Alberta Premier Danielle Smith dared Prime Minister Mark Carney to defy her Wednesday, throwing a bone to separatists in her province, and inflaming a divisive cross-country debate over oil pipelines and climate change.
“This is a test of whether Canada works as a country,” Smith told reporters in Calgary. “Because if we can’t build with the collaboration of the federal government and between provinces, if it’s everybody gets to get their products going to market except Alberta, that’s not a country.
“A country is one where we support each other.”
What Smith wants is a new bitumen pipeline to British Columbia’s northern coast — a route that may follow a similar path to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. (That project was given the green light with 209 conditions in 2014 by prime minister Stephen Harper’s government, but halted in 2016 by prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government, after a federal court of appeal ruled consultations with Indigenous Peoples had been inadequate. Trudeau was concerned by Northern Gateway’s environmental impact, and instead sought to increase access for Alberta’s crude oil to Burnaby, B.C., through Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion — a pipeline project he eventually funded through Canadians’ tax dollars.)
Smith says she doesn’t want to spend Albertans’ tax dollars to build a new pipeline but she’s forking over $14 million for now to become the proponent of the project, to get Indigenous consultations started, and a plan drafted. Once it’s approved, Smith said, she’s confident the private sector will step in to finance it.
“It’s my hope, with Alberta as the proponent, that we will see this pipeline project on the next list of nation-building projects announced by the federal government come Grey Cup in November.”
But what if it is not?
The federal Liberal government and B.C.’s NDP government have hidden behind the excuse that there was no proponent willing to build a new oil pipeline to avoid staking out a clear position. Now, Smith is calling them off the fence — and raising the stakes. They either appease their core political constituencies, dismiss her requests and risk fuelling the separatist push in Alberta, or they risk their own political fortunes to please a premier not known for ceasing her demands, on a project that is far from fully baked.
Behind closed doors Wednesday, Carney seemed to be pouring cold water on Smith’s plans. In caucus, he left the impression, according to several MPs in the room, that Alberta’s latest proposal was insufficient to make the second tranche of national-interest projects — national building infrastructure projects that will get extra attention to ensure they get built, and possibly, receive exemptions from environmental conditions that stand in their way.
Carney faces a B.C. caucus and a Quebec caucus quite concerned with climate change, and other MPs equally alarmed that their new leader is walking back environmental measures and commitments that the Grits worked hard to achieve.
According to six MPs in attendance, the prime minister said he wouldn’t unilaterally push Smith’s proposal forward. “If B.C. doesn’t want it, it’s not going ahead,” several MPs reported that Carney said.
Privately, however, Carney appears to tell people what they want to hear. In the past, he’s told some Liberals that he would not support a new oil pipeline, while publicly leaving the door open. Is he doing the same thing now with his MPs and the premier of Alberta?
She noted Wednesday that Ottawa could carve out an exception to the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, a tanker ban on B.C.’s northern coast — which the controversial Bill C-5 allows the federal government to easily do. The buzz around the capital is that Carney has also told Smith he’s prepared not to push ahead with the proposed oil and gas greenhouse gas emissions cap if Alberta facilitates the Pathways Plus project (an expensive carbon capture, utilization, and storage project, which Smith has said she is committed to do, and which was placed on the first list of national-interest projects to be shepherded by the Major Projects Office).
British Columbia Premier David Eby has different problems. The NDP leader faces a leadership review in November and is best served by taking a strong environmental stance. In June, he told the CBC, however, that he wasn’t opposed to pipelines, he just didn’t want public money going to build them. He noted at the time that he’d signed a memorandum of understanding with western premiers around a trade corridor that could include energy projects, such as heavy oil. “Obviously, there are major issues including the tanker ban on the North Coast, the underuse capacity in TMX (the Trans Mountain pipeline) and other pieces, but we did sign off on them,” he told the CBC’s Rosemary Barton.
Faced with Smith’s new proposal Wednesday, Eby called it “not a real project,” “incredibly alarming to British Columbians,” and painted it as a threat to B.C.’s resource projects by jeopardizing the relationship his province has with First Nations.
He also noted that Smith’s project requires the lifting of the tanker ban off the north coast and raised the stakes, calling the ban “‘foundational’ for British Columbians who value our coast,” and saying it was personally important to him.
But, it’s worth noting that Eby stopped short of saying ‘no.’
Something Smith seemed to take as an encouraging sign.
But none of these leaders — Smith, Eby, or Carney — can all get what they want (if they can figure out what that even is).
And at least one of these politicians is painting the other into a box. The question is, who?
