The Liberal government rejected a Conservative motion in the House of Commons this week that called for explicit federal backing of a large oil pipeline to tidewater. Ministers said the proposal oversimplified complex negotiations with provinces and Indigenous nations and failed to reflect the government’s approach to reconciliation and major project development.

Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said the motion ignored the full context of a recent Canada–Alberta memorandum of understanding, which links any future pipeline discussions to climate policy, clean-technology investment and Indigenous engagement. She described the Conservative proposal as “immature” and said it misrepresented how large infrastructure projects move forward in Canada.

Poilievre, by contrast, argued that Canada’s economic interests require decisive action on export infrastructure. He has said waiting for unanimous agreement among provinces, communities and Indigenous nations risks stalling projects indefinitely and limiting Canada’s ability to access overseas markets, particularly in Asia.

“We need a pipeline,” Poilievre said in recent remarks, framing the issue as one of national interest and economic competitiveness. He accused the Liberal government of using consultation as a pretext for delay and challenged it to clarify whether it supports new oil export infrastructure at all.

The Conservative motion — which was non-binding — called on Parliament to affirm support for one or more pipelines capable of exporting at least one million barrels per day of bitumen from a British Columbia port. It also referenced potential changes to the federal oil tanker moratorium on B.C.’s north coast, while stating that the duty to consult Indigenous Peoples must be respected.

The pipeline debate has long been shaped by Indigenous rights and environmental concerns. Previous projects, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, were opposed by dozens of First Nations over risks to land, water and treaty rights. That project was ultimately cancelled, and Ottawa later enacted legislation banning oil tanker traffic along much of northern British Columbia’s coastline.

Legal experts and Indigenous leaders have repeatedly warned that proceeding with major resource projects without consent could trigger lengthy court challenges. Canadian law requires meaningful consultation with Indigenous nations whose rights may be affected by development, and court rulings have reinforced the federal government’s obligation to engage early and substantively.

The issue also carries political weight as Parliament edges closer to an election cycle. Reuters has reported that the Liberal government’s position has been strengthened by recent defections from the Conservative caucus, reducing opposition leverage on key votes and policy initiatives.

As energy security, export access and reconciliation continue to collide in national debate, Poilievre’s comments underscore a clear dividing line between the Conservatives’ approach to resource development and the Liberals’ emphasis on consultation and consent — a contrast likely to feature prominently in the months ahead.

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By Stewart Prest

The recently struck memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta is a high-stakes strategy that risks deepening already deep divides in Canadian politics.

While the MOU touches on a number of issues, at its heart is a shared vision for a new pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia’s protected northern coast.

In effect, the deal offers a quid pro quo: Ottawa agrees to relax a range of federal environmental regulations — including a ban on tanker traffic in B.C.’s north — and to support a pipeline in exchange for a commitment from Alberta to eventually increase the price of carbon on industrial emissions in the province to $130 a tonne.

It’s a vision negotiated without the involvement of either the B.C. government or the Indigenous Peoples affected by the plan. While the agreement calls for consultations with both groups, they are relegated to the status of secondary partners, with concerns to be addressed in the execution of the plan outlined by Ottawa and Alberta.

A policy solution for an identity issue

The deal is clearly meant to bridge the gap between populist voters centred in the Prairie provinces and the rest of the country. But both the content and the process risks widening that gap, even as it deepens divisions elsewhere in the country.

Simply put, Prime Minister Mark Carney is trying to find a policy solution to an identity problem, and doing so by picking sides rather than neutrally facilitating agreement.

It’s part of the polarized, populist identity in Alberta, in particular, to oppose Ottawa and Liberal governments. In fact, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith referred to the MOU in front of the United Conservative Party (UCP) convention, she was roundly booed. Rather than being hailed as champion who had achieved valuable policy concessions, she was greeted as a traitor to the cause.

Given the rude reception, it’s not surprising that in recent days Alberta has sought ways to limit its environmental commitments.

