Foothills MP John Barlow says frustrated doesn't begin to cover how Albertans are feeling after TransCanada pulled the plug on the Energy East pipeline project.

He says "angry" is a more apt description.

Barlow says the Conservatives felt this would be the company's response when the federal Liberals and the National Energy Board changed the rules halfway through the process.

"The rules that they put forward in terms of upstream and downstream emissions just made Energy East impossible to do and today's decision is just proof of that," he says.

Barlow says Energy Minister Jim Carr is not being honest with Canadians when he says this is just a business decision on the part of TransCanada and the government has approved two other pipelines under the same regulatory regime.

"That is absolutely false, those two other pipelines were approved under the previous National Energy Board processes which were in place under the Conservative government that did not include upstream and downstream emissions as part of the review process," Barlow says.

He says the government is putting Canada's own energy products which are developed under the most stringent environmental regulations in the world at a disadvantage while ensuring more oil will be imported from places like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Algeria that have, what he called horrific human rights records and almost no environmental standards.

Barlow says both Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Trudeau are instituting carbon taxes as a way to get "social license" to move these types of projects forward but it's gotten nowhere.