CALGARY — Premier Alison Redford says she intends to keep pushing for a national energy strategy now that she has a solid mandate from Alberta voters.
Redford has delivered few details about the plan since first raising it during her leadership campaign last fall, but says she has raised it with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, as well as Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Christy Clark of B.C.
She says she wants to ensure that everyone is working together to promote the nation’s energy resources, an issue Alberta is deeply invested in.
“I’ve had good discussions with Minister Oliver over that, had discussions with the prime minister about that. I think there’s some interesting ideas that we’re going to be able to pursue that are going to allow us to talk about energy as it should be talked about in the best interests of the country,” Redford said Tuesday.
The premier made the comments a day after her party pulled off its 12th straight majority election win, beating back a challenge from its rival on the right, the Wildrose party.
Prime Minister Harper, who is also from Calgary, has indicated he is “intrigued” by the national energy strategy idea, but has also said that he needs to know more about it before jumping on board.
Wall expressed the same reserved support Tuesday, alluding to the national energy program to redistribute oil wealth implemented under Pierre Trudeau in the 1980s. It’s still notorious in Western Canada.
“The nomenclature gets really important here, because you can put national in front of that word and a lot of people ... just want to check out of that discussion in Alberta and in Saskatchewan as well,” Wall said. “We just need this country, this country of ours, Canada, to be proud that we are an energy power.
“I guess if that’s what she means when she talks about a national approach where the country embraces the fact that, in renewables and non-renewable, we are an energy power, I think that we are very supportive of that.”
Redford said she got a congratulatory call from Harper after her election victory.
“We talked about some of the successes we had already in the past six or seven months working together on issues that matter to Alberta,” said Redford, who noted that she has known Harper since she was 19.
She said it doesn’t bother her that some members of the federal Conservative caucus had thrown their support behind the rival Wildrose.
Redford has proposed making Alberta the petro equivalent of Silicon Valley — a hub of research, product development and environmental initiatives.
The premier said Alberta will attend Rio+20 — a United Nations conference on sustainable development that is to take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June. The conference is billed as a way to develop a safer, more equitable, cleaner, greener and more prosperous world for all.