Read more: How ideology is darkening the future of renewables in Alberta

Playing favourites in the federation

Over the longer term, the agreement risks legitimizing the narrative of “Alberta aggrieved” by treating it as a distinct, sovereign jurisdiction entitled to special treatment.

In fact, the trappings and language of the agreement seem to reinforce the idea that “Alberta” is a natural negotiating partner with “Canada” rather than part of Canada.

The MOU’s signing ceremony in Calgary — not the provincial capital of Edmonton or Ottawa — bore all the hallmarks of international treaty-making, complete with flags and a formal text in both official languages. The symbolism reinforced the image of the deal as a kind of grand bargain between Ottawa and oil country.

While the federal government often strikes deals with provincial governments, this situation is quite different. It’s a deal only with Alberta but it primarily involves British Columbia. The agreement therefore elevates Alberta to the level of a quasi-sovereign jurisdiction to be treated as an equal with Canada. B.C., site of any future hypothetical pipeline terminals, has been rendered a deal-taker, not a deal-maker.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the federation is supposed to work. Just because the federal government has ultimate jurisdiction doesn’t mean other regions don’t get a say. It’s hard to imagine the federal government striking a deal with Ontario about what should happen in Québec without Québec’s involvement.

Read more: Alberta has long accused Ottawa of trying to destroy its oil industry. Here’s why that’s a dangerous myth

B.C. fury

B.C. Premier David Eby was accordingly furious with the federal government’s approach before the deal was announced.

Since then, while pointing out weaknesses in the deal, the NDP premier has also been at pains to show his willingness to work with Alberta on workarounds, including an expanded Transmountain pipeline or another pipeline that would leave the oil tanker moratorium in place on B.C’.s northern coast.

In leaving Eby out of the conversation, the federal Liberals have alienated a natural ally in their pursuit of economic development, forcing the premier to defend B.C.’s status within the federation, the rights of the province’s Indigenous communities and the province’s protected northern coast and Great Bear Rainforest.

Constitutional obligations to consult

Even more telling is the united reaction of First Nations. The Assembly of First Nations has unanimously voted in favour of a motion calling for the MOU to be scrapped. In fact, the federal government may have put itself in legal jeopardy over its failure to consult prior to the MOU.

At some point, it will likely have to explain in court how it could be serious about consulting in good faith with Indigenous Peoples in accordance with its obligations under Section 35 of the Constitution Act when the MOU gives the appearance of approving the project in principle before such conversations even begin.

Offering ownership stakes to Indigenous groups in a project devised without their involvement is not consultation. Simply put, unless governments can show they’re open to amending their plans in light of information they receive during consultations, they risk falling short of their obligations.

Cracks in the Liberal coalition

While polls suggest a majority of Canadians support the idea of a pipeline so far, the Liberals’ own coalition shows some signs of fraying.

Former environment minister Steven Guilbeault’s resignation from cabinet over the deal, along with the resignations of multiple environmental advisers to the Liberal government, suggest the party’s reputation for environmental progress has taken a hit given the slow and fuzzy approach to climate action outlined in the MOU.

Other federal parties sense an opportunity. The Bloc Québecois has strongly denounced the deal and has offered to support B.C. in its campaign to defend the province’s autonomy. The move underscores the sensitivities that remain in Québec around issues of provincial rights.

Even more tellingly, federal Conservatives, perhaps initially dismayed by a deal uniting federal Liberals and Alberta Conservatives, are now putting a motion before the House of Commons asking it to endorse the government’s position on the MOU and make good on its commitments. The Liberals, for their part, have vowed to vote against the motion, arguing that it only endorses part of the MOU.

In effect, the Conservatives are seeking to turn the government’s own MOU into a wedge issue against it. The Conservatives will likely continue to press the issue going forward given how the idea of a pipeline at any cost unites Conservatives and divide Liberals. Liberal MPs in B.C. and Québec, in particular, will also likely feel torn between loyalty to the party and deference to the views of constituents opposed to the deal.

In short, a pipeline intended to unify threatens to throw divisions into even sharper relief — even within the Liberal Party itself.

