JAY GOLDBERG: Mark Carney almost gives B.C. dangerous leverage over national pipeline

Prime Minister Mark Carney came dangerously close to handing British Columbia a de facto veto over a national pipeline and calling it “co-operative federalism.”

Canada urgently needs a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. This pipeline would play a crucial role in diversifying Canada’s economy by giving Canada access to Asian buyers instead of relying almost entirely on the United States, where Alberta crude often sells at a discounted price compared with global markets.

For months, the governments of Alberta and Ottawa engaged in intensive negotiations to draft a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Alberta’s UCP government and Carney’s Liberals, beginning to clear the way for the construction of a pipeline to Canada’s west coast.

Alberta, for its part, was willing to concede to Ottawa on a higher industrial carbon tax and was prepared to spend billions on carbon capture in exchange for the Carney government’s political support for a new pipeline.

The MOU addresses other important issues, like exemptions for Alberta from other federal regulations, but that’s not the issue at hand here.

The core issue is that Carney, right before signing off on the MOU, raised concerns that he might surrender his power as prime minister at the moment it was needed to get the pipeline project done.

According to the Constitution, when a proposed project crosses provincial boundaries, it becomes a matter of federal jurisdiction under section 92(10)(a) of the Constitution Act, 1867, which explicitly gives Ottawa authority over interprovincial pipelines.

In the case of a new pipeline, no matter how strenuously British Columbia’s NDP government might object to a new project going through its province, it does not have a constitutional veto over such a proposal. But Carney indicated, right up until the last moment, that B.C.’s objections could effectively stall the project, which is precisely why big things haven’t gotten done in Canada for years.

When asked by Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre if he could tell Canadians when this MOU would lead to shovels in the ground on a new pipeline project, Carney said one day before the official announcement that the MOU would create necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for such a pipeline to be built.

“We believe the government of British Columbia has to agree,” Carney told the House of Commons. “We believe in co-operative federalism.”

But allowing B.C.’s NDP government to hold this project and the country hostage is not at all what co-operative federalism is meant to be about.

B.C. Premier David Eby has made it clear he will never agree to a new oil pipeline running through the province, despite an Angus Reid poll showing 56% of British Columbians support such a project.

Thankfully, in the text of the final MOU, Carney backed off his initial approach in favour of requiring Alberta to collaborate with B.C.

Carney has sold himself as the man who can lead Canada into a new era of accomplishing big things. If he really wants to be that person, he can’t be musing about giving a veto to every premier whose province might be impacted by a major national project. To do so would be a recipe for accomplishing very little.

As well-known B.C. political journalist Rob Shaw put it, “If Carney’s vision of Canada’s post-American economic future is only to back projects that ever-squabbling premiers and First Nations agree on, that spells trouble for all provinces, as they navigate their differing natural resources, priorities, and interests. It’s also a mystifying approach by a prime minister sold to voters as a master of federal leadership.”

Carney needs to focus on accomplishing big things and not allowing big projects to be pulled off course by handing out new roadblocks to premiers as he goes along.

Carney is Canada’s prime minister. He needs to use the powers that come with that office and act like it.

Jay Goldberg is a fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy