If the goal of Danielle Smith’s “historic” pipeline announcement earlier this week was to distract voters and media from Alberta’s looming teachers’ strike, increasing health care chaos, unpopular separatist scheming, embarrassing oil company layoffs, and continuing procurement scandals, it appears to be working.
All the serious websites of the land were publishing learned treatises last night on the prospects for a pipeline to Prince Rupert or Kitimat on British Columbia’s North Coast and that province’s exasperated premier was giving the story oxygen by assailing his Alberta counterpart’s plan.
Well, this is all very entertaining, but if you think Alberta announcing it intends to spend a paltry $14 million on “early planning work including cost estimates” for a pre-plan for a proposal for a pipeline to a part of the coast where nobody wants one is going to result in anything getting built any time soon, you should probably give your head a shake.
Let me give you a hint: There’s a reason no corporation wants to invest in this scheme, and all the screaming from Alberta notwithstanding, it’s not because of what Smith calls “The Nine Bad Laws” passed when Justin Trudeau was prime minister of Canada. To lightly edit a turn of phrase made famous by former US president Bill Clinton, it’s the market, stupid!
There are reasons the government of China, the world’s second most populous country located across the Pacific, is electrifying as fast as it can, and it’s not because there’s no million-barrel-a-day dilbit pipeline to the West Coast of Canada.
The fact that the leader the jurisdiction that includes most of Canada’s oilpatch aspires to be a loyal toady to Donald Trump, the unreliable US president who has cast himself as an enemy of China, might have something to do with it. But the main reason is probably China’s recognition of the need to slow global climate change.
Alas, the participation of industry bosses, some Alberta First Nations leaders and Indigenous Relations Minister Rajan Sawhney on a “technical advisory group” to aid the proposal won’t change market realities.
A statement yesterday from First Nations leaders on the North Coast said, “As the Rights and Title holders of BC’s North and Central Coast and Haida Gwaii, we must inform Premier Smith once again that there is no support from Coastal First Nations for a pipeline and oil tankers project in our coastal waters.”
So Energy Minister Brian Jean is promoting a pipedream when he says, “We already see Canada as an energy powerhouse, and with the right infrastructure, moving toward superpower status is both realistic and achievable.”
“Increased market access from Alberta to tidewater will scale Canada’s export markets and diversification, while supporting the