A viable project or a costly political fantasy?
Guest Column
Amy Janzwood is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Bieler School of Environment at McGill University. She is the author of Mega Pipelines, Mega Resistance.
With Alberta Premier Danielle Smith unveiling her Alberta-taxpayer-funded pipeline proposal, Canadians should be asking a simple question: is this a viable project or a costly political fantasy?
The Canada Day deadline was loaded with symbolic irony for what Alberta Premier Danielle Smith calls a test of national unity, a response to a crisis she has fanned by courting the province’s separatist movement.
For its part, the federal government’s spin machine is in full swing. Canadians are being sold a story about energy security, economic competitiveness and national interest. Yet a hypothetical new oil sands pipeline would not lower gas prices for Canadians. It would not insulate Canada from volatile global oil markets. Nor would it make Canada more energy secure.
Prime Minister Carney skipped into a trap set by Danielle Smith: a debate in which rejecting an absurd pipeline idea means rejecting Alberta, and supporting it requires accepting assumptions that are perhaps even more absurd.
Danielle Smith was initially interested in reviving the previously planned route of the failed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project. But Enbridge learned some difficult lessons that are still relevant today. In 2014, the company disclosed it was taking “a step back” from the project due to opposition from First Nations, admitting, “we do recognize now, more than we did originally, that there needs to be a strong [Indigenous] and B.C. voice in the leadership.”
In the 10 years since the cancellation of Northern Gateway, much has changed despite this recent bout of political amnesia, including the federal government buying Trans Mountain and expanding the pipeline. The profitability of the $34 billion taxpayer-owned pipeline is an accounting illusion, which the federal government recently quietly admitted it cannot sell. This is a high price for taxpayers to pay to appease Alberta. And even the majority of Albertans oppose building another pipeline with public money.
And yet, the West Coast pipeline announcement was just that — a publicly backed pipeline by none other than the Trans Mountain Crown corporation. This pipeline “proposal” may as well be scratched on the back of a napkin. The ‘proposal’ does not identify a specific route but sketches out a “corridor” with two route ideas through southern British Columbia across unceded Indigenous territories.
Today, Canadians are being asked to accept a multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded pipeline on faith: that long-term oil demand will materialize because politicians say so. But vibes do not a pipeline make. Planned additional expansions to the Trans Mountain and Enbridge Mainline systems would bring sufficient capacity to even the federal energy regulator’s most optimistic export-growth scenario.
Despite this, we should not be surprised to hear the familiar refrain from pipeline boosters that it is never enough — evidenced by their attempts to revive part of the defunct Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, would further expand Canada’s dependency on oil exports to the US.
Astoundingly, Albertan and Canadian taxpayers would shoulder the cost of this new pipeline, currently estimated to cost between $35 amd $44 billion.
On top of the promise of another new pipeline, Danielle Smith and oil and gas companies have also effectively reversed a decade of climate policy. They’ve pressured Carney to scrap the oil and gas emissions cap, weaken industrial carbon pricing, essentially kill the clean electricity regulations and further delay the low-hanging fruit regulations for the oil and gas sector’s methane pollution in Alberta. Prime Minister Carney made these concessions in exchange for a positive relationship with a government dallying with separatists.
The Carney-Smith deal depends on a stack of hypotheticals: a hypothetical pipeline justified by a hypothetical carbon capture and storage project (Pathways) that hypothetically could reduce emissions from oil sands production – but would ultimately be used to justify expanding production. Let’s not forget (though worryingly, many Canadians increasingly seem to) that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of the climate crisis.
And even if you can stomach that contradiction, oil companies are not incentivized to invest in the Pathways project with weaker industrial carbon pricing. The MOU implementation agreement is self-defeating by design. Even former Conservative finance minister and well-known climate denialist Joe Oliver has cautioned against another taxpayer boondoggle for Pathways.
Now, more than ever, the irony of Danielle Smith’s faux-patriotism is on full display. Would a politician who truly wants a strong Canada be forcing an uneconomic pipeline through the unceded territories of its neighbouring province? After tearing up most of Canada’s climate plan, she seems lukewarm to the idea of staying in the country that has catered to (nearly) every demand.
In this framing, supporting a pipeline becomes synonymous with keeping Alberta in Canada. Rejecting the proposal carries political risk amid separatist sentiments. Yet accepting this framing is equally dangerous: it turns a policy question into a loyalty test and obscures the costs of another mega pipeline.
Our governments should ask themselves whether they are actually acting in the best interest of Canadians or falling victim to pipeline boosterism. A nation-building strategy that constantly moves its own goalposts, tramples over Indigenous rights and defies basic market logic is not a strategy for success, and it is certainly not how you ‘Build Canada Strong’.
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