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 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.”
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.