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By Mitchell Beer

Prime Minister Mark Carney and his new cabinet took office Tuesday with some tough, momentous questions on their agenda, most of them still pointing back to the rogue regime waging economic war on Canada from the White House.

But as The Weekender first argued in March, after Carney won the Liberal Party leadership, there’s one fairly easy calculation the Cabinet can make that will set them on track to addressing that challenge. Not least by tackling the domestic vulnerabilities that were driving us apart until Donald Trump’s latest round of rolling outrages pulled us back together.

What’s the cheapest, quickest way to deliver the reliable, affordable energy Canadians need, while boosting domestic manufacturing, driving down climate pollution, and restoring public confidence that our governments can actually deliver on their promises?

If our political leaders answer that question seriously and follow the evidence where it leads, it will bring them directly to a low-carbon energy path that begins with:

• Drastically increasing the energy efficiency of everything;

• Replacing fuels with electricity across a large swath of the economy while decarbonizing the electricity system;

• Seizing the urgent opportunity to rapidly drive down methane emissions, whether or not fossil companies are serious about getting with the program;

• Pairing the rise of renewables and energy efficiency with a managed phaseout of oil, gas, and coal.

A least-cost energy strategy that factored in the fully-loaded cost of climate change would give us a lens for assessing every new pitch for Canada’s energy future—whether it’s a deep energy retrofit program, a local battery storage system, a solar or wind farm, a $100-billion nuclear megaproject, or the ridiculous demands for new pipelines in all directions, hatched by the fossil fuel industry and voiced by the former industry lobbyist they’ve since installed as Alberta’s premier.

Pretty much without exception, an honest answer to this one, crucial question points back to low-carbon options that are practical, affordable, and ready to scale up. They don’t depend on carbon capture and storage technologies that their biggest boosters admit are a decade away from prime time, or expensive direct air capture (DAC) adventures that still emit more carbon than they reduce. They won’t either fry the planet when used as directed or saddle us with eons’ worth of dangerous nuclear waste.

For bonus points, they connect us to a burgeoning global clean energy economy—the same one Carney has in mind when he talks about diversifying our exports beyond one risky, unreliable trading partner.

180° of Speculation

Just as important, this line of thought takes us past the disconnect between statement and action—between the “what” and the “how” of government policy on climate, affordability, and everything else that matters. That gap has cut across all the major political parties for the last deeply performative decade and quite rightly sapped public confidence that anything much will ever get done.

Now, with Carney vowing to “do things that had not been imagined or thought possible, at a speed we haven’t seen before,” his team’s early energy choices will either put his government on a path to success, or make it immeasurably harder for them to get there.

But in the first 100 hours after the Cabinet announcement (heh, he wants to move fast, so no more of this ‘first 100 days’ stuff), we were left with 180° of speculation about where this government will come down on climate change and energy.

We had Carney knowledgeably described as “the most climate-literate PM we’ve ever seen, and maybe the most climate-literate leader among industrialized countries,” while telling CTV news his government will “change things at the federal level that need to be changed in order for projects to move forward”—including the federal Impact Assessment Act and the former Trudeau government’s long-delayed cap on oil and gas emissions.

We heard that newly-minted Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, former head of Ontario power utility Hydro One, board member at oil sands producer MEG Energy, and Carney colleague at Goldman Sachs, will either be the fossil industry’s voice in Cabinet, the former business heavyweight and familiar face who can talk low-carbon sense to the oilpatch, or the steady hand who can make a national renewable power grid a reality.

We saw an emphasis on pragmatism and short-term success from a government that seems enamoured of carbon capture technologies that are nowhere near ready for prime time and new nuclear reactor designs that look great on PowerPoints, but have never been built in the real world.

All of which is a longabouts way of saying that no one can say for sure which lane Team Carney will choose, and you have to wonder whether they’ve decided yet. The next big milestones will be the template language in the PM’s mandate letters to ministers and the Throne Speech that King Charles is scheduled to deliver May 27.

