Ep 39: Retired Senator David Tkachuk on Bill C-69 and pipelines

So Rahman sent me a copy of a speech that you did back in 2018 before you retired.

And I just want to read a couple of excerpts from it because, you know, remember 2018, we were three years into a liberal government who the prime minister you quoted here had talked about phasing out the oil sands.

I just want to highlight a few things here because of the contrast of what's happening now and why things are happening now.

So he said, I don't think it could be any clearer that the Liberal government has embarked on a mission to kill the resource economy in our country.

The overt purposes of bills C-69, C-48, C-68, C-55, and C-88 may be to protect the environment, but they just so happen to kill our resource industry in a process.

And the people who work in these industries, they're sacrificial lambs.

They're collateral damage.

They're the price to be paid for transition.

And then he went on, honorable senators, we're living in a remarkable times.

Despite all the gloom and doom of the liberals, we are longer, healthier, richer lives.

We take it all for granted like it fell into our laps, but we forget what got us here.

What got us here was largely our resource industry, especially oil.

Our life, frankly, would be impossible without it.

Now, there's a couple other things that you mentioned here.

where he talked about, while the Liberals talk about their grand environmental plans, it's the ordinary workers in the automobile plants who are saving the plant, the engineers, designers, scientists all working together.

And there's another point here.

Hold on.

I would have published the whole thing, but it would have been the longest piece I ever published.

So the point is, though, is that, you know, you were waving the banner here saying, it's the other thing I highlighted, If we pass the legislation as written today, we impose a death sentence on the resource industry and its people, the pipeline workers of which I used to be one, the oil workers or oil rigors and waitresses and restaurants who depend on business they bring in in order to pay their bills and feed their kids.

And now here we are eight years later and basically all of that came to pass.

You know, I've written countless stories about how we went in decline starting in early 2015, late 2014, and how a lot of it was not just oil in prices.

It was federal government.

So, Senator, with that intro, tell us what your thoughts are about C-69.

Well, as I said in the speech, it was a bill that affected absolutely everything that people take for granted.

But at its roots, I think, it was the federal government trying or attempting and succeeding in controlling natural resources, which is really under the Constitution.