Canada PM to interrupt foreign trip to meet Alberta, BC premiers over pipeline impasse
Ottawa, Apr 12 (IBNS): Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will take a break from his nine-day foreign trip to return to capital Ottawa to meet B.C. and Alberta Premiers John Horgan and Rachel Notley respectively to try to break the impasse over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, media reports said.
Trudeau will travel to Ottawa from Lima, Peru, and then go to Paris.
The itinerary change was announced minutes before Trudeau's plane departed for Peru, where he is scheduled to join more than 30 world leaders for the Summit of Americas.
Tensions over the pipeline expansion have been building since Kinder Morgan suspended all non-essential spending on the project on Sunday. It has given Ottawa until May 31 to deliver concrete expansion assurances. That prompted an emergency cabinet meeting in Ottawa Monday. Ministers disclosed no concrete solutions to the standoff.
Finance minister Bill Morneau met with Notley in Toronto early Wednesday evening.
Notley only disclosed that she felt "more convinced" that Ottawa will soon take action. "I will say that he did assure me the Canadian government plans to take swift action on this file," she said on a conference call after the meeting.
Today at a Public Policy Forum event in Toronto, Morneau said, "We are resolved to move forward on this project. We have the federal tools to do that. We will be, of course, discussing how to do that with the project proponent."
"Those discussions are already under way. I don't have the opportunity to give you more details because we do need to get through those discussions to find the right approach to ensuring that this is delivered on behalf of Canadians," the minister said.
(Reporting by Sayantan Banerjee)
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