There is a negotiation maxim widely heard in trade talks that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. By that measure nothing has been agreed between Ottawa and Alberta.
Prime Minister
Mark Carney and Alberta Premier
Danielle Smith wanted to make a show of signing a memorandum of understanding on
energy and the
environment, even though all the actual commitments are still TBD.
Carney and Smith can both gain from the deal, but for the Prime Minister, the risks are inside his own house
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The Liberal Prime Minister has made a new one-million barrels-a-day pipeline to the British Columbia coast a national priority.
Alberta’s United Conservative Premier has made a long-term commitment to more stringent industrial carbon pricing to reduce emissions.
“If” both sides follow through on what is essentially
a negotiating agenda for a real agreement, it will transform the prospects for Canada’s energy sector and its climate policy and internal politics.
There’s nothing but a memorandum of understanding at this point, & they’re losing their shit.
It calls for a new pipeline, on the condition that the oil industry builds a massive carbon-capture project to reduce oil emissions. It gets rid of the emissions cap and several other regulations that Ms. Smith called “bad laws” if Alberta raises its industrial carbon levy to $130 per tonne − much higher than it is now but less than the increase that was supposed to take effect under existing federal climate policy. That’s a groundbreaking compromise.
The biggest obstacle comes from the objections of Mr. Eby and B.C.’s Coastal First Nations, who oppose a pipeline to the northwest B.C. coast and the lifting of the tanker ban that such a project requires. Mr. Eby described the tanker ban as key to First Nations support for several major projects, suggesting that lifting it would be like removing a Jenga piece that makes it all fall apart.
So it’s worth noting that the wording of the MOU signed Thursday allows for a way to work around that issue, quite literally. It called for a pipeline to Asian markets, without mentioning northwest B.C., so a compromise could conceivably be reached to instead triple the conduits of the now-twinned Trans Mountain pipeline to Burnaby, B.C.
