Kinew floats oil shipments through Hudson Bay as part of potential trade corridor

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says oil could be among the commodities shipped through Hudson Bay if Canada proceeds with a new or expanded port along the province's coastline.

Kinew has asked Prime Minister Mark Carney to support a northern trade corridor that would involve a new all-season road, a hydro-electric transmission line to Nunavut and potentially a pipeline to Hudson Bay.

Kinew said Friday that oil is among the commodities that could be shipped through Arctic waters via Hudson Bay. The premier has in the past floated the idea of liquefied natural gas or hydrogen shipments.

"When we're talking about a pipe, what is the product that makes sense?" Kinew said during a scrum with reporters following a speech in Winnipeg's RBC Convention Centre.

"Are we going to be looking at liquefaction, and then maybe it's an LNG thing? Are we looking at oil and gas projects? Are we looking at something novel, like green hydrogen or maybe a potash slurry? These are the things that we can signal to the private sector we're open to having a discussion about."

In April, Kinew said he was open to the construction of a second port on Hudson Bay because of ecological sensitivities at the Port of Churchill, at the Churchill River estuary, where large summer congregations of beluga whales attract tourists. Polar bears also gather east of Churchill every fall before the bay freezes up, supporting an even more lucrative tourism industry.

Kinew said Friday he would entertain proposals from private industry about the best location to place a new port, pipeline terminal or transshipment centre along Hudson Bay, taking into account logistics, environmental concerns and Indigenous interests.

"Those are some of the key questions that we want to take the time to get right," Kinew said. "There's an urgency right now with these nation-building projects and a national unity dynamic when [you're] working with Alberta and Saskatchewan. But we also need to get the environmental piece right."

Alberta premier praises idea, others concerned

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith praised Kinew for suggesting Manitoba would consider a northern oil pipeline.

"This is what a Team Canada approach looks like — provinces and their premiers supporting other provinces in getting their products to market for the benefit of all Canadians," Smith said in a statement.

Oil industry experts and environmental organizations, however, are unanimous in their disdain for the idea of shipping oil through Arctic waters.

There is no business case for shipping oil through Hudson Bay, said Heather Exner-Pirot, a Calgary-based senior fellow and director of energy, natural resources and environment at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute.

The shipping season through Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait — the passage between Quebec and Baffin Island — is too short, requiring expensive icebreakers to ensure the safe passage of oil tankers, Exner-Pirot said. The threat of a spill in remote areas would likely make insurance impossible, she said.

"We're only having this conversation of moving oil through Churchill because B.C. is being obstructionist," she said, noting the B.C. government's opposition to oil pipelines from Alberta. 

"From every angle — from an environmental angle, from a business angle, from a market angle — it makes so much more sense again to build that egress, to build that other pipeline across to B.C. to Pacific tidewater."

Eric Reder, the Manitoba director of the Wilderness Committee, said shipping oil through Arctic waters would result in disaster, because it would be very difficult to respond to remote spills, which he described as inevitable.

Reder said there is a more basic reason to oppose the idea.

"While we look at the climate catastrophe fuelling fires and floods on a daily and weekly basis, if we build more fossil fuel infrastructure, we are going to kill more of us faster," he said in an interview from Hope, B.C.

Kinew suggested shipping fossil fuels through the north could be carbon neutral.

"If we are going to work with conventional energy, what are we doing in terms of export contracts going west to make sure that we're offsetting any greenhouse gas emissions, or are we doing carbon capture and utilization and storage?" he asked.

"Is there a way that we can ensure that as we build, we're also moving forward on climate change?"

Laura Cameron of Manitoba's Climate Action Team said this does not make sense.

"While Manitoba is in a state of emergency, with tens of thousands of climate refugees evacuated from their communities, Premier Kinew is proposing a new pipeline to Churchill that would add more fuel to the fire. We cannot extinguish the flames with one hand while stoking them with the other," she said in an emailed statement. 

"The provincial government should retract these comments and instead focus on creating a real plan for protecting communities while swiftly transitioning to clean energy."

Trade agreement pending

Kinew also said Friday that Manitoba is close to signing a memorandum of understanding to reduce trade barriers with British Columbia, similar to a document the province signed with Ontario in May.

The premier also said he is working with the federal government to harmonize national trucking regulations.