Excerpted from CTV News ‘Flaherty warns that delay could kill XL pipeline project’
The delay is largely due to the upcoming U.S. presidential election and Barack Obama’s need to shore up votes among both unions and environmentalists — both core democratic supporters who are on opposite sides of the pipeline — says Colin Robertson, a former trade envoy to the U.S.
“This wasn’t about Canada. This is about the presidential election. This about the president really being caught between a rock and a hard place,” Robertson said Friday on CTV News Channel. Environmentalists are opposed to the pipeline while the unions support it and expect it will create some 20,000 jobs.
An earlier and comparable pipeline, Enbridge Clipper, “sailed through” the U.S. approval process, he added.
Robertson predicted that the U.S. will revisit Keystone. “I’m not convinced this is over … There will be other acts to this because at the end of the day, Americans still need hydrocarbons.”