Canada's Conservatives pushed for approval of new natural gas pipelines on Thursday as a Russian war in Ukraine raged, arguing “energy is vital to Canadian defence and security.”

During a debate on a Conservative motion that ties condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin with approval of pipelines in Canada, NDP MP Charlie Angus accused the Tories of using a humanitarian crisis to promote “the pipedream of spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars on pipelines.”

Robert Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, said Putin’s actions in Ukraine “may amount to war crimes under international criminal law” and that Canada would join other countries in calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate.

However, he called the focus on pipelines a distraction and accused Conservatives of taking advantage, “like an opportunistic infection,” of a grave international crisis.

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