That is, unless we hear anything sooner from Carney or his Cabinet about the climate imperatives he’s known and understood for a decade or more, and the clean energy choices that give him his only chance at tackling any of the other big-picture crises he’s taken on.

The Projects We Want to Speed Up

We’ve known for decades, not years, that there’s a smart, systematic way to run an energy transition. The fine details have shifted over time, but the basic prescription has not.

Start by drastically increasing the energy efficiency of everything.

Electrify key end uses like cars and other vehicles, home heating and cooling, and many industrial processes, now with the added reliability of affordable energy storage, while decarbonizing the electricity system.

Make it an absolute, top priority to phase out emissions of methane—the main component of natural gas, a climate-busting super-pollutant with 84 times the impact of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span, and our single best chance to achieve major climate gains by 2030.

Pay careful attention to the relatively few, more complicated energy uses—like air travel and some heavy industries—that aren’t so simple to decarbonize.

And, crucially, cut with both arms of the scissors by pairing the rise of renewables and energy efficiency with a managed phaseout of the oil, gas, and coal industries whose products are frying the planet when used as directed, while devastating local ecosystems and communities along the way.

With rapid emission cuts and deeper climate resilience as our top-line goals, the energy transition also delivers on the quicker business opportunities that industry has been demanding—even if those aren’t the opportunities the fossil lobby has in mind when it’s doing the demanding.

Even at relatively large scale, solar and wind farms are faster to approve and build than fossil fuel plants, pipelines, or nuclear reactors, largely because they have a far smaller physical and environmental footprint. They generally come in on time and on budget because, unlike the most mega of megaprojects, they aren’t too big to succeed.

Go behind the meter, to the realm of deep energy retrofits, home heat pumps, rooftop solar panels, solar+storage, and community microgrids, and you can afford to speed up the process even more, as long as developers know how to open real conversations with local communities and earn their support.

“The modular nature of solar and wind construction allows for faster development and more predictable construction timelines and costs at different scales,” Eyab Al-Aini, senior research associate, clean growth at the Canadian Climate Institute, told The Weekender in an email earlier this year. “Unlike gas turbines or nuclear generation, where pressure on a few suppliers can limit choice and stretch timelines, the distributed nature of solar equipment manufacturing lowers overall project execution risks.”

Al-Aini added that smaller projects can face lighter permitting requirements because they often “bypass the transmission planning process, can leverage existing onsite assets (roofs, permits),” while benefitting from fewer technical reviews and bypassing long waits to connect to the grid. And behind-the-meter solar and wind, “especially when combined with storage, can both reduce overall site energy use from the grid and also be a source of power during peak demand.”

Note that every megawatt of peak power demand a community can save through energy efficiency or generate behind the meter is a megawatt that needn’t be supplied by methane-intensive gas plants that provincial premiers like Doug Ford are so intent on building in places like Ontario.

The Road Not Taken

Smaller-scale energy isn’t quite as simple as I’m making it sound, and decades ago, a decision on which kind of complexity to embrace was instrumental in bringing us the oil sands industry as we know it today.

When I worked at the late, lamented Canadian Renewable Energy News, like any other early 1980s news outlet in a world before PDFs, we received our share of news leaks in hard copy, delivered in (literal or metaphorical) plain brown envelopes. One draft memo, printed on the recycled map paper that signposted its origins in the then Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, compared the costs and benefits of subsidizing a heavy oil upgrader in Alberta against an equivalent investment in a national home insulation program.

Its conclusions were stunning: The insulation plan would save more energy than the upgrader would produce, creating more jobs that were more evenly distributed across the country. But federal bureaucrats were said to be petrified at the thought of staking the success of their decision on millions of individual, local choices, rather than a single, high-stakes negotiation among first ministers.

You know where that story ended. The upgrader went ahead, and to this day, Canada and especially Alberta are overly dependent on the boom-and-bust industry that received that initial infusion of government largesse, and has been steadily polluting the countryside and our national politics ever since.

New Pipelines Would Need Massive Subsidies

But now, with Trump threatening Canada’s very existence as a sovereign country, that history points to another advantage in accelerating the kind of energy projects we need and want. The ones that increase community control rather than obliterating it and reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than driving them through the roof.

