Tough issues, trade-offs in store for Liberals during fall sitting: prof

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The federal Liberals return to work tomorrow for the fall sitting of the House of Commons, in what some observers feel could be a make-or-break session for the new government.

“This where the rubber hits the road for Mister Trudeau,” says University of Victoria Political Scientist Michael Prince, pointing specifically to upcoming debates on pipeline and resource development.

“We’ve got the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline proposal … a decision has to be made sometime probably by Christmas,” Prince explains. “It already has conditional regulatory approval by the National Energy Board, but there is still a lot of speculation around that.”

Then there’s the Northern Gateway pipeline: Trudeau has to decide within the first week of the sitting whether he’ll appeal a federal court decision that rescinded permits for the project.

The Site C dam project may also prove troublesome Prince says, in no small part because the Association of First Nations (AFN) have openly called on the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister to oppose it.

Prince notes that Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould “did exactly that about four years ago” when she was the regional chief of the BC AFN.

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