At Issue - Carney’s Alberta pipeline partnership

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith forge a partnership for a new pipeline out of Alberta, but it quickly sparked a resignation and pushback from B.C. And, more support from the federal government to help industries being battered by U.S. tariffs. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne, Althia Raj and Jason Markusoff.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on at issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, November 27. This agreement today between Alberta and the government of Canada, it's the first step. It's an example of cooperative federalism. We're agreeing in partnership and in a spirit of trust. No matter whether it's a nation or whether it's a province or whether it's a political,

party. There's just different opinions on things. But what this agreement shows is that we're going to work collaboratively. So this week, we are asking what's to be made of this partnership, this agreement between Ottawa and Alberta? Could the Prime Minister lose other MPs and allies? So what's to be made of this new partnership between Ottawa and Alberta? Could the Prime Minister lose other MPs and allies? I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it down tonight. Chantella Bear, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj, and Jason Marcosov joins us from Alberta for an Alberta perspective tonight. you all. Chantal, I'll start with you. How big a deal is this agreement between Ottawa and Alberta?

Well, it is a big deal. It's a complete repositioning of the Federal Liberal Party on pipelines. It's also a partial but almost complete withdrawal from the climate policies of the Trudeau era. So on both counts, basically the agenda has been transformed. It also is an interesting, notion of cooperative federalism, if I can say that something in Quebec, that you would say you are vouching cooperative federalism while keeping out of the loop the province that is most effective by the pipeline plan that is put forward. There are times when words have meanings in this province, cooperative federalism. I spent all day trying to put the word Quebec where BC was in all these announcement. And I thought I was in a fifth dimension. So I'm guessing BC voters who voted for

the liberals will have a lot of questions. Andrew, were you surprised at how bold it was and how far it went in terms of giving Alberta the things that it's wanted for so long? Yeah, it's not just an agreement for today. It's a partnership. We now have the Federal Liberal Party and the Alberta United Conservative Party as partners. They have kind of joined hands and jumped on this because they both need each other in this respect. You know, Carney needs to be able to fend off people saying this isn't a real pipeline by saying,

well, you know, Daniel Smith seems to be okay with it. And she needs to be able to similarly cite that the liberal's environmental credentials, if they still remain, against those who are to say that this, which have simply given up the store on that. So it's remarkable to see them working together in this way. It's remarkable also to see that you're getting actually better environmental policy out of it. We're replacing flawed regulatory and subsidy schemes with carbon pricing, which was supposed to be the deal from the start.

Althea made a face, so I'll go to her about the environmental policy there. Althea. Well, I assume that Andrew is talking about the clean electricity regulations. So basically, Environment Canada has studied this and estimates that if you, you have an equivalency from only industrial carbon pricing, that price would have to be $400 a ton. And on our technical call today, we were told basically that that is not a number that Alberta is willing to pay and that there are other parts of this agreement like competitiveness and affordability that will make sure that actually we do not get the equivalency, and that's why that word is not in the

agreement, we will not achieve the same greenhouse gas emissions with this carve out of the regulations in favor of an industrial price. So I'm sorry, but it is complete BS that this will result in better environmental rules. Thank you. Okay. Good answer there, Althea. Jason, from your end, I mean, is it being viewed as a win for the premier more than for the prime minister in Ottawa? You know, I was in a room with Mark Carney and 1,200 Alberta business types at the Chamber of Commerce for his speech. And the mood in the room felt like it was a room that had, you know, a foot lifted off its chest. This seems like a like a business group, an oil sector, ready to go now. Now, they know that this pipeline, there's still a long roadmap to a

pipeline through having to get some kind of buy-in from BC. The economics need to be there for a pipeline and, of course, buy-in from indigenous groups and a co-ownership, as Mr. Carney says. But these groups are, you know, they feel, especially with the ending of a lot of these rules, this layering of rules, a much more simple carbon tax to go through, that they can get there. Yes, Alberta is committing through this process to net 50, net zero by 2050. But I don't know if anybody seriously thinks that they have a roadmap to get there. There is the carbon capture project, which will be a big, big. deal. And it does have the guarantees from both the federal government and the provincial

government to get there, which will make, as Carney says, Alberta's oil lower carbon, but that's still going to be much more carbon to burn. I mean, Daniel Smith is talking about one million, maybe 2.4 million more barrels per day of production from some of these new projects that could come on stream. And that's on top of 4.2 million now. So we're talking a major eruption in oil production in Alberta. And the carbon and capture and storage project only happens if the pipeline happens. So he doesn't get it. And vice versa. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Chantal, did it make sense to you, given particularly what Althea said there, that Stephen Gilbo had to walk away from this? Because yesterday, it seemed as though they had

convinced him not to, and today a complete about-face and strong, strong reaction from him. They actually had not convinced him, too. It's the usual PMO spin that everything is going to be okay. which it was to tell you the truth. I spent, by coincidence, a lot of time with about 300 people who work on transition to a net zero economy. And the word I heard all day, it was a very jarring experience with betrayal. And that is what people were saying even before they saw this. And I'm not talking people who wear sandals and are going out with a sign to save this street.