From the moment the current occupant of the White House began trumping up his baseless case for tariffs and economic annexation, his allies and paymasters in the oil and gas industry knew what to do. The partly American-owned companies in the Alberta oilpatch, many of which no doubt contributed to the industry’s lavish and “breathtakingly corrupt” investment in bringing Trump back to power, immediately dusted off every pipeline megaproject they’d failed to push through over the last decade. Suddenly, industry lobbyists and elected officials were touting carbon bombs like the Energy East and Northern Gateway pipelines as the path to our economic salvation, even the key to our national identity.

When we last looked in on this topic in March, Globe and Mail columnist Adam Radwanski had a good idea of how those questions would be answered. The very obvious absence of any private investors tripping over each other to build new pipelines:

…suggests enormous subsidies would be required to attract the capital, if not outright government ownership. The rationale would have to be that given the security dangers posed by Mr. Trump, Canada can no longer rely on oil from the U.S., or flowing through the U.S., to supply eastern provinces.

But as then-energy and natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson pointed out at the time,

there is no way a pipeline would be completed in less than five years. That wouldn’t make it much help with the threat posed this decade by Mr. Trump. And by then, the shift toward electric vehicles—which Mr. Trump may slow, but won’t stop outright as those vehicles get cheaper—could mean less oil is needed.

Even if subsequent events have blunted the International Energy Agency’s projection that oil demand will peak this decade, Radwanski added, “placing a huge bet against it happening next decade isn’t wildly appealing.” Carney’s Quebec lieutenant, former environment and climate minister Steven Guilbeault, made much the same point on Wednesday, the day after the PM’s CTV interview.

“I think before we start talking about building an entire new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure,” Guilbeault told media, noting that the $34.2-billion taxpayer liability known as the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is still operating below capacity. “And, the Canadian Energy Regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028-2029, demand for oil will peak globally, and it will also peak in Canada.”

It All Comes Back to Community

Even or especially as we face down an existential external threat, we have to be honest about a legacy of resource extraction projects—from fossil fuels and pipelines to mining and forestry—that have too often left communities behind and their land base indelibly altered. Changing the channel on that history begins with not repeating the same old, bad old practices of bulldozing projects through local objections, or accelerating approvals and permitting so fast that communities can barely catch their breath, much less assess the impacts and have their say.

If we’re joining together to protect Canada as a nation that is different and distinct, that cannot and must not mean deregulating ourselves out of the values—social and spiritual, economic and physical—that we’ve set out to protect.

Politicians across the spectrum have been tapping into a powerful vein of community pride and purpose. It’s playing out at the national level in response to an international threat. But it traces back to the people, places, and things we know and love—and so much of what we’re all scrambling to defend is local.

That means we don’t want an ExxonMobil subsidiary polluting Indigenous lands and withholding the information from communities for months, or an Australian coal magnate winning regulatory approval for a widely-hated megaproject in the Rocky Mountain foothills, any more than we support Elon Musk’s U.S. gigafactory dumping waste in the Nevada desert and harassing whistleblowers who try to tell the story.

It means holding clean energy projects to those same standards, even knowing that they start out delivering more benefits and fewer impacts than the fossil fuel developments they replace. And setting the expectation that renewable energy developers will consult pro-actively, listen attentively, and look at community input as an opportunity to maximize benefits, minimize impacts, and dodge major flaws in a project design before it’s too late—not just an exercise in box-checking.

We didn’t need Donald Trump to remind us that the energy transition is meant to be about building something better, not just replacing one set of crappy, corrupt industrial practices with another one. Now, Mark Carney and his Cabinet get to prove it, in a moment and on a scale where failure is not an option.

The post Opinion: One energy path brings Carney the big wins he needs. The other one doesn’t. appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Mitchell Beer

Prime Minister Mark Carney and his new cabinet took office Friday with some tough, momentous questions on their agenda, most of them pointing back to the rogue regime waging economic war on Canada from the White House.

