The Current - Mark Carney’s energy gamble

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Our National Affairs Panel gets you caught up on all the latest politics.  Rosemary Barton,  CBC's Chief Political Correspondent, Stephanie Levitz, the Globe and Mail's Senior Reporter in the Ottawa bureau and Ryan Tumilty a political reporter with the Toronto Star join host Matt Galloway.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. The Prime Minister, Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have revived the possibility of a new pipeline in the West. Their agreement is part of the federal government's nation-building agenda, but the whole nation, it turns out, is not on side, including some in Daniel Smith's own party. She pitched this new energy deal at the United Conservative Party's convention this weekend. Here's how that went. I support us strong in sovereign Alberta within a United Canada. I know we might have a bit of a difference of opinion on that. But I hope people today feel a lot more confident than Canada works than they did a couple of days ago.

This week, the Prime Minister is off to Washington again, where he may or may not meet with the U.S. President Donald Trump. You might remember Mark Carney saying, Who cares when asked when he last spoke with the president who has cut off trade talks with Canada? Well, our national affairs panel cares. Rosemary Barton is the CBC's chief political correspondent. Stephanie Levitts, a Globe and Mail senior reporter in the Ottawa Bureau. And Ryan Tolentie, political reporter with the Toronto Star. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning. Rosie, the Prime Minister, got two standing ovations in Calgary last week, including from oil patch and business crowds. You have that on your bingo card? Not lately, no, and not with necessarily a liberal prime minister, but I think we're increasingly learning that this prime minister does things differently and has different plans for the country. I did not expect myself for this memorandum of understanding this agreement to go quite as far as it did in terms of loosening or preparing to suspend or eliminating entirely different

environmental policies put in place by the previous government in order to chart the path to a potential pipeline. And I know we'll talk more about all the hurdles that have to be overcome to get there. But Mark Carney has long made climate change part of his own battle, his career. And in many respects, I think people today are asking how important is that given some of the things that were included in that deal. Ryan, what surprised do the most about this agreement that the prime minister and the Premier of Alberta signed? Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I was surprised to see the language around the clean electricity

regulations. These are regulations the Trudeau government brought in that are supposed to decarbonize Canada's electricity sector. That's harder in a province like Alberta that relies so much on natural gas compared to, you know, Quebec's vast hydro power or Ontario's nuclear fleet. But not only is Alberta being exempted from it, but it's not a case where every province is being exempted from it. You know, we expected we started to hear this that they pushed the whole thing back five years or something like that. But Alberta is alone in being exempted.

Now, the ministers have said that other provinces could be, but it's an interesting way to write regulations to say they don't apply in Alberta. Steph, what do you make of this? I mean, part of this is about the idea of a nation-building project, as I said. It's not clear that the entire nation is on board with this. The BC government, coastal first nations, say that they oppose the deal because they were left out of the talks entirely, although the premier of BC, David Eby, did say yesterday that he would be willing to talk with Alberta and others about a pipeline if the tanker band stays in place.

What happens with British Columbia now? David E.B. I think has made a really salient point. He's used a great expression. energy vampire, right? And we know this. Many of us know this from our daily lives. What is an energy vampire? Somebody who sucks away all the attention, all the energy. The concern he's raising, and perhaps it's a very valid one, is that this notion of a pipeline and the political and environmental and financial debate that it is going to create is going to suck all of the energy, pardon the pun, I suppose, away from the other projects that he wants done, that are

shovel-ready, that have First Nations proponents, that have financial backing. And does this end up detracting from getting things done that everyone is already on side with? That's a fair concern from British Columbia. And you can see, you know, to Ryan's point, other provinces, perhaps like Quebec, which is often saying, hey, we want to do things our own way. Why are we subject to this, that, and the other thing, looking at this MOU with Alberta and wondering what can they get out of the federal government now that they couldn't before. Rosie, what is Mark Carney's calculus here, his political calculus? It seems that Alberta got a lot of what it wanted. BC feels snubbed.

