After expressing disappointment with President Biden’s decision to revoke permits allowing the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he will take his gripes to the new commander in chief himself.
Trudeau expressed his intention to reporters in Ottawa on Friday afternoon.
“I will express my concern for jobs and livelihoods in Canada, particularly in the West, directly in my conversation with President Biden,” he said.
The Canadian prime minister also alluded to areas of common interest between himself and Biden.
“We are much more aligned on values, on focus, on work that needs to be done to give opportunities for everyone while we build a better future,” he noted.
Trudeau’s planned political confrontation comes after Biden canceled permits to construct the Keystone XL Pipeline, a planned expansion of the existing Keystone Pipeline System that would run between Canada’s Alberta province and the Texas Gulf Coast.
The Biden administration defended its decision to shelve the project.
“Climate change is a crisis, and the Keystone pipeline and its construction was not consistent with addressing the climate crisis to the depth and scope that we are planning to address it,” Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser, told reporters Tuesday. “Whatever limited benefit that Keystone was projected to provide now has to be obviously reconsidered with the economy of today.”
The move was widely criticized by Canadian lawmakers, who publicly lobbied Biden not to take any action without discussing it with representatives of the northern neighbor first.
“[Biden] should recognize that peremptorily revoking the permit without first giving Canada a chance to make its case wouldn’t exactly send a signal renewed friendship that he has promised towards America’s closest allies,” tweeted Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau.
Labor leaders, many of whom backed Biden during the 2020 presidential contest, also condemned the decision.
“Sadly, the Biden Administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work,” wrote the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters in a statement.
The North American Building Trades Unions, which endorsed Biden’s presidential bid, concurred.
“[We’re] deeply disappointed in the decision,” it said.
The project has been in legal purgatory for years. After its initial commission in 2010, the pipeline was halted by the Obama administration due to environmental concerns in 2015. Trump then approved the permits, only for unending litigation to delay its construction. Biden revoked Trump’s permit approval on his first day in office.
If approved, the Keystone XL Pipeline would span 2,000 miles across the two countries, funneling millions of gallons of oil into U.S. refineries and producing tens of thousands of jobs.
