Saskatchewan calls for federal support in creating new energy corridors

WATCH: The province is calling on Ottawa to invest in more ways to get exports to port. Damian Smith has the details.

The Government of Saskatchewan is calling for federal investment in national energy corridors to get more resource products to international markets, especially given trade uncertainty with the United States.

The province says better trade offers better security against a range of potential issues.

“As we move forward in the province and also in Canada, we position ourselves as an energy superpower so that when we do have these challenging situations, like quite high-risk drought, that we are able to support those industries,” Minister of Energy and Resources Colleen Young told reporters Wednesday, while visiting Mosaic’s potash mine near Belle Plaine.

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Mosaic says Saskatchewan’s mining sector is slowly returning to normal.

“It’s in a stable place, not to what we saw back in the period of when Ukraine was invaded by Russia,” explained Marnel Jones, Mosaic’s director of government and public affairs.

“We saw sky-high potash prices, and that’s not actually very conducive to the market or to producers in the long term. So, the market we have right now, it’s stable, we’re making lots of tons, and our customers want it.”

Saskatchewan is projected to bring in $7 billion in mining investments this year.

The Mosaic Company also has operations in Florida and New Mexico, but Canada remains the largest producer of potash in the world, with most of it coming from Saskatchewan.

Potash, along with other energy imports to the U.S, currently face a 10 per cent tariff. But it’s expected to be exempt from threats of 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods later this summer.

“We have been watching the trade negotiations closely, and it’s continuing to be a dynamic situation,” Jones said.

“We’re watching to see what happens next. Right now, we’re fortunate that our product is all compliant. We don’t believe that any fertilizer product should be tariffed as it’s meant for humanitarian purposes to grow food.”

The next focus for the province is pipeline projects, where they’ll need to acquire licences from the federal government that they say have been “sitting on the books” for the past decade.