You have the energy minister who is apologizing for what he says is a poor choice of words in telling coastal First Nations to get on Zoom if they want to have a conversation. Then he gets on a plane and heads west because he realizes that perhaps that was not the best choice of language. You have a Quebec cabinet minister, the former minister of the environment, Stephen Gilbo, who has stepped down from cabinet. So what is, as you understand it, what is the political calculation here that the prime minister is making? Yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of time. last week trying to figure it out.

And the best I can come up with is this. Mark Carney calls himself a pragmatist. And I think this is a pragmatist approach to two things. One, two, dealing with what is a growing concern around Alberta's place in the country and in the federation. You heard those booze there from separatists at Daniel Smith's own party convention over the weekend. And I think the second piece is that he believes that the way this deal is structured, he will actually get Alberta to a better place when it comes to fighting emissions. If you look at the industrial price on carbon that Alberta has agreed to now,

up to $130 a ton, down, they're starting at 95, and they're going to plot a path forward to that. I think that there were questions about whether Alberta, would actually get there. The problem with that reasoning, of course, is that there is a federal backstop on industrial carbon pricing and the federal government could force them to get there. But I guess what I'm saying is they think that, I think they think that this gets Alberta to commit more to fighting climate change than it did before. That they will actually, that there will be follow through. I just don't know, though, if the tradeoff makes sense for a lot of people.

Clearly, it didn't make sense for Stephen Gilbo. The idea that you could push Alberta to potentially do more on climate change, but in exchange, you've got to give them the possibility of a pipeline. And I think that that really runs the risk of alienating, progressive, environmental concerns inside the liberal caucus. And for voters who voted for Mr. Carney, not thinking that a pipeline would be in the offing. Ryan, do you want to pick up on that? Do you think this is going to move the needle on support for the liberals in Alberta, and not just in that province, but maybe in Saskatchewan as well, maybe in some parts of British Columbia, where they were vulnerable? You know, I think, and I've talked to a bunch of liberals about this, politically, I don't know that I see the upside for him.

you know this the the the liberals had their best election ever this year in albert in bc uh they have 20 seats in that province they have seats on vancouver island uh for the first time in many elections um they were in very good shape in bc um they are potentially trading some of those bc seats and maybe even some seats in quebec um for the idea of seats in alberta or saskatchewan um and those seats I think are unlikely to materialize. I think in a liberal best case scenario, there are six or seven seats available to them in the province of Alberta. The rest of them, you know, aren't going to be swayed. Let's remind ourselves that, you know, not like eight years ago, the liberal government under Justin Trudeau bought a pipeline for the benefit of Alberta's industry, a $34 billion pipeline at last. count for which they have received zero political credit. So I think the idea that this MOU opens up seats in Alberta, you know, I just don't see it. Now, it does prevent Alberta from fighting with Ottawa constantly, which is potentially good

politically, but is also just, you know, good economically, financially, and better for the government long term. Steph, what have you learned in this last week or a couple of weeks about, you know, Mark Carney and the politician that he is shaping up to be or the politician that he is now? I'm not sure he is a politician. That's the takeaway I keep getting from him, which is to say that the political calculus, I will give, you know, his office credit. I will assume that somewhere someone is running numbers and looking at seat counts and considering what if, what if. But think about the budget, I mean, which was a thousand years ago in political terms now, right?

