LILLEY: Mark Carney doesn't have time to move slowly on new pipeline

Donald Trump said the Venezuelan oil industry could be booming again in 18 months. Here in Canada, we might have finished the first round of consultations on a new pipeline, but we won’t have concluded the court challenges to it.

This is the dilemma Canada is facing: We are still moving at Ottawa speed, meaning slow, while the Americans are talking about a breakneck pace in restoring Venezuela’s oil industry.

Several analysts have said it will take between five to 10 years for Venezuela’s oil infrastructure to be rebuilt given years of neglect and decay. Trump, speaking to NBC in an exclusive interview, doesn’t buy that and said he thinks it can happen in less than 18 months.

“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump told NBC. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

Trump will meet with oil company executives at the White House on Wednesday to discuss how to achieve this goal.

Conservatives call for quick action

Those doubting Trump’s ability to move at speed, those counting on any rebuilding taking a decade are relying on hope and hope is not a strategy. Both Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have called on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to move with a sense of urgency on issues like pipelines.

“Recent events surrounding Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro emphasize the importance that we expedite the development of pipelines to diversify our oil export markets,” Smith posted to social media.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Poilievre released an open letter to Carney calling for immediate action.

“We need to move millions of barrels a day to overseas markets quickly to reduce our dependence on the U.S. market. That is why Canada must immediately approve a pipeline to the Pacific Coast,” Poilievre wrote.

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Carney plodding along like nothing changed

That’s the kind of urgency we need, but speaking to reporters in Paris where he was attending meetings, Carney showed all the urgency of a bureaucrat on lunch break.

“It’s been our view, and we’re working towards this, that Canadian oil will be competitive because it is low risk,” Carney said.

He went on to say that Canadian oil will also be competitive because it is low cost and low carbon.

I want to support out industry as much as possible, but lying to ourselves that we are low risk is a bad idea. It’s true that the risks are different than in Venezuela, where the issue is corruption, but the risk in Canada is due to uncertainty from bureaucratic red tape, protesters being given free rein to block projects, endless court challenges and a government apparatus that allows all of this.

Justin Trudeau’s government didn’t buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline because he wanted to, he bought it because the company was walking away in frustration over endless delays caused by either government policy or indifference. We could argue that Carney is different, that he’s promising to move quickly, but he hasn’t shown that to be true yet.

New pipeline is no certainty

All that the agreement Carney signed with Smith does is promise to declare a pipeline to the Pacific Coast a priority that can be referred to the Major Projects Office by July 1, 2026. As Carney himself said in November, getting a project referred doesn’t mean it will get built.

“Referring to the MPO — or the Major Projects Office — does not mean the project is approved. It means that all the efforts are being put in place from the federal government in order to create the conditions so it could move forward,” Carney said.

So Trump promises that he can get Venezuela’s oil industry up and running again in 18 months and Carney says he can get a pipeline project sent for consideration by July 1. From there, the MPO will take six months to a year to consider the proposal, then there would be First Nations consultations and court cases, so we are talking several years before anything begins.

The biggest threat to Canada’s oil industry in the short term isn’t Venezuelan oil replacing Canadian barrels, it’s Venezuela taking up all the capital investment dollars that Canada needs to compete.

Speed and urgency are of essence and we seem to be lacking both.