Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized some of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet picks, calling Canadian Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault “a threat to national unity,” after he claimed Canada doesn’t need any more pipelines.
Poilievre told reporters on Thursday that he “absolutely” believes Guilbeault is a threat to national unity following his recent comments saying private sector developers aren’t interested in building pipelines in Canada.
“I just find it astonishing that Mr. Carney would appoint a man who says we don’t need any pipelines built,” Poilievre said. “The Liberals went around the country pretending they had changed their minds about pipelines after 10 years of blocking them, but now one of Mr. Carney’s top ministers comes out and says we don’t need any more pipelines, and that he would work to block those pipelines.”
Guilbeault said Tuesday in Ottawa that governments don’t build pipelines, investors do, and claimed that investors are uninterested in Canada, while adding that demand for oil and gas will peak in 2028-2029.
Premier Danielle Smith later called out Guilbeault on X and asked that Carney’s new environment minister, Julie Dabrusin, disavow his anti-oil and gas comments.
Poilievre continued, saying Guilbeault wanted to block road construction, and was against nuclear energy and economic development in Canada.
“That will be bad for the entire country, to be clear, but especially antagonistic to the resource-producing provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta, who rightly feel that they have been mistreated by this last lost Liberal decade,” Poilievre said.
He shifted gears away from Guilbeault who he said “wants to block resource development,” and aimed at Carney’s other cabinet picks.
“We have Sean Fraser, who created the immigration crisis and then the housing crisis, a new housing minister yesterday who says he doesn’t want housing costs to go down,” Poilievre said. “Presumably, he wants them to go up like they did when he tripled them, nearly tripled them as mayor of Vancouver. So what we’re seeing in the last 48 hours of this Liberal government is looking a lot like the last 10 years of the Liberal government.”