But think about how that came down to the wire with no real sense of how it was actually going to pass, what kind of horse trading was possible. I mean, to borrow a phrase, you know, Daniel Smith and her grand bargain, think about Elizabeth May and the grand bargain she made on Paris climate commitments, and then Mr. Kearney went and basically approved a pipeline. I mean, it's kind of nuts if you think about it. And so I wonder to go back to the, you know, the phrase that Rosie used, which the prime minister uses himself, he's just a pragmatist. And perhaps in this particular instance with the pipeline, this is a bit of a double dog there, which is to say to Alberta, okay, you keep saying that these laws are a problem, that these laws are holding back economic growth and development. Fine, I dare you. Get it done. And if they don't get it done, I don't know what that does for Mr. Carney politically, but I guess perhaps he can just say he tried. Because if the idea that, you know, the business sector and the oil and gas industry and everyone is saying that we can't get ahead, we can't get ahead, we can't get ahead. This is Canada's right now, at this moment in time, probably our best thing to do to juice our, you know, gross domestic product, juice our economy.

So he's giving it a go. If he fails, well, at least he tried. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out as it happens. I'm Chris Howdy. And I'm Neil Kokesal. Every day we reach people at the center of the. most extraordinary stories, like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight with a tooth.

Or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with As It Happens, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Jason Kenney, the former Premier of Alberta, was on this program on Friday, and I asked him at the end, do you think this will ever be built in your lifetime, hoping that you live a long, long life? And he admitted that he's not sure about that. What do you make of that stuff? Yeah, and I think that's exactly it. I think the pipeline, what's interesting about the pipeline is that it was more so the politics of it, right?

Which is to say that did Daniel Smith, Daniel Smith got a political win by getting an agreement in this pipeline. This pipeline was very much to borrow the phrase centered in this MOU. But there's a lot of other stuff in the MOU about AI, about other issues. You know, if certain of the regulations is going to be lifted, what does that mean for more natural gas development? There's all sorts of other little pieces in there. And I think that's where we kept hearing Mark Carney say things like, this MLU is about more than a pipeline, recognizing that the pipeline, okay, now it's up to other people to deliver it. Come back to me when you have a plan, says the prime minister. Meanwhile, the rest of this stuff, let's get going now. Rosie, where does this leave, Pierre Pahliav, given that this MOU seems to address many of the issues that he and his party have been calling for. Isn't this what he wanted? Yeah, and it puts, I mean, that is where the politics, you can see that maybe you understand the politics of what the prime minister is doing because it puts an immediate squeeze on conservatives.

And to that end, it sort of left them with very little to say last week, frankly. I think by the end of the week they had settled on, well, you will allow for a pipeline, but it may not happen. You know, and that's kind of a weak political argument. The thing is, I don't know how conservatives can respond to it, right? It is effectively removing so many of the things of the nine bad laws that Premier Smith identifies. They're not bad. That's her characterization. It effectively removes seven of them to allow for, as Steph points out, the possibility of a pipeline.

and because the deal contains so much more, as stuff said, possibility for future kinds of development and perhaps better coordination between provinces in Western Canada. I think the conservatives are really wedged in here, and I don't know that there is a line to come out of it. The best case scenario would probably be to ignore it, frankly. Ryan, could you imagine other provinces and the leaders of other provinces, perhaps?

Stugford in Ontario, putting his hand up and saying, excuse me, could I get your attention, please? That they might want to, now that there's a grand bargain with Alberta, that they might want their own grand bargain. I can almost certainly guarantee that that's coming. I'm surprised those hands aren't in the air already, quite frankly. Yeah, I think, you know, this is what he is going to have to expect now. He's going to get calls from Ontario.

He's going to get calls from Quebec, certainly. I don't exactly know what the demands are, but I know there will be demands. And I don't know that the liberal government in Ottawa is that upset about that prospect. You know, he is talking about making big investments in major nation-building projects. He needs the provinces to come forward with those projects. He needs the provinces to commit to those projects and commit to that level of ambition. A lot of these things that the provinces have put forward are going to cost them tens of billions of dollars,

and they have to be open to spending them. So, you know, I think the prime minister may welcome those hands. Obviously, negotiating is going to be interesting and delicate. But, you know, what everything the prime minister has said is that he is eager to see this country build quite a bit as quickly as possible. So he needs those provinces coming forward to push that agenda. Rosie, you mentioned something earlier about progressive voters, not just in Quebec, but elsewhere, maybe feeling a little bit abandoned that the party that they voted for is doing things, they weren't entirely aware that they were going to do.

