‘Should I just laugh?’: Energy experts question Freeland’s pledge to push LNG
Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland’s pitch to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to allies is drawing skeptical reactions from those who say her government neglected the sector over the past decade.
The former finance minister’s policy statement on jobs and growth, released on Feb. 5, includes a pledge to “seize the opportunity to make Canada an energy superpower, from powering our grids with hydro to exporting liquefied natural gas to our allies.”
That line is part of a package of proposals Freeland made to diversify Canada’s exports in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on those exports.
But critics — even those who agree with her ideas for LNG — found it to be a tough line to swallow.
“Should I just laugh?” said Martha Hall Findlay, director of the University of Calgary’s school of public policy. “It would be funny if it weren’t just so frustrating.”
Hall Findlay said Freeland was a central figure in the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for nearly a decade, as it “did everything it could possibly do to limit our ability to export energy.”
The Trudeau government shelved the Northern Gateway pipeline project in 2016. It also passed Bill C-48 in 2019, which prohibited tankers off the northwest coast of British Columbia.
Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, said Ottawa’s track record over the past decade has “not at all been friendly to the development of natural resources” and that “nobody was speaking up for the oil and gas industry.”
“They’re the right things to do,” he said of Freeland’s energy policy proposals. “The question is whether she has credibility to say these things.”
Freeland’s campaign cited the Liberal government’s purchase of the Trans
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