Rob Breakenridge: OK, Carney, now approve the pipeline for real

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the West Coast Pipeline Project at Trans Am Piping Products in Calgary on Thursday, July 2, 2026. Gavin Young/Postmedia Gavin Young/Postmedia

Article content

CALGARY — It’s quite a needle that the prime minister has threaded, weaving together announcements with B.C., Alberta, and private industry to move forward with a new million-barrel-a-day pipeline to Canada’s West Coast.

Article content

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, though, and we’re still really only nearing the end of the beginning. It’s unfortunate that it took months of negotiations, major concessions, and an unprecedented legislative intervention to expedite Canada’s regulatory approval process just to arrive at what is essentially the lowest-hanging fruit.

Article content

Article content

Article content

It would be a terrible indictment of Canada’s ability to build major projects if all of this was somehow insufficient to move this project forward. By landing on the easiest, simplest pipeline route with the least possible amount of opposition, there should be zero excuses now

Article content

Article content

Rather than a pipeline project to a deepwater port in northwestern B.C. — the shortest distance from Canada to Asia — Alberta has settled on a route to the southwest coast. This will hew more or less to the right-of-way of the existing Trans Mountain expansion (TMX), ending at Roberts Bank port terminal in Delta, B.C.

Article content

The Thursday evening announcement in Calgary was the culmination of a rather busy and consequential day for Mark Carney. The prime minister started the day in Vancouver, where he announced a new agreement with B.C. Premier David Eby.

Article content

Essentially, B.C. won’t fight this new pipeline and, in exchange, will receive considerable benefits in the form of billions for resource projects and major infrastructure investments. Ottawa will also maintain the tanker ban along B.C.’s northern coast — a major political concession in B.C.’s favour.

Article content

Article content

To be sure, further growing our capacity to develop and export LNG to Asian markets is a win-win for B.C. and for Canada. Still, the upside for B.C. is considerable — including the benefits that this pipeline will deliver.

Article content

Article content

The tanker ban itself was always redundant and symbolic, at least based on the Liberals’ underlying logic in favour of the Impact Assessment Act. Canada’s coastline far exceeds just the B.C. north coast, and the whole point of raising the bar on environmental impact assessment was to better protect sensitive areas.

Article content

Keeping the tanker ban, therefore, constitutes yet another concession from Alberta, since the original Alberta-Ottawa MOU left the door open to adjusting the ban, if necessary, to accommodate a pipeline project. There would surely have been considerable opposition to such a project, however..

Article content

So yes, Alberta gets federal backing, and referral to the Major Projects Office, of a new pipeline and the fruits of Carney’s efforts to facilitate a more conducive political atmosphere.

Article content

There was also Ottawa’s concession to ease the controversial Clean Electricity Regulations. That helped pave the path for Thursday’s other big announcement of a $4.6-billion natural gas project to power a new data centre near Edmonton