Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says American officials would have understood the potential impact on the economy had they introduced Buy American provisions to the Keystone XL pipeline extension.
Last week, Notley spent several days in Washington, meeting with Republican senators, congressmen, state officials and a member of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.
On Thursday, Trump's spokesman said a new executive order calling for American steel to be used in the construction of new pipelines won't apply to Keystone, the TransCanada pipeline stalled for years and then denied under the Obama administration.
"We certainly did talk about the Keystone issue and we got indications that people are aware of the impact of Buy American," Notley said in an interview with Evan Solomon, host of CTV's Question Period, to air Sunday morning.
Notley says she discussed generally how products can cross the Canada-U.S. border three or four times from beginning to end of production and how trade barriers could hurt that flow.
"If Buy American suddenly becomes injected into that, or border taxes or whatever, we could really disrupt the trade relationships and jobs on both sides of the border. And there was no question that there was a pretty strong sense of people that we were meeting with, of beginning to understand the complexity of that and the fact that there are some pretty significant consequences," Notley said.
"Not only does this protect and preserve and build jobs for Albertans and Canadians, but there are a number of American jobs that depend on what's already happened and the ongoing nature of our integrated trade relationships across the border."
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