The chief executive of National Bank of Canada says he’s not changing the bank’s strategy because of the war in the Middle East, but he is urging a faster response from Canada to rising threats abroad.
Speaking at the bank’s financial services conference in Montreal, Laurent Ferreira says the country should be moving quicker on reducing internal trade barriers and boosting energy supplies.
“We need to set politics aside and start thinking about our future, because the world is dangerous.” he said.
“There an opportunity for us to really leapfrog here, to move forward on a lot of issues where we have a lot to offer to the world.”
National security and economic sovereignty start with being an energy superpower, so Canada needs to look at all the options it has, said Ferreira, who focused specifically on fossil fuel exports.
He said Canada needs to export more liquefied natural gas westward and transport more gas east to Ontario, Quebec and beyond, expressing dismay that New Brunswick recently took in an LNG shipment from Australia.
And while the country is looking to diversify trade from the United States, he also said the Keystone XL pipeline project that would send more Alberta crude there needs to be revived immediately.
Pipelines have faced significant opposition over both climate change and oil spill concerns, but Ferreira said there’s increasing support.
“People are talking about trade tensions. People are talking about, you know, war around the world. So I think that there is a social licence that our governments right now have that they did not have in the past.”
He says Canadian banks are well capitalized and ready to support government efforts.
Ferreira, however, also raised concerns about rising bank oversight rules in Canada at a time when the United States is significantly pulling back.
“We’ve gone up in terms of supervision, they’ve come down.”
He said it’s positive in Canada that there’s respect and engagement between the banks and regulators, but he wishes things would move a little faster there too.