liberals’ obstacle course, and the Canadian Impact Assessment Agency recommended its approval.  

“This meant the Liberals had only one option left – drag out and delay the final approval to push the private sector proponent to abandon it. This is exactly what the Liberals did, twice.   

“This is just the latest energy project the Liberals have killed through regulatory suffocation. Add it to a list that includes Energy East, Northern Gateway, the Sustainable Marine tidal energy project, the Teck Frontier project and 15 LNG export proposals since 2015.  

“Bay du Nord would have generated an estimated $14 billion in economic activity and 22 million employment hours for the hardworking people of Newfoundland and Labrador.  

“Canadian oil and gas is produced to the highest environmental and social standards. Canada has what the world wants and needs, but the Liberals keep putting up roadblocks and delays that hold Canada back.  

“Conservatives will remove the gatekeepers and replace Trudeau’s red tape with a speedy common sense approvals process to get Canada’s world-class energy to market. Conservatives will bring home powerful paycheques and good energy jobs for Newfoundland and Labrador and all Canadians.”