Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan says interest in a new federally-funded program to put oil industry workers back to work cleaning up abandoned wells in Alberta amid the coronavirus pandemic has been “significantly higher” than expected.
During a virtual meeting of the House of Commons on Tuesday, O’Regan was pressed by Conservatives on why the federal government hasn’t yet released an industrial support package for the energy sector akin to the multi-million-dollar industrial package unveiled earlier that day for the agricultural sector.
In response, O’Regan pointed to the government’s investment of $1.7 billion in funding for B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan natural resource firms to hire energy workers to restore and reclaim well