Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan says Canada needs more oil and gas workers and that he doesn’t like the phrase “just transition.”
“I’ve said this for years,” said O’Regan in the Senate Question Period on Feb. 9.
“‘Just transition’ is a phrase that workers hate, and my constituents don’t like, and so I don’t like it either. We tried, anyway, within the bureaucracy and amongst ourselves to say the words, ‘sustainable jobs.’”
The former natural resources minister was responding to Sen. David Wells who asked him how the phasing out of the oil and gas industry is “just” for the potentially affected workers in Newfoundland and Labrador where his constituency is based….