{"id":114875,"date":"2026-07-03T15:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/114875\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:06:09","slug":"rob-breakenridge-ok-carney-now-approve-the-pipeline-for-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/114875\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Breakenridge: OK, Carney, now approve the pipeline for real"},"content":{"rendered":"

CALGARY \u2014 It\u2019s quite a needle that the prime minister has threaded,<\/a> weaving together announcements with B.C., Alberta, and private industry to move forward with a new million-barrel-a-day pipeline to Canada\u2019s West Coast.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken a long time to get to this point, though, and we\u2019re still really only nearing the end of the beginning. It\u2019s unfortunate that it took months of negotiations, major concessions, and an unprecedented legislative intervention to expedite Canada\u2019s regulatory approval process just to arrive at what is essentially the lowest-hanging fruit.<\/p>\n

It would be a terrible indictment of Canada\u2019s ability to build major projects if all of this\u00a0was\u00a0somehow insufficient to move this project forward. By landing on the easiest, simplest pipeline route with the least possible amount of opposition, there should be zero excuses now<\/p>\n

Rather than a pipeline project to a deepwater port in northwestern B.C. \u2014 the shortest distance from Canada to Asia \u2014 Alberta has settled on a route to the southwest coast. This will hew more or less to the right-of-way of the existing Trans Mountain expansion (TMX), ending at Roberts Bank port terminal in Delta, B.C.<\/p>\n

The Thursday evening announcement in Calgary was the culmination of a rather busy and consequential day for Mark Carney. The prime minister started the day in Vancouver, where he announced a new agreement<\/a> with B.C. Premier David Eby.<\/p>\n

Essentially, B.C. won\u2019t fight this new pipeline and, in exchange, will receive considerable benefits in the form of billions for resource projects and major infrastructure investments. Ottawa will also maintain the tanker ban along B.C.\u2019s northern coast \u2014 a major political concession in B.C.\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

To be sure, further growing our capacity to develop and export LNG to Asian markets is a win-win for B.C. and for Canada. Still, the upside for B.C. is considerable \u2014 including the benefits that this pipeline will deliver.<\/p>\n

The tanker ban itself was always redundant and symbolic, at least based on the Liberals\u2019 underlying logic in\u00a0favour\u00a0of the Impact Assessment Act. Canada\u2019s coastline far exceeds just the B.C. north coast, and the whole point of raising the bar on environmental impact assessment was to better protect sensitive areas.<\/p>\n

Keeping the tanker ban, therefore, constitutes yet another concession from Alberta, since the original Alberta-Ottawa MOU left the door open to adjusting the ban, if necessary, to accommodate a pipeline project. There would surely have been considerable opposition to such a project, however..<\/p>\n

So yes, Alberta gets federal backing, and referral to the Major Projects Office, of a new pipeline and the fruits of Carney\u2019s efforts to facilitate a more conducive political atmosphere.<\/p>\n

There was also Ottawa\u2019s concession to ease the controversial Clean Electricity Regulations. That helped pave the path for Thursday\u2019s other big announcement of a $4.6-billion natural gas project to power a new data\u00a0centre\u00a0near Edmonton<\/p>\n

And, of course, Alberta will benefit tremendously from the additional production capacity that will fill the new pipeline and be shipped off to foreign markets.<\/p>\n

But we cannot overlook the costs that fall on the province.<\/p>\n

There will be costs associated with the development of the Pathways carbon capture and storage project. The full costs are not yet known, and the major oilsands companies will be partners in that project, but this a condition for federal support. The same is true of the escalating industrial carbon price, although a recent compromise agreement will keep it from reaching its originally planned high level.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0also the cost of building this pipeline. Although we can expect this project, once completed, to deliver substantial revenues,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0still the price tag of construction.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0estimated that this pipeline will cost upwards of\u00a0$35-billion\u00a0to build, and the private sector has still been skittish about the risks of such an investment. In the meantime, taxpayer dollars will be in the mix.<\/p>\n

So far, there is only one private sector partner, the Pembina Pipeline Corporation, as the others involved \u2014 Trans Mountain Corp. and the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission \u2014 are Crown entities. Ideally, there would be more private involvement and hopefully greater certainty as this project moves forward can attract more investment.<\/p>\n

Still, as the prime minister pointed out,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0unleashing at least\u00a0$200-billion\u00a0in new investments across\u00a0all of\u00a0these projects. Premier Smith called it \u201ctransformational wealth,\u201d constituting \u201can opportunity neither Canada nor Alberta can afford to leave unrealized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully\u00a0this now marks the end of the MOUs and trade-offs. We still need to see a quick decision from Ottawa with regard to designating this project to be\u00a0in\u00a0the national\u00a0interest. The lack of such a designation in the entire first year of the Building Canada Act has not helped to build confidence in the notion that the federal government is determined to act with urgency on major projects.<\/p>\n

The prime minister and premier deserve credit for moving the ball forward on such an important initiative. The changing and growing global economic pressures we\u2019re facing make this urgent, and the benefits we\u2019re now realizing from TMX show that it will be worth it.<\/p>\n

And beyond just enhancing Canada\u2019s prosperity and economic security, this comes at an important political moment for Alberta.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0an arduous and imperfect path\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0finally brought us to a good news announcement.\u00a0So\u00a0no more concessions, no more MOUs.\u00a0Let\u2019s\u00a0get this done. If not now, when?<\/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\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 It\u2019s quite a needle that the prime minister has threaded, weaving together announcements with B.C., Alberta,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[17,3178,4666,111,61,9322,20950,141,39480],"class_list":["post-114875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-canada","tag-danielle-smith","tag-major-projects","tag-mark-carney","tag-ottawa","tag-pipeline-project","tag-pipeline-route","tag-prime-minister","tag-trans-am-piping-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114875","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=114875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}