Tasha Kheiriddin: This is why Carney is succeeding

Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives to a Liberal caucus meeting on Parliament Hill June 10, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable /Postmedia

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Do politicians start parades, or merely get in front of them? That’s a question Canadians might be asking this week, following news that the government was polling them on the issue of oil pipelines last fall — just days before Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an agreement with Alberta to explore building a new one to B.C.

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According to news reports, the Privy Council Office added a question to its weekly poll on Nov. 23 about whether Canadians supported “new or expanded oil pipelines.” The results were clear: 67 per cent approved, including a majority in every province. Beautiful B.C. clocked in at 64 per cent, eco-conscious Quebec at 56 per cent. On November 27, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “make Canada a global energy superpower” with great fanfare.

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The following week, the government asked a more pointed question: “(D)espite their contribution to the economy, some point out that building pipelines involves cutting corridors across ecosystems, with impacts on nature and habitat, and pipelines come with risks of leaks and spills. Given that, do you support new or expanded pipelines?”

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Again, a majority of Canadians in every province said yes: 62 per cent nationally, 60 per cent in B. C. and 50 per cent in Quebec. A green light for black gold.

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Though PCO staff is non-partisan, the program is supervised by folks in the Prime Minister’s Office, who most definitely are partisan. The polls are designed to help the prime minister, cabinet, PMO staff and bureaucrats take the pulse of the nation. Which in this case showed a clear desire for economic development, even if it involved fouling the environment a little bit.

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This dovetails with a slew of surveys showing that the environment has dropped down Canadians’ priority list. A recent Abacus poll shows the cost of living to be the dominant issue at 67 per cent; “the economy” comes second at 39 per cent. Climate change and the environment sit in ninth place, at 13 per cent — a drop from 29 per cent in 2023, when it was a top three concern.

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In other words, Carney is perfectly safe, politically speaking, in approving projects that will eventually see an extra million barrels of oil a day pumped out of the oil sands, something that would have been unthinkable under the previous Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.

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How things have changed in seven years. Last week, Carney was all smiles as he announced that governments in Ottawa and Edmonton would finance a new oil pipeline from Bruderheim, Alta. to Delta, B.C. As for Thunberg, today the 23-year-old has moved on from saving the planet to starting a “global intifada” for “Palestine.”

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Yes, the proposed West Coast Pipeline’s southern route avoids the need to reverse the oil tanker moratorium on B.C.’s northwest coast, and the venture is twinned with the Pathways project, a carbon capture project designed to offset rising emissions. But it’s still safe to say that Carney 1.0 might have been a little less enthused.