Why can't Canada control its own oil

We are in a in a pre-election period, an election everyone expects to be a dirty one with lots of mud being thrown on the leaders of each party.

I will try not to comment on the truth of these claims on either leader.

I don't want to be seen as an advocate of either. I do want to talk about Bill C69. It is an environment protection bill that is supposed to get major projects that involve danger to the environment passed through Parliament in a timely fashion.

The Senate debated this bill long and hard and came up with 169 amendments. The Liberals accepted 69 of these and sent it back. Five Conservative premiers sent a letter before the Liberals got the bill back from the Senate telling Trudeau that if he didn't pass it with all the amendments it would affect national unity.

This in my view is pure politics. To be believable they would have waited to see what the government did with the bill. Of course if they, the government, had passed it with all the amendments they wouldn't have gotten the chance to write their letter.

The government will pass this bill and the opposition will attack it.The government says it is the way forward to getting the pipeline to tidewater built. The opposition says it is a pipeline killer. So who is right? Nobody can actually know for sure, either one could be.

The opposition will point out the past failures and blame the government. The Liberals will point at the Conservatives’ failures and claim they have the answer. The Liberals have struggled, but they didn't take themselves to court to stop the pipeline.

Our own tax dollars are paying for this. The NDP in B.C. are fully involved in this.

The fact of the matter is nobody really knows who is right and we should look at all the claims for and against C69 in this light.

Quebec’s environment minister says he does not like the bill. not for what it contains but because he thinks Quebec should be doing its own environmental assessment and not the feds.

Why is Canada under attack by the Greens and unable to get their pipelines built? We keep hearing that Canada sets the standard for environmental protection and yet it is us who is under attack – easy answer is other oil producing countries, like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others would throw these protesters in a deep dark jail and forget about them.

Also, we sell 99 per cent of our oil to the United States and they like it that way. This allows money to flow north to fund the green protesters. My advice. stop shooting ourselves in the foot, get together and get that oil to market.

Scheer says he will kill Bill C69 if elected, and also Bill C41. He doesn't say what he will replace it with. We know where the greens and the NDP are. No pipelines and shut down production. Really?

Jones lives in Amherst. His column appears in the Amherst News.