![\"CANADA-POLITICS-ENERGY-CARNEY\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ca67b5a62114431ef059467948679592.jpeg\")
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney departs after speaking during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, on May 14, 2026. (Credit: Dave Chan\/AFP via Getty Images) <\/p>\n Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney departs after speaking during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, on May 14, 2026. (Credit: Dave Chan\/AFP via Getty Images) <\/p>\n
One of the peculiar aspects of Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s Build Canada Strong pipeline from Alberta through British Columbia to Asia is the list of Make Canada Weaker conditions that must be met before the project is approved.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not quite the message Carney delivered Wednesday during his promotional visit to British Columbia. Speaking to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Carney\u00a0filled the air<\/a> with his now too-familiar flourishes of clich\u00e9d optimism, promising more resilience, more prosperity, more independence, global energy leadership, net-zero carbon emissions, the doubling of non-U.S. exports, Indigenous ownership benefits, relentless focus on affordability, and big gains for provinces.<\/p>\n It was all great optimistic stuff, but only if the audience ignored the actual policies behind all the wondrous economic benefits that Carney said would be delivered by his master plan for Canada\u2019s future as a global energy superpower.<\/p>\n The main reason for the prime minister\u2019s visit to Vancouver, the Canada Strong project under discussion, was the oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. While nominally approved by Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed last week, the pipeline comes with major high-cost conditions that will do nothing to make Canada stronger while adding financial burdens that will undermine the project \u2014 and the economy.<\/p>\n The two major economic risks are the industrial carbon price and the proposed mandate that carbon emissions from oil in the pipeline be buried underground to save the global environment and help Canada achieve net-zero carbon emissions. There are other conditions that have yet to be specified. On Wednesday, Carney included commitments to allocate oil pipeline benefits such as \u201cco-ownership\u201d to Indigenous communities and to allow B.C. to \u201cshare\u201d in the pipeline\u2019s development.<\/p>\n But carbon capture and carbon pricing are the two main artificial costs that will burden the pipeline and the Canadian economy.<\/p>\n Carbon capture: It takes a lot of imagination to get behind the concept of Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS), and a lot of money. A 2024 series of\u00a0reports<\/a> from McMillan LLP laid out the foundational problems lurking within the idea that carbon can be grabbed and stored, perhaps underground, to prevent it from hitting the atmosphere.<\/p>\n Among the issues: How to capture it and when, how to transport it, economic uncertainty, and the risk of making Canada\u2019s fossil fuel production uneconomic. Above all, the McMillan report titled Making Dollars and Sense of Carbon Markets concluded that CCUS makes no sense without massive amounts of government backing: \u201cCCUS, as it stands, is not a revenue-generating stream for the industry yet.\u201d Nor are the plans \u201ceconomically viable,\u201d which means they require \u201cenormous upfront capital outlays in the billions of dollars.\u201d Projects also require billions in tax credits and price guarantees, with the report noting \u201cthere are also enormous potential liabilities in the event of failure of a storage facility which have not been adequately addressed and incentive programs have been slow to materialize.\u201d<\/p>\n That was in 2024. This week veteran Alberta energy consultant Yogi Schulz \u2014 who last month said<\/a> the $20-billion CCUS project is in fact \u201ca pathway to an expensive boondoggle\u201d \u2014 did not see reason to change<\/a>\u00a0his views based on the new MOU.<\/p>\n Industrial carbon pricing: The new MOU between Alberta and Ottawa aims to impose a carbon \u201cprice\u201d of $140 per tonne in 2040 to carbon emissions attributable to the pipeline. The strong case against carbon taxes or prices has already been made by many, including on this page, who have deemed it a pseudo-market scam<\/a>. That no government has ever imposed a significant carbon tax on individual consumers is proof that it has no economic or political support.<\/p>\n Environmental activists such Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute,\u00a0condemned<\/a> the new Ottawa-Alberta MOU because it fails to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to meet Canada\u2019s official targets.<\/p>\n Over at the Fraser Institute, analysts Julio Mejia and Elmira Aliakbari took another view in a recent commentary. The MOU will bog Canada\u2019s energy sector down even further into its existing lack of global competitiveness, they said. An earlier Fraser Institute economic study<\/a>\u00a0of industrial carbon pricing found that it could reduce Canada\u2019s economic growth rate and weaken the attractiveness of Canada as an energy nation. The lead author of the Fraser paper, Guelph University\u2019s Ross McKitrick,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that while the economic burden of the industrial carbon price helps governments dodge consumer backlash, the impact on jobs, investment and other economic measures will weaken Canada\u2019s economy, not make it strong.<\/p>\n