{"id":197251,"date":"2025-10-08T10:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197251\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:06:08","slug":"danielle-smiths-pipeline-ransom-note-to-mark-carney-is-using-canada-as-her-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197251\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Smith\u2019s pipeline ransom note to Mark Carney is using Canada as her hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is asking Prime Minister Mark Carney to clear away any federal regulatory obstacles to the proposed pipeline and then back it in the face of determined B.C and Indigenous opposition.Adrian Wyld\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the to-do list Danielle Smith has set<\/a> for Mark Carney. He has to:<\/p>\n

approve her proposal to build a pipeline from Alberta to the northern coast of British Columbia that has no private sector sponsor and no declared route;push it through over the strenuous objections<\/a> of the government of B.C., environmental organizations, and the affected Indigenous groups, all of whom are sure to do everything they can to stop the project: legally, politically, and physically; andsweep away a raft of federal laws and regulations said to be responsible for the lack of private sector interest, including the cap on oil-sands emissions, the Impact Assessment Act and the ban on large oil tankers off the B.C. coast.<\/p>\n

And he has to commit to doing all this inside of five weeks \u2013 in time to include the pipeline on a list of \u201cmajor projects\u201d receiving federal backing, to be released mid-November. The proposal will not be submitted to the federal Major Projects Office until May. Still, the Alberta Premier says she needs \u201ca signal\u201d of federal intentions before then.<\/p>\n

Oh, one more thing: If he does not agree to every line of this ultimatum, it will not only be the Prime Minister\u2019s credibility that is in question, according to Ms. Smith, but Canada itself. \u201cThis is a test,\u201d she declared, \u201cof whether Canada works as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith calls Eby\u2019s pipeline criticism \u2018un-Canadian and unconstitutional\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

From the East and West, Alberta\u2019s pipeline ambitions face pushback<\/a><\/p>\n

As blackmail notes go, this is right up there. Do as I say \u2013 risk your government, Canada\u2019s international climate commitments, relations with Indigenous groups, and God knows what else \u2013 or we blow up the country. Well, not \u201cwe,\u201d exactly, but you know, those other groups I\u2019ve been furiously winking at the past six months.<\/p>\n

Were it not for the implied threat to the country, one might say: fair enough. Since entering politics, Mr. Carney has been playing a double game, suggesting he was open to building pipelines even as he promised no pipeline would be \u201cimposed\u201d on anyone. Ms. Smith wants to flush him out, and pin him down \u2014 to force him to choose.<\/p>\n

To now, Mr. Carney and his ministers have been able to fend off any questions about their ultimate commitment by insisting \u201cthere\u2019s no proposal\u201d in front of them. Ms. Smith has sought to close off that escape route by presenting her own proposal. That\u2019s a gamble on her part: were Mr. Carney to do as she asks, and still no private sponsor emerged, she would be left looking foolish. But to get to that point he\u2019d have to spend large amounts of political capital \u2013 existential amounts, possibly.<\/p>\n

What Ms. Smith is asking of him is not just to clear away any federal regulatory obstacles to its construction, but to back it in the face of determined B.C and Indigenous opposition. While some Indigenous groups are in favour, it is enough that any of those whose territory the line would cross are opposed to pose a major political risk. <\/p>\n

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government plans to submit an application for a new oil pipeline to northwestern British Columbia in the spring of 2026.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the matter of the laws Ms. Smith wants scrapped. The emissions cap would be no loss: it\u2019s a terrible policy \u2013 costly, intrusive, and selective to boot. Offset by a tightening system of industrial carbon pricing, the result would be a net gain for the economy, and for national unity. Likewise, the Impact Assessment Act could surely be modified in ways that made it more acceptable to Alberta.<\/p>\n

But the tanker ban? The north coast of B.C. is legitimately fragile. A large spill would be catastrophic, not only for the environment, but for the socio-cultural heritage of Indigenous people in the region. Mere repeal of the ban \u2013 or a one-time carve-out \u2013 is not on. <\/p>\n

(Don\u2019t U.S. tankers ply those same waters, unhindered, as former B.C. premier Christy Clark claimed<\/a> the other day? No. The ban applies to tankers calling at ports in the region. But U.S. ships bearing oil from Alaska are obliged to steer clear of the area altogether via the \u201cvoluntary\u201d Tanker Exclusion Zone<\/a>, and have been since 1985.)<\/p>\n

Could it be replaced, however, by regulation: multiple layers of prevention, preparedness and liability? Drawing on reforms<\/a> implemented in Alaska after the Exxon-Valdez disaster, these might include double hulls<\/a> (already the norm), mandatory two-tug escorts<\/a>, traffic monitoring, plus robust response capacity<\/a> and stringent, enforceable liability, among a long list.<\/p>\n

At any rate, two points should be emphasized. One, the regulation of interprovincial pipelines is a federal responsibility: B.C. has no legal power to stop it. Whatever the feds decide, only they have the authority to decide it. <\/p>\n

But two: their responsibility is to decide, not necessarily to approve. It\u2019s fair for Ms. Smith to put pressure on Mr. Carney to decide the matter her way. It\u2019s not fair \u2013 it is unacceptable \u2013 to threaten Canada in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is asking Prime Minister Mark Carney to clear away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28472,49,48,20754,28473,44,927],"class_list":["post-197251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-andrew-coyne","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-column","tag-coyne","tag-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}