EDMONTON – Alberta union leader Gil McGowan is in Ottawa to protest a proposed extension of the Keystone XL pipeline, calling on federal politicians to consider building domestic capacity to refine raw bitumen in Alberta rather than pumping jobs into the United States economy.
“Approving Keystone XL will, indeed, be good for the U.S. by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs south of the border,” the Alberta Federation of Labour president said in a statement issued to media Thursday morning. He pulls from a cross-section of reports showing the pipeline could provide as few as 99,000 jobs to the U.S. economy by 2020 or as many as 270,000 jobs by 2030.
However, McGowan said, “Keystone XL will add only about a dozen permanent jobs here. We have a one-time chance to take control of our own resources and build a value-added refining industry here.”
While the $12-billion pipeline extension has vocal opponents concerned about the environmental impacts that come with pushing approximately 900,000 barrels of bitumen from Alberta to Texas each day, McGowan is not alone in protesting the project on economic grounds.
Last week, during an on-air interview with the CBC, former premier Peter Lougheed said he’d prefer bitumen be processed in Alberta to keep jobs in the province. In an editorial piece penned for the Edmonton Journal this week, NDP Leader Brian Mason also highlighted the potential loss of domestic job growth that could come with the pipeline extension.
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