But there’s one fairly easy calculation they or any future cabinet can make that will set them on track to addressing that challenge. Not least by tackling the domestic vulnerabilities that were driving us apart until Donald Trump’s latest round of rolling outrages pulled us back together.

What’s the cheapest, quickest way to deliver the reliable, affordable energy Canadians need, while boosting domestic manufacturing, driving down climate pollution, and restoring public confidence that our governments can actually deliver on their promises?

If our political leaders answered that question seriously and followed the evidence where it leads, it would bring them directly to the low-carbon energy path we laid out in last week’s Weekender:

• Drastically increasing the energy efficiency of everything;

• Replacing fuels with electricity across a large swath of the economy while decarbonizing the electricity system;

• Seizing the urgent opportunity to rapidly drive down methane emissions, whether or not fossil companies are serious about getting with the program;

• Pairing the rise of renewables and energy efficiency with a managed phaseout of oil, gas, and coal.

A least-cost energy strategy that factored in the fully-loaded cost of climate change would give us a lens for assessing every new pitch for Canada’s energy future—whether it’s a deep energy retrofit program, a local battery storage system, a solar or wind farm, a $100-billion nuclear megaproject, or the ridiculous demands for new pipelines in all directions, hatched by the fossil fuel industry and voiced by the former industry lobbyist they’ve since installed as Alberta’s premier.

Pretty much without exception, it brings us back to low-carbon options that are practical, affordable, ready to scale up, and won’t either fry the planet when used as directed or saddle us with eons’ worth of dangerous nuclear waste.

For bonus points, it connects us to a burgeoning global clean energy economy—at just the moment when we’re looking to diversity our exports beyond one risky, unreliable trading partner.

And just as important, it takes us past the disconnect between statement and action—between the “what” and the “how” of government policy on climate, affordability, and everything else that matters. That gap has cut across all the major political parties for the last decade and quite rightly sapped public confidence that anything much will ever get done.

The post Opinion: A least-cost energy strategy would bring Carney’s climate policy home appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

Commercial property owners grappling with the one-two punch of falling asset values and demands for increased energy efficiency must recognize that some of their holdings may not continue to be money-makers.

Commercial buildings too old and drafty to survive the regulatory push to net-zero risk becoming “stranded assets,” reports the U.K. trade publication Mortgage Introducer, citing recent comments by Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and before that, the Bank of Canada. He currently chairs Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management.

Carney is also a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance, has a continuing role as finance adviser to the British prime minister, and signed on last month as a special adviser on economic growth to the Canadian government.

“There will be a tail of stranded assets … which are going to have to turn over and be refurbished, if possible, or knocked down and repurposed,” Carney said at the Oct. 2 launch of Eden Dock, a waterside garden project at Canary Wharf in London, England.

Countries attending last year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai pledged “to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030,” Mortgage Introducer notes. And with commercial buildings contributing 26 per cent of energy-related emissions globally, the industry publication adds, such refurbishing is urgently needed.

European property investors, in particular, will need to confront the reality that many of their holdings are far from energy efficient. “A report by investment manager AEW indicates that European property investors must increase their capital spending by 30 per cent annually to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement,” writes Mortgage Introducer.

Meanwhile, “stringent deadlines” to upgrade building energy efficiency by 2030 notwithstanding, 12 per cent of U.K. commercial properties “failed to meet energy rating requirements last year.”

Carney warned his audience not to test the regulators. “There will be people … who, either implicitly or explicitly, think that these timelines are going to shift, or that somehow or another it is not going to become a binding constraint,” he said. “But that is a big risk to take.”

Property owners who postpone their efficiency improvements will discover an increasing unwillingness by financial institutions to backstop climate harms, Carney said.

“Dutch bank ING recently warned 2,000 of its largest clients, including real estate developers and landlords, that it would halt financing unless they made significant strides in mitigating their climate impact,” writes Mortgage Introducer, offering a case in point. “ING identified commercial real estate as one of the slowest sectors in adopting climate disclosure and reducing emissions.”

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