Shortly after Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith formally signed their memorandum of understanding on Thursday, Smith joked to reporters in Calgary that she would love for “pipelines to be boring again.”
It’s not clear that pipelines have ever been boring — they have been associated with political tumult in Canada for at least 70 years. And given the great questions that are still tied up in both the idea and the reality of an interprovincial pipe — the unresolved work of reconciliation, the lack of a complete answer to the present and future threat of climate change, the fear for national unity — it is difficult to imagine that a pipeline could easily be made boring in this moment.
So Carney and Smith’s memorandum, at least on its own, was probably never going to render pipelines mundane — even before Quebec MP Steven Guilbeault called the prime minister on Thursday afternoon and told him he was quitting the cabinet in protest.
“Changes in our relationship with the United States have led to profound disruptions affecting the global order, diplomatic relations, and the economy. I understand and share the Prime Minister’s efforts to ensure our country remains united and that all regions feel they have a voice,” Guilbeault said in a statement, acknowledging the exceptional circumstances that framed Thursday’s memorandum of understanding.
“Despite this difficult economic context, I remain one of those for whom environmental issues must remain front and center.”
Guilbeault’s resignation — the rare cabinet resignation due to a disagreement over government policy — both adds to and underlines the test of national and political leadership that Mark Carney signed up for when he put his signature on that memorandum.
Whatever else Carney aimed to achieve this week, he might have hoped to deprive oil and gas proponents of the convenient argument that the only thing standing in the way of a new pipeline was a Liberal government in Ottawa. That argument always clashed with the reality of what happened the last time someone tried to build a pipeline across northern British Columbia, but this memorandum of understanding effectively eliminates that argument entirely.
Earlier this year, with C-5, the Carney government cleared a potential regulatory path for major infrastructure projects. Now, the federal government is abandoning a proposed cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector and formally confirming a willingness to amend the oil tanker ban that covers B.C.’s northern coast.
The memorandum commits the Alberta government to support a strengthened pricing system for industrial emissions. And getting a conservative premier to agree to that is a potentially significant development both for the short-term and long-term future of Canadian climate policy — not least because federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has positioned his party in vehement opposition to the policy.
It is perhaps also not a small thing that the premier of Alberta has formally committed to the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 — an idea that Poilievre has disparaged.
Alberta and B.C. at odds over pipeline push | Power & Politics
But in exchange for agreement on one major climate policy, the Carney government has potentially sacrificed another. Pending agreement on industrial carbon pricing, Alberta will be excluded from federal clean electricity regulations. And if Alberta is excluded from that policy, it stands to reason that other provinces will soon demand their own carve outs.
Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, warned in a statement on Thursday that the exemption from clean electricity regulations and a softening of methane regulations “could trigger a race to the bottom on climate policy where other provinces seek special treatment and side deals over federal laws or regulations they object to.”
The federal government has also now tied the future of the long-promised Pathways proposal to a new pipeline. For years, a consortium of major oil companies has insisted on its eagerness to move forward on a major carbon capture and storage project in Alberta. But the memorandum of understanding now says a pipeline is a “prerequisite” for Pathways moving forward.
Perhaps Carney was not fond of the Trudeau approach to climate policy. Perhaps he believes that these sacrifices are a small price to pay for the sake of solidifying the industrial carbon price and undercutting the threat to national unity posed by an unhappy Alberta.
But while removing the ability of anyone to seriously claim the federal government is a significant obstacle to a pipeline, Carney has not completely removed himself from the question of whether a pipeline gets built. The memorandum describes a new pipeline as a “priority” and pledges federal involvement in trilateral discussions involving the B.C. government and B.C. First Nations.
Unless or until a private-sector proponent steps forward to say they would like to build a pipeline, such commitments might be moot. But what if a private proponent steps forward and discussions with the B.C. government and First Nations fail to produce broad acceptance for a pipeline?
That question will now hang in the air. And David Eby, the aggrieved premier of B.C., has already worried aloud that a push for an oil pipeline could cause First Nations to withdraw support from existing liquefied natural gas projects in his province.
Amid all this, Guilbeault’s exit is obviously dramatic, but also almost poetic.
Guilbeault himself is something of a Rorschach test. Within the environmental movement, he was considered a credible pragmatist. Within conservative political circles, he was held out — at least after he joined Justin Trudeau’s cabinet — as an anti-oil bogeyman.
“For some, I’m a radical. And for others, I’m not radical enough,” he told me in an interview shortly after he became environment minister in 2021.
What is perhaps largely forgotten now is that Guilbeault’s decision to run as a Liberal candidate in 2019 was most remarkable because he was doing so after the Trudeau government had decided to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and expansion project (TMX). The famed environmentalist was joining a government that was actively building a pipeline.
Liberal MP Guilbeault resigns from Carney’s cabinet
Before using public funds to take ownership of that pipeline, the Trudeau Liberals expended significant political effort and resources to build acceptance for that expansion, including a $1.5-billion marine protection plan. And to a large extent, those efforts were successful — despite fears that the Liberals would be wiped out in B.C. after approving TMX, the party won 11 seats in the province in 2019.
Resource policy and Western alienation nonetheless came to be seen, in some corners, as major failings of the Trudeau era. It’s at least fair to say he failed to make pipelines boring.
Carney came to office wanting to turn a page and do things differently. His memorandum of understanding is a significant example of that. And in some small way, for Carney, Guilbeault’s exit may even be a useful message to some voters that this is no longer Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government (though Liberal strategists will now have to calculate how many environmentally minded voters might follow Guilbeault out the door).
But Guilbeault’s exit is, most of all, a reminder that holding together a big, diverse group — be it a cabinet, a federation or a coalition of voters — is never easy and that grappling with the difficult, necessary politics of building a pipeline cannot be boring.
