Political antagonists, Alberta’s Jason Kenney and PM Trudeau to meet

OTTAWA – Jason Kenney will meet face-to-face today with the political foe he attacked relentlessly in his successful bid to become Alberta’s premier: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The two are to meet this afternoon in the Prime Minister’s Office, just hours after Kenney is to testify before a Senate committee studying the government’s bill to re-write the rules for environmental assessments of energy projects.

Kenney, a former federal Conservative cabinet minister, calls the bill the “No Pipelines Act” and wants it scrapped.

He spent as much or more time during the Alberta election campaign attacking Trudeau than his main provincial adversary, Rachel Notley, whose NDP government was defeated on April 16.

Indeed, Kenney repeatedly urged Albertans to defeat what he called the “Trudeau-Notley alliance” and shared a stage during the campaign with federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

He has promised to fight the Liberals in court over the imposition of a carbon tax and has threatened to hold a referendum on federal equalization if there’s no substantive progress on building a pipeline to get Alberta’s oil to tidewater for shipment to overseas markets.