But the general feeling was that they couldn't understand how Mark Carney went from who they thought he was to this particular outcome. So I don't think Stephen Gilbo's job would have been to try to explain the unexplainable to this crowd. And I don't think that he could have done it with a straight face. And by the way, for those who are claiming that this is a great day because he quit, Premier Smith, I'm talking to you. In this province, Mr. Gilbo is being claimed as one of Quebec's own by all sides of the political spectrum. And there will be a bill to pay for the federal liberals here as in B.C. for this. Yeah. We will talk more about some of that in the next block. But Andrew, I'm just going to end on you and Althea. You'll start in the next block.

Is there a sort of environmental pragmatism to what the prime minister did here? You know, I can get, I can at least get these things from Alberta if I agree to this. Yeah, well, we've got a proper industrial pricing regime that is going to escalate in price. That's a gain. Getting the carbon capture and storage, we'll see what the economics of that are, but that is certainly progress towards reducing emissions. And more broadly, the political gain is that he's basically forking the federal conservatives. If you've now got the Alberta conservatives on side with it,

It's going to be very difficult for Pierre Paulyev, for example, to be saying, well, we should abolish the industrial carbon price. It's going to be very difficult for them to paint Mark Carney as an out-of-touch, you know, aloof technocrat who's got no feeling for the economy. This is very major in terms of its positioning federally. Let me just quickly get Althea weigh in on that piece on what it does to the Conservative Party, and then we'll talk more after the break. I'm not convinced that half of the things that Alberta is loosely committed to will actually get done. In fact, they had already committed to pathways, and now it is a pipeline, and then you get pathways. The two now come together. That is a rollback.

That is not an add-on. When you have a political party that could very well lead the next government saying that we're going to get rid of industrial carbon pricing, then that carbon price is worth zero. So all those investment in the oil sands are worthless. So if you're a company that wants to invest billions of dollars to clean up your grid and your emissions, what incentive do you? have unless the conservatives look like they will never form government. I think there is a risk of uncertainty there. And, you know, the pipeline, what is really surprising about this agreement is that even if the pipeline doesn't get built, Ottawa has conceded so much to Alberta. And that's, like, the rather really surprising thing, discussions that we were not having at all publicly.

So it is, it is a surprise and the politics are going to be very interesting. Quickly, Andrew, then I'm going to take a break. There is reference in the agreement to financial mechanisms, which I imagine is a reference to contracts for a difference that would lock in industrial carbon pricing. It would make it very difficult for anybody to back out of it. We all think we know what's in it, but it's not the word. The words are not there. And frankly, the commitments, Alberta got far more direct commitments than Ottawa got. You're going to take a little break.

We're going to keep talking about this because there's a lot there when we come back. We'll talk about some of the hurdles that still have to be overcome, the reaction to it, and what backlash might come from other places. Okay, so what challenges we've seen some of them already might the pipeline proposal face? Can they be overcome? That's next. We are going to get to our greenhouse gas objectives, our climate objectives, by massive, only through massive investment. And so we need agreements like this.

We need to make sure that this project doesn't become, an energy vampire with all of the variables that have yet to be fulfilled. So what about the pushback of this pipeline? Let's bring everyone back, Chantal, Andrew, Althea, and Jason Marcusoff. Jason, let's start with you in terms of what Alberta might try and do now to convince Premier Eby, this makes sense, to convince coastal First Nations to get on board. Good luck to first all say. Now, there was some language in the memorandum.

random understanding that says, commits Alberta to collaborating with the British Columbia government to ensure that economic and financial benefits are going to be in place on this pipeline. Now, economic is not surprising. We're talking about, you know, jobs in Kittamat, B.C. or Terrace, B.C. or along the route. Financial is interesting. Are they talking about some kind of financial revenue sharing? Of course, this is a big lucrative thing for Alberta to get a pipeline, to get royalties. Is there some talk about sharing some of the upside of that?