Could this open the door for the NDP at all? Yeah, I mean, listen, if anyone was happy about this deal, it was the NDP, but not because of what it contained, because of the possibility that it created. It 100% opens up some space there on the left, and the departure of Stephen Gilbo is very much the embodiment of that, right? Someone who has been a lifelong climate activist, who had, frankly, sucked up a lot of staff already,

including the purchase of a pipeline, finally said that this is a bridge too far. And for the NDP, if they get a leader that makes sense, if they can position themselves properly, I do think it allows for some opportunity. Mark Carney is clearly pulling the Liberal Party much further to the center, center right in this country where more voters probably are.

But at the same time, it exposes, I think, that progressive side. And I do think that that is probably the best Christmas gift that Mark Carney could have given the NDP. Ryan, do you want to just talk quickly about that? The NDP held its first leadership debate last week in French. A lot of English spoken in that French debate. Are you paying attention to that? Yeah, I mean, as a political reporter, of course. But I don't know that the rest of the country is.

I don't know that people are paying that much attention to the NDP debate. I think you'd struggle to find someone who can name, you know, all of the candidates or even some of the candidates. But that's always been a challenge for the NDP is to get that attention. And I'm sure that will continue in this moment. But, you know, when we talked about some of the seats that are potentially shifting because of this pipeline deal, a lot of those move in favor of the NDP. And I think right now what the NDP really wants more than anything else is five more seats. So they're an official party again.

that's their key to relevance in parliament that's the key to a whole bunch of things so yeah i think this is a big opportunity for the nDP you know the people who were with justin trudeau when he was opposing any more pipeline expansion when he was saying things like there's no business case for lNG um you know those people didn't disappear those people are still very concerned about climate change they're concerned that mark carney isn't pursuing it nearly aggressively enough uh they're looking for somewhere to put their votes, and it's not going to be with the Conservatives. So, yeah, I do think there is an opportunity for the NDP there.

Steph, last couple of minutes to you, the Prime Minister is off to Washington this week. He said, who cares when he was asked when the last time he'd spoken with Donald Trump was. He may have the opportunity to speak with Donald Trump at the World Cup draw in the next couple of days. Do you think Donald Trump took notice of that when he said, who cares when the last time he spoke with him was? I have an inkling that Donald Trump took notice only because Mr. Carney, then noted that he had spoken to Donald Trump after that. And he said, well, you know, whatever we said, we texted, it sounded like it wasn't newsworthy.

And I think every reporter in the country was like, let us be the judge of that, Prime Minister. How about you say what you said? And I would suspect perhaps that he shot the guy a text and said, I do care, actually. You know, the risk of this Washington trip is, once again, we have a sporting event with a deadline attached to it, right? Like, Mr. Carney is going to go down for this FIFA draw. is he going to talk to Trump? Is he not going to talk to Trump? And the pressure on him every time to deliver something keeps going, right? And the prime minister seems to shrug off this question that he keeps getting asked about his engagement with the president. But I know I've said it on this panel. We've all said it multiple times. This is what got you elected, sir, the promise of a deal with the president. So to keep shrugging off, who cares when I spoke to him last? I don't think that's the best look. see whether anything comes aside from the, you know, what I guess is it, is it balls coming out of a bowl or something like that? Is that how they do the World Cup draw? I'm not entirely

sure. But we'll see, maybe that will offer some political insight into where this may go. Good to have you all here this morning. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. Take care. Thank you. Rosemary Barton, CBC's chief political correspondent, host of Rosemary Barton Live. Stephanie Levitts is a senior reporter in the Globe of Males, Ottawa Bureau, Ryan Tomulte political reporter with the Toronto Star. They're all in Ottawa. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. I'll talk to you soon.