Former PM Harper praises Poilievre’s experience, ascent in Edmonton rally

Former prime minister Stephen Harper praised Pierre Poilievre at a rally attended by thousands of people in Edmonton.

EDMONTON — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s political experience and his climb to the top of the party’s ranks makes him aptly positioned to lead Canada, former prime minister Stephen Harper says.

“Political experience -- elected accountable political experience -- and the capacity for growth with that political experience, that is what Pierre has demonstrated for two decades,” said Harper at a Conservative campaign rally Monday in an industrial warehouse south of Edmonton.

“That is the single most important characteristic a prime minister needs.”

Harper, Canada’s prime minister from 2006 to 2015, said Poilievre’s experience, including his time in Harper’s cabinet, should outweigh the resume of the political newcomer in Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who served as the governor of the Bank of Canada during Harper’s time in office.

“I am the only person who can say that both of the men running to be prime minister once worked for me,” Harper told the crowd.

“And in that regard, my choice without hesitation, without equivocation, without a shadow of a doubt, is Pierre Poilievre.”

Harper, who received a boisterous applause at the campaign’s first Alberta stop Monday, didn’t take a position on the Conservative party’s 2017 and 2020 leadership contests, but he did endorse Poilievre in 2022.

Harper said that while Canada faces a grave threat in U.S. President Donald Trump, “the bulk of the problems that afflict our country” are a result of 10 years of Liberal policy-making.

“Falling living standards, declining employment and housing opportunities, rising crime, the growing divisions between our regions and our people -- these were not created by Donald Trump,” Harper said.

“I believe that the challenge this country faces today from the United States -- as real and serious as it is -- should not be another excuse for Liberal failure.”

Poilievre, joining the former prime minister on stage, said Harper was a much-appreciated mentor and that a Poilievre-led government would follow Harper’s footsteps.

“Always and everywhere he was solid, competent, honest, decent, down to earth,” Poilievre said of Harper.

Speaking in Terrace, B.C. earlier Monday, Poilievre promised a “one-and-done” approach to resource project approvals if he becomes prime minister.

Poilievre said his plan was to speed up approvals for major resource projects and he told reporters he would create a one-stop shop that would see one application and one environmental review for each project.

Poilievre said the idea is about “ensuring efficiency without sacrificing standards.”

“It’s not about reducing our environmental or public safety protection. It’s about merging them into one simplified step instead of overlapping processes,” he said.

Poilievre pitched the plan as a way to make Canada less dependent on selling to the United States -- as Trump’s tariff war continues to rock global financial markets.

Stock markets continued their steep plunge on Monday, prompting Poilievre to take a shot at Trump’s tariffs during his announcement.

“This chaos is the direct result of wrong-headed, unnecessary, chaotic policies coming from President Trump,” he said.

He also accused the Liberals of making Canada “dependent” on the U.S. as a market for its natural resources.

The Conservative plan would require that Ottawa work with the provinces to create a single office that would co-ordinate project approvals across all levels of government.

“My goal is to bring First Nations, municipalities and provinces all under the same tent,” Poilievre said.

“Let’s sit down and put together the checklist of all the things we need to approve, put it in one office that is accountable to all levels of government, and let the company then apply to the project right there.”

The Conservative proposal is similar to a deal Carney struck with Canada’s premiers two days before the federal election began last month.

That agreement would see Ottawa recognize provincial and territorial assessments when weighing whether a proposal can move forward, adopting what Carney told reporters was a “one project, one review” model for major projects.

Poilievre is also promising to rapidly approve 10 projects he said are stuck in limbo, including LNG Canada Phase II, a liquefied natural gas project in northern B.C.

The $40-billion LNG Canada facility got regulatory approval in 2015 and received a final investment decision from its key stakeholders in 2018. The export facility is expected to send its first shipments of liquefied natural gas in the coming months.

The Conservatives’ list of what they say are stalled projects also includes proposed roads, ports, mining sites and expansions of existing mines in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. The Conservatives claim some of these projects have been under assessment by the federal government for years.

Poilievre said he plans to impose a one-year cap on wait times for approvals -- the target would be six months -- to give businesses the certainty they need to start work.

Greenpeace Canada senior energy strategist Keith Stewart said Poilievre’s promise to fast-track fossil fuel industry infrastructure projects is misguided.

He said that projects are taking years to develop because of their complicated nature and the multiple layers of community consultations that are required. He said the best way to speed things up is to pursue renewables that “have a lot less risk and harm involved.”

“There’s just so much less risk to water, to air quality, that they’re actually a lot easier to get through because communities are more likely to be accepting of them,” he said. “The reality is, markets outside of the U.S. are trying as hard as they can to move off of fossil fuels.

“So rather than trying to build projects to deliver the stuff that people wanted last century, we should be building projects that are producing and exporting the things that people want this century.”

The LNG Canada website said in an update last fall that the project was awaiting a final investment decision from the consortium partners about moving ahead with a possible second phase.

Stewart said most of the delays in energy projects tend to come from the proponents and it is “sort of a myth” that the federal government is the main impediment to faster approval of such projects.

In October 2018, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau announced $275 million in federal funding to support to the LNG Canada project.

Written by Jack Farrell in Edmonton, Craig Lord in Ottawa and Chuck Chiang in Terrace, BC.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2025.