Politics

The Conservatives would like to remind you they support Keystone XL

Joe Oliver v. American billionaires

The latest assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline has been released—see Luiza Savage and Andrew Leach for the details—and now the Conservative party has a video they’d like you to see. Here it is with the note that went out in Joe Oliver’s name to Conservative supporters.

Friend,

As you may have heard, some American billionaires are using their wealth to attack our oil industry.

These billionaires ignore the fact that U.S companies are major players in the Canadian oil sands, and the fact that Keystone XL will create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs for Canadians AND Americans.

They also ignore the fact that the U.S. State Department has recognized that Keystone XL will not pose a serious threat to the environment.

So today, we are hitting back with an ad of our own — an ad that tells the truth.

Watch the ad here and add your name to support Canada’s oil sands:

http://www.conservative.ca/KeystoneXL

Sincerely,

Joe Oliver
MP, Eglinton—Lawrence

PS: Help get the truth out to as many people as possible – share our new ad on Facebook and Twitter.

Despite being styled as a response to American attacks and including a demand to some unidentified individual to “approve Keystone XL,” the ad apparently won’t be airing in the United States, though, of course, the Internet transcends international borders.

The line that “Keystone XL will create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs for Canadians AND Americans” is possibly worth a discussion, but it’s also sufficiently vague. The job creation projections for Keystone XL have been friskeddebated and considered (and disputed by the President of the United States). It depends, of course, on what you’re measuring and projecting. Last year, the Globe went with either 2,200 jobs or 442 person-years in Canada (the latter a measure of direct and indirect jobs during construction, seemingly taken from this NEB report). The State Department’s report today estimates that “during construction, proposed Project spending would support approximately 42,100 jobs (direct, indirect, and induced), and approximately $2 billion in earnings throughout the United States.” Once in service, the pipeline would require “35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.”

The New Democrats, conversely, argue that Keystone XL would ship jobs across the border, but the NDP stance on jobs and oil sands development is subject to a different set of questions (see also Andrew Leach and Stephen Gordon).

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