That'll be curious to see. And, of course, will David E.B. bite on that. We know that, you know, polls repeatedly have shown that there's a majority of BCers, a narrow majority, or at least the plurality, support a pipeline to the West Coast. But guess where that big minority is almost wholly located? That's within the NDP, BCNDP's voter base. So this is going to take a long time to turn them. you know, the Trudeau government and the Alberta government never got John Horgan to turn

on Trans Mountain, but they rolled a power through differently. The other thing I'd point out is that the, it seems like a lot of these cases, it's the federal government is going to be working with BC on this. It's going to be this trilateral deal. So it's not just going to be on Alberta to win over the British Columbians. No, which was also surprising because a lot of people thought that was the play that Ottawa was going to make so that it could sort of wipe its hands of it, but that didn't have. happen either, Shantelle. Okay, so let's talk about jobs. This is Northern Gateway, the

project, a zombie that was resuscitated. Let's talk, Kitty Matt, at the tail end of the debate over the Northern Gateway Pipeline. The town held a referendum to see if they wanted all those benefits, and the result was 60 against and 44. So you start from a not terribly enthusiastic base. Coastal First Nations, unlikely to change their minds on a moratorium that they've asked for decades and that they implemented informally for decades before it was official. This would be a great day for the Liberal Party of Canada, if only it had gotten elected to a minority government last April with the support of Alberta. But at this point, the people who actually made this happen were one in Quebec, set aside Stephen Gilbert that everyone is partying about, that he's

leaving in this province, he matters. And then there's BC. And the NDP voters of BC who went to the liberals thinking that they were not voting for the conservative pipeline agenda. So put all of those together and maybe Mr. Carney will have a bit of a credibility issue telling BCC. see that he really cares about the issues in that province and those voters. I believe this is the best day the NDP has had in more than a decade. And I heard Peter Julian on French radio this morning, former NDP, I think deputy leader. And I could hear the step and his voice having this unexpected Bonanza offered the party. So what does the Prime Minister do with that, then, Althea, knowing that he has created today, new enemies might be too strong a word, but people who aren't going to like him as much as they did yesterday?

Well, he really hopes that the Blet-Cubiquois doesn't call for a recorded vote on the Budget Implementation Act next week, because if so, there would be a lot of conservatives hiding behind the curtains, because I'm not sure you'd be able to get Elizabeth May. to vote in favor of this budget or have the two NDP members abstains. I agree with Chantad, the politics really make very little sense. The liberal government or a liberal party under Mark Carney was not elected with this agenda. But he must feel that he has enough political capital to waste to plow through with an agenda like this. I mean, when you listen to the debates in the House of Commons is kind of easy to forget that the progressive side doesn't exist. this because we don't really hear from them, especially if you're listening in English, because only the Black Quebeiquois is kind of raising climate as an issue.

But those are the people that voted for the liberals in the last campaign. So it is quite interesting. The other thing I think it's worth flagging is this memorandum of understanding does not say the north coast of British Columbia. It just says to Asian markets. So it doesn't have to go through Kittamatt or Prince Rupert, as Daniel Smith has talked about. And when you talk to Alberta and they say that they want this pipeline approved in two years and shovels in the ground by 2029, really hard to see how you could do fulsome indigenous

consultations on the old end bridge route. But could you go and do it through an expansion, a further expansion of TMX, build a pipeline along that route? Possibly. But we're not having that discussion. And instead, the liberals have said they're willing to like forego the oil tanker ban and things that have an emotional connection to their own voters. But the Prime Minister was elected, Andrew, on a plan to make Canada economically stronger, more sovereign, less dependent on the U.S., all those things. Is that argument not compelling enough behind this idea? Well, we've listened here to all the downsides politically. It's possible the Prime Minister and the people around them are not complete idiots.

And it's possible there's also upsides in terms of attracting seats in Western Canada and in Ontario. The upside from claiming the center ground in Canadian politics, claiming the center right ground, I don't think should be discounted. That is, this is the kind of symbolic thing that can really change people's opinions of a government. The liberals have not won a majority of the seats in Western Canada since 1949. It's possible there's some upside, some gains that can be made there. I was interested in note the remarks of the British Columbia Premier. There was a lot of no-noes, you know, no backer, no route at the...

etc. I didn't hear him saying no way, no how. One of the lessons of this agreement, which we were told was never going to happen, is that if you put enough pieces in the table, it becomes easier to make agreements than if you just have one or two things that you're haggling about. So it's possible that in this remarkable three-way negotiations that we're heading for, that there may be things that Alberta and the federal government can put on the table that can alter the arithmetic in B.C., particularly, as well already noted, plurality, if not a majority of, British Clemmons are actually in favor of the pipeline. Very quickly, Chantal.

I feel like I'm hearing a discussion on the Charlottetown Accord. Put a lot on the table and all will be good because everyone will find something to buy in on. Excuse me for being skeptical. I'm curious to see where it goes from there, but rarely as a government, Tom Ditz knows that the people who got it in government to the advantage of the people who did not. So we'll see. We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, we'll talk about how Ottawa is supporting sectors affected by Trump's tariffs. That's next. Of course, we want to further improve the existing trading relationship with the United States. We stand ready to re-engage when they are.

But at the same time, we're going to do a few other things. First and foremost, build this economy. to be masters in our home, Mets Sheenu, and invest to make sure our strategic industries are there. So what do these supports mean for those industries, affected steel and softwood lumber? Is there hope for a deal with the U.S. still? Let's bring everyone back.

Chantal, Andrew, Althea, and Jason. I should point out the prime minister is going to Washington next week for a FIFA event, but he'll see the president there and apparently had a brief conversation with him this week. Elthia, I'll start with you. What do you make of, I guess, the timing? and whether the government is supporting these industries enough

in light of the fact that talks remain frozen for now? Well, there was a lot of pressure to deliver something on Southwood for the industry because they had kind of been left out of the conversation and they were being drilled in the House about it. So I think that they're responding to that. They feel that they need to do that. And also there's obviously no advancements, deep freeze as the negotiations might be, even though the president and the prime minister are texting each other.

Can I just make a link back to our previous conversation? Because I think that what this agreement shows should have us all a little concerned that if this is the way Ottawa is negotiating with the province of Alberta, what is Ottawa willing to give to Washington? That, to me, is like the parallel between these two because there were a lot of rumors in the fall about supply management being on the chopping block, cultural industries being on the chopping block. We've talked about this before, but maybe it was a good thing that the negotiations were put on hold

because I'm not sure the Kearney government is as great negotiators as probably they would like us to think. What do you think of that, Andrew? Well, they have different priorities and different things they'd like to protect. I would buy for one would cheer if we gave up supply management, but others might differ. But I think there's a lot to, I think there's a rather a distinction to be made, but politically between making concessions to get an agreement with the Canadian province and making concessions to get an agreement with Donald Trump. I don't think we can necessarily say that their actions in one are predictive of the other.

But I think what this tells you is there's no deal with insight. Probably is not a lot to be invested in trying to get a deal because you're dealing with a very erratic and unpredictable person. ordinarily, I would not be particularly keen on bailing out or supporting these sectors, but in the situation they find themselves where it's not as if they've suddenly lost competitiveness and you just have to say, sorry, boys, you know, we've got to move on to other industries. And it's not as if this is a temporary trade war where you just take out a line of credit and riding out. This is, you know, the tariff could be 25% on Sunday, 50% on Monday, and

0% on Tuesday, and you've got no way to predict it. This kind of massive radical uncertainty, it means some policies you would ordinarily not countenance are more acceptable. Yeah. Chantal? I agree with Andrew on this, and I do agree that it sends a signal that there's not going to be some kind of stable arrangement with the United States anytime soon. I also agree with health here on the fact.

that if the way you negotiate is to go to the table and be able to or be willing to offer as many concessions as it takes to get a deal, that does and has today sent some shivers of what is it going to be when they negotiate with Donald Trump, let alone when they negotiate with other provinces. Some of those caravouts today, do you seriously think other provinces will not want them on electricity regulations, et cetera. So, yeah, I am sure that some people in the White House took note that this is not maybe the biggest team to hang on to some line on the sand for very long. Jason, last word to you on whether you think this support indicates that we're not getting anywhere with Trump.

Well, I mean, I think that, you know, to all at the end, Chantel's point. I don't think that the thing that the same White House will see that other countries have dealt with, you know, settled for 10%, 15% baseline tariffs, and that Canada has been much more patient. But I do think there is that parallel here for other provinces. I mean, we already hear apparently Doug Ford talking about carveouts. The carve outs are real. But in terms of this deal, I want to hone in on the one interesting facet of it. It's the fact that there's this 50% subsidy now for the federal government will pay for, any steel shipments or forest through shipments across the country to settle the argument

that we're not buying enough from across the country because it's cheaper from imports. You know, this could well stoke a lot more across interprovincial trade, but if you're creating this new 50% subsidy for all shipments, you're going to create this expectation that that's going to be permanent, and any new clientele and business you'll create across the country with that may well rely on this permanent subsidy, which I'm sure we'll delight Andrew to no end. Okay. Don't get him started. That's the end. We can't get him going again. All right. Thank you all very much. That's at issue for this week. Do you support a new pipeline from Alberta to

BC? Let us know. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. Remember, you can catch me on Rosemary Barton live. That's Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be back here in her podcast feeds next week. Thank you so much for listening. more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.