Rae seeks middle ground on oilsands development.

By Postmedia News

Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae waded into the oilsands debate Saturday suggesting that, while Alberta’s booming development is an important part of Canada’s economy, the discussion about how best to use it has been polarizing and unproductive.

“I don’t think it’s just a matter of saying ‘I’m pro-development’ or ‘I’m anti-development,’ I think everybody recognizes it’s a huge resource for Canada. The question is: Can we do it in a sustainable way?”

Attempting to strike a middle ground between Opposition NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s strong stance against development and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s position that the oilsands are crucial to creating “jobs and growth” for Canadians, Rae told CBC Radio’s The House that “the key word in all this is balance.”

“You can’t just grow a development from 100,000 people to a quarter of a million people in 10 years or 15 years without really thinking through all of the social and economic implications as well as the environmental ones. . . . We have to recognize that we are, in part, a resource economy — we’re also a manufacturing economy . . . and a service economy — but, to deny the fact that we are a resource economy strikes me as ludicrous.”

After touring northern Alberta communities and oilsands development sites last week, Rae met briefly with Alberta Premier Alison Redford and Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes at the Calgary Stampede. He called Alberta’s “National Energy Strategy” — which sees the oilsands as one cog in Canada’s energy market wheel — “a very positive and effective way to look at what we need to do.”

Rae said that while exporting to Asia is a logical step in a global economy, priority should be given to bringing oil from Alberta to Eastern Canada.

“A national pipeline is something we could do quite readily,” Rae told The House’s guest host James Fitz-Morris. “It’s not complicated. . . . We just need to improve the infrastructure” that already exists between Alberta and the rest of the country.

“We’ve got to look hard at the fact that this resource is not going away . . . we’ve got to become world leaders in sustainability.”

He challenged the federal government to set clearer standards for development and to ensure that all stakeholders — including First Nations communities, which live around the oilsands — are on board.

PN 7/14/12 16:56:37