Last Wednesday, Parti Québécois (PQ) Environment Minster Daniel Breton raised considerable controversy. When asked about proposals currently being brought forward to start moving crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in Montreal and further east in the Maritimes, he rejected the notion outright.

“Albertans want to bring their oil onto our land, without our consent,” he told La Presse.

He also cited environmental risks, stating that “this is a question of protecting the environment that’s on our territory.”

The Alberta oil sands are a hotly-debated topic on the environmental front. For years, critics have targeted the extraction process as excessively harmful, but that’s not the issue brought forward by Mr. Breton. His concern, judging by his quote, is the impact of the project on Quebecois land.

Unlike the hotly disputed Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects, which would lay down new pipelines in a process both lengthy and harmful to the surrounding areas, these current proposals primarily involve the repurposing of existing infrastructure. Enbridge is seeking to reverse the flow of their pipeline, which currently moves crude oil from Montreal to Sarnia. Similarly, TransCanada wants to convert their Canadian Mainline pipeline, which currently carries natural gas, into an oil line. The work required to make these modifications is minor.

Mr. Breton also cited the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill as a reason for Quebec to be wary of the proposals. While the disaster in Michigan certainly serves as a harsh reminder of what can go wrong with pipelines, these are risks that Quebec is already taking with the existing Enbridge line. Reversing the flow of oil will not increase the likelihood of a rupture.

The environmental concerns seem even more dubious when one considers that New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair has come forward in favour of these proposals. Mulcair has vehemently opposed the other aforementioned pipeline initiatives, on the grounds of both environmental and economic concerns. However, provided the project developer pays for any environmental damage caused, he believes that the economic benefits greatly outweigh any drawbacks in this case.

Currently, refineries in Eastern Canada process crude oil shipped in from Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Venezuela. Once refined, the oil is sent inland to Canada, to the eastern United States, or as far south as Texas. Replacing these imports with Albertan oil would keep more profits within Canada.

As Mulcair rightly points out, the alternatives to this proposal involve shipping the bitumen to the U.S. or China, eliminating potential high-paying Canadian jobs. The West-East pipeline would create more jobs in the East, and increase the export capacity for our refined oil.

Ultimately, Mr. Breton’s comments seem to indicate an ideological opposition to the proposal, rather than a stance based on the facts of the issue. Rather than addressing environmental or economic concerns, his comments derive from a purely political stance. The rhetoric used is distinctly nationalist, even employing the Quiet Revolution slogan ‘maître chez nous’ (‘masters of our own home’). While Mr. Breton’s sovereigntist approach is certainly in keeping with the Parti Québécois’ stance, it may be problematic for the province’s future.

This sort of dogmatic unwillingness to even consider proposals such as these could prove seriously harmful to Quebec, deterring job creation and economic growth. The PQ has vowed to get tough on corporations, but a recently filed lawsuit—in which a number of corporations including Wal-mart and the Gap are threatening to pull out of Quebec over increasingly strict language laws—seems to demonstrate that this stance is to the overall detriment of the province thus far. To set a precedent in which opportunities are being struck down on uniquely partisan grounds will only worsen this. While the party did get elected on a platform stemming from a particular set of ideologies, these cannot take precedence over general economic well-being.

The questions of judgement that these issues bring forward could ultimately damage the party itself. As a newly-elected minority government with an upcoming confidence vote, this is not the time for the PQ to be trying to score political points with a separatist base by shunning real issues. If the Party plans to occupy any sort of long-term leadership role, it will have to learn to temper its ideologies and take all aspects of that role seriously.