Premier Scott Moe said his announcement wasn’t intended to circumvent any of the requirements necessary for licence approval, but was meant to be a show of confidence that would provide energy security for all of North America. (dgdimension/Depositphotos.com)

By Daniel Reech - CKOM News

Politics

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says pre-approval for pipelines provides ‘certainty’

Mar 1, 2025 | 12:59 PM

Premier Scott Moe further explained his announcement to “pre-approve” licences for projects in Saskatchewan on Friday.

Moe said his social media post on Wednesday was done to provide “certainty” to the industry.

He said he was inspired to do so because of rhetoric coming from the U.S. and nearly a decade of “detrimental” policies from the Government of Canada.

“We need to come together. If we are truly serious about being independent as a nation and coming together and ensuring that Canada is energy secure and food secure and manufacturing secure into the future, that needs to be reflected in our policy development,” Moe said.

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Moe made the announcement a day after U.S. President Donald Trump stated his desire to resurrect the defunct Keystone Pipeline. He also urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other provincial leaders to follow suit in pre-approving pipeline projects.

The premier blamed the federal carbon tax and Bill C-69 for stifling Canada’s energy industry.

“If we’re truly serious about creating an energy secure nation and if there’s any chance of energy dominance across North America — which is the new U.S. administration’s goal — all of our policies need to be about creating certainty for these industries that are going to ultimately do that for us,” Moe said.

Moe said his announcement wasn’t intended to circumvent any of the requirements necessary for licence approval, but was meant to be a show of confidence that would provide energy security for all of North America.

Sask. NDP calls for infrastructure

NDP Leader Carla Beck said her party also wanted to see trade-enabling infrastructure built, such as pipelines, railroads, and power lines.

“The best way to do that — to make sure that we are dealing with effectively getting them built and not being bogged down in court cases — is to get everyone at the table,” she said.

Beck said that would include federal, provincial, labour and Indigenous leaders.

“This is something that we should have been doing already,” she said.

“This has been a wake-up call and we’ve had hundreds of meetings since December. We need to get these great products to market. We need to increase access, we need to reduce reliance on the U.S. I think all of that is very clear.”

Federal assessments required

Bob Halliday, vice-president of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, said Saskatchewan’s environmental assessments would be quite effective, but most interprovincial pipelines would require federal assessments in addition to the provincial ones.

“You could do them jointly, and that just depends on how much goodwill there is between the two governments at a given time, but certainly they could be done jointly and that would be one way forward that would expedite the process,” Halliday said.

He said it would be hard for companies to plan for new pipelines given the different priorities for different administrations and due to the fact that oil is a “sunset” industry.

“Anybody building a new pipeline has to say ‘well, can I recover my costs and make a decent profit over perhaps 20 years?’ And that’s a challenge.”

Halliday instead advocated for robust electricity connections between provinces that have hydro-electricity and those that don’t.

“That would make a terrific nation-building project and it would also tend to cut the Americans off from Canadian hydro-electricity, which is where it goes right now,” he said.

“To me that would be a far more sensible kind of nation-building project.”

— with files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff and 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick