Do Quebecers support pipelines now? Their politicians can't agree

National Post

20-05-2025

OTTAWA — Albertans may want to see more pipelines across the country, but Quebec politicians are still arguing about whether their constituents will welcome them.
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'Where are the projects that are profitable for Quebec? If there were any, we would have known about it a long time ago. This is not the case currently,' said Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Paradis at a press conference Tuesday.
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Premier François Legault's comments last week in an hour-long podcast interview with host Stephan Bureau are still resonating in the National Assembly and in Alberta.
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'Quebecers are saying, 'There's no way Trump is going to control the oil we produce in Alberta.' So, can we export it to Europe through Quebec instead of being stuck with Trump? There's openness. I feel things are shifting,' Legault said. But he also suggested that a potential project could pass through the northern part of the province and end at the port of Sept-Îles.
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'There are projects like that which would have been unthinkable before Trump,' Legault said.
Some Quebec politicians don't agree. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said that 'we could discuss at length what constitutes openness among Quebecers or not.' Paradis argued that 'there's one poll showing a certain openness, but to what? '
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Making matters even more contentious, only a few public polls have been conducted on this question. The most frequently cited one dates back to February, during the tariff war with the United States.
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At the time, a SOM-La Presse poll suggested that 59 per cent of Quebecers would be in favour of a new Energy East project.
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Another one by Nanos Research, conducted in April, found that nearly half of Quebecers said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea of a trans-Canada pipeline, the lowest rate in Canada.
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Legault later told reporters that 'we're a long way from a concrete project' and that any potential environmental assessments would not be skipped.
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'We remember there have been past projects that crossed several rivers. We need to look at the impacts and then look at the benefits. What's positive in each of the projects, if any concrete ones are put forward,' Legault said.
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While the Parti Québécois is asking 'what's in it for us' and 'what are the proposed projects on the table' — so far, there aren't any — the leftist separatist party Quebec Solidaire attacked the premier for making the mistake of 'thinking that pipelines are the solution to the Trump tariff crisis.'