WATCH ABOVE: Alberta Environment and Parks Minister Shannon Phillips spoke to media regarding a tour of the Alberta oilsands with U.S. senators.
EDMONTON — The Wildrose is criticizing Alberta’s NDP government for not planning to have any ministers or MLAs attend an oilsands tour with a “top level U.S. delegation.”
The visit was scheduled for Thursday and included U.S. Senator and presidential candidates Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Tom Rice.
The official Opposition said it was informed about the visit on Wednesday.
“We were shocked and disappointed to discover the NDP government had failed to have any of their ministers or MLAs attend the tour, choosing instead to hand the delegation off on department level officials,” said Tany Yao, Wildrose MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo.
He said the visit is a big deal and described the U.S. visitors as “top level decision makers in Washington.” Yao said the U.S. delegation spent Wednesday with Premier Brad Wall on a tour of Saskatchewan’s energy innovations. He said Alberta’s decision not to have a minister there for Thursday’s visit sends the wrong message, especially when the energy economy is struggling.
“Since the NDP was blowing them off, I offered to host the delegation on behalf of the Alberta government,” said Yao.
“At 7 p.m. last night the NDP finally found a minister to host the senators.”
Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said she’s “not really sure what the Wildrose is talking about here.”
Phillips said the details of the Alberta visit were not confirmed with intergovernmental affairs until Wednesday afternoon.
“My schedule was tentative before that,” she explained.
WATCH: The Wildrose is accusing the NDP government of ‘going AWOL’ and nearly missing an opportunity to meet with high-ranking U.S. politicians. Tom Vernon reports.
An open invitation to visit had been extended by the previous Alberta government.
“They were going to Saskatchewan and so they had a very, very tight window of time and they were on military aircraft and so there were a lot of different moving parts in respect to the logistics,” Phillips said.
The minister added she was honoured and “very pleased” to host the delegation.
Representatives from Suncor and CAPP, as well as the government, took part.
Phillips said the group discussed a number of topics, including “oilsands 101”, how they were discovered and initially developed, the environmental standards Alberta has in place, and “just how important the Alberta market is to them.”
“We didn’t really touch on Keystone specially,” Phillips said. “We talked about market access more generally.”
Phillips shared several photos of the tour on Twitter.
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“For the last several weeks the NDP government has been AWOL,” added Yao. “Key government staffers are on leave to campaign in elections rather than deal with Alberta’s problems.”
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“Albertans want this government to focus on jobs and our economy,” said Yao. “Premier Notley and her government need to up their game and get to work on improving Alberta’s image internationally, not hurting it.”
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