The Okotoks and District Chamber of Commerce hosted a Q&A with Foothills MP John Barlow earlier in the week, where he fielded questions from constituents and members of the local business community.

The discussion centred around COVID-19 response and the Keystone XL pipeline, two of the major issues on the minds of Albertans entering the new year.

Barlow spoke on reports U.S. President Joe Biden's decision to sign an executive order to effectively cancel the pipeline.

He says more action needs to be taken to defend Canadian energy and criticized the Trudeau government for "virtue signalling" to oil activists, pointing to bills such as C-69 and C-48.

"These activists will never take no for an answer. They will always move the goalposts, nothing we do will ever appease them, and we have to stop doing this. It does not make any sense to me why we are wanting to phase out our energy sector to appease people that will never be appeased."

He says he plans to fight for Keystone and Canadian energy in the weeks ahead, but he's not convinced Trudeau put up much of a fight.

"I'm not exactly gonna bet my farm on Justin Trudeau going all-out to fight for Keystone XL, I just don't see that as all likelihood. This is going to come down to Alberta and Saskatchewan leading this charge, and we'll see what Premier (Jason) Kenney and Premier (Scott) Moe do."

On the COVID-19 response, attendees asked about vaccine shipments, following the news of delayed shipments of the Pfizer vaccine.

Barlow says he's frustrated with the status of the vaccine rollout, attributing delays to Canada's failed collaboration with China to produce a vaccine with CanSino Biologics.

"Of course August hits, no vaccine, the agreement implodes, China's basically said "No, we're nowhere near, we're not going to have it." So then we had to start to scramble. We had to go to Pfizer, we had to go to AstraZeneca, we had to go to these other companies. That put us way down the line. People who had agreements signed months before us, of course, are getting those vaccines before us."

When asked if we might see Canada-wide restrictions in the new year, Barlow said it's unlikely.

"The only way the federal government can demand or get that cohesion is if they were to implement the Emergency Measures Act, which Prime Minister Trudeau's been extremely reluctant to do. I don't think we've had it since it was called the 'War Measures Act' when Pierre Trudeau did during the FLQ crisis."

He also expressed frustration over mixed messaging from province to province, and even between municipalities when it comes to protocols and restrictions. He says those restrictions could be lessened with the introduction of widely-available rapid testing and at-home testing technology, something he says he's been pushing for since at least August.

"There's a Calgary company called 'ClearMe,' that has a rapid testing technology that's 98 per cent accurate that's been used in the United States and United Kingdom since July but has still not been approved by Health Canada. These types of things are unacceptable."

Despite the current roadblocks facing Alberta, Barlow says he's confident Albertans will persevere.

"We are resilient, we are tough, we are risk-takers, and we've been through this before. We've been through the National Energy Program and survived, we've been through these downturns before and not only survived but thrived. So yes, I think there are wins coming."

To view the full Q&A session, click here.

 

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