It should come as no surprise that Canada\u2019s prime minister would go to bat for national unity, but it remains unclear exactly how Mark Carney\u2019s determination will manifest itself in Alberta.<\/p>\n
At his end-of-sitting news conference last week, Carney vowed to make the case for Canada and use the summer months to convince Albertans that things are improving, and that the province has a willing partner in the federal government.<\/p>\n
There will, of course, be varying degrees of skepticism about such assurances. Carney isn\u2019t likely to win over committed separatist voters, and Liberal supporters in Alberta (a much less lonely group than was previously the case) probably don\u2019t need much convincing.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, as they say, actions speak louder than words. The original MOU between Alberta and Ottawa, and the subsequent agreement on how to proceed<\/a>, would both fall into that category, even if they\u2019re smaller steps on a path to a larger outcome.<\/p>\n Getting to those larger outcomes is where the federal response is still lacking. Hopefully, part of the prime minister\u2019s summer will involve a focus on how to accelerate those paths, because it\u2019s been underwhelming thus far.<\/p>\n The pending submission of a pipeline project proposal coincides with the first anniversary of the passage of the Building Canada Act, which created the Major Projects Office. A year ago, there was a significant emphasis on being able to build big and build quickly, and, as such, the Building Canada Act was rushed through.<\/p>\n Since then, there have been projects referred to the Major Projects Office for consideration but, until last week, none had been declared to be in the national interest and put on the new fast track.<\/p>\n This week, we\u2019re expected to finally see the specifics of a West Coast pipeline project in the form of a proposal to the Major Projects Office. The hope and expectation is that this project could receive a national interest designation by October. Given what else falls on the calendar in October<\/a>, this would be ideal.<\/p>\n As noted, that would represent a much faster timeline than what we\u2019ve seen so far. The first projects to be fast-tracked were finally announced last week<\/a> \u2014 the Mackenzie Valley Highway Project in the Northwest Territories, the Grays Bay Road and Port Project in Nunavut, and a nuclear waste storage project in northwestern Ontario.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no slight on these projects, and Canada would be better off with all three proceeding, but it\u2019s an underwhelming return on what\u2019s been billed as transformational and uniquely ambitious. And if it takes that long to get moving on such less-than-major projects, what does that foretell for those that are much larger in scope and in keeping with the underlying rhetoric of this endeavour?<\/p>\n The optimistic and charitable take here is that, having finally reached this milestone, subsequent announcements will start to flow more quickly. Even if that proves to be the case, though, it still doesn\u2019t erase the underlying problem that such a process was necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n Still, though, there\u2019s a golden opportunity here for Carney to deliver on his promise to build \u201cnation-building infrastructure on a scale and at speeds not seen in generations.\u201d Poll after poll shows that Canadians support building such projects, including a new pipeline.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also an important moment for the prime minister to deliver on his pledge to show Alberta that \u201cco-operative federalism\u201d is prevailing and that his government is indeed that willing partner.<\/p>\n He should heed his own words from last week, \u201cWe\u2019re seen as one of the most trustworthy, reliable, desirable countries to do business with, and we shouldn\u2019t mess that up.\u201d<\/p>\n Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca<\/a> and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It should come as no surprise that Canada\u2019s prime minister would go to bat for national unity, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[261,17,4136,111,9322,141],"class_list":["post-110081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-brent-calver","tag-canada","tag-major-projects-office","tag-mark-carney","tag-pipeline-project","tag-prime-minister"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}