Unless Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has misread her meeting last week with Prime Minister Mark Carney, it looks like it’s a go for an oil pipeline from Alberta to B.C.’s west coast.
Smith was practically giddy after her meeting with the PM, in which the two of them discussed the memorandum of understanding they jointly signed back in November, which was aimed at laying out the pathway for that said pipeline.
“Well, I was feeling less confident before I saw the prime minister, and now, I’m feeling much more confident we’re going to be able to land the MOU and to do so before we submit our proposal to the major projects office for a new pipeline to the west coast of B.C.,” Smith said.
Given Smith’s adamant and long-standing insistence that an oil pipeline be built, her use of the words “much more confident” must be interpreted as a strong sign that the Carney government is about to green-light that pipeline.
On the same day of the meeting, B.C. Premier David Eby was asked about it, and he repeated his mantra to reporters that “there is still no route, there is still no proponent, there is no progress on this from when it was first announced about two years ago.”
Note there was no vow to block any such pipeline, an indication perhaps that Eby knows his government may lack the power to stop a federally backed pipeline project, just as his predecessor, John Horgan, discovered when he vowed to “use every tool in the toolbox” to block the expansion of the Trans-Mountain pipeline.
It turned out that Horgan’s toolbox was bare, and the pipeline was twinned (albeit by the federal government, which had to step in and take over the project).
Two key questions remain even if the project gets the go-ahead (which could come as early as this week).
First, who is going to build it?
And secondly, which route would it take?
As Eby and B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix constantly points out that no private company has expressed interest in building a pipeline that could cost well more than $50 billion.
Perhaps the Alberta government, maybe even in partnership with the federal government, financially backstops the project with tax dollars. It is entirely possible that kind of arrangement was discussed in the Smith-Carney meeting.
As for the route, if a pipeline is indeed built, it will either be in the northern part of the province, with Prince Rupert the likely terminus. This would require lifting the tanker ban, a move the B.C. NDP government opposes even more strongly than the pipeline itself.
But a southern route might be more politically acceptable. It would run alongside (or on top of) the Trans-Mountain pipeline. Smith opposes the idea, arguing it would greatly increase tanker traffic in an already congested area around the existing Burnaby terminus.
Smith may have a point. Last Sunday afternoon, I took a float plane from Vancouver Harbour to Victoria Harbour. While waiting to board, I could see considerable traffic in Burrard Inlet.
That included the Seabus, an inbound ferry from Nanaimo, a tour boat, a Coast Guard vessel, a rather larger tanker and several pleasure craft. Plus, float planes take off in the harbour every half hour or so.
That tanker was sailing under the Lions Gate Bridge and once through had to thread its way through more than a dozen freighters anchored in English Bay.
A busy place indeed.
But an oil spill in that heavily industrialized area would not cause anywhere near the catastrophic damage that could result from a tanker spill on B.C.’s pristine north coastline.
In any event, to go by Smith’s take of her meeting with Carney, it sure looks like the pipeline is a done deal.
Keith Baldrey is Global TV’s Legislature Bureau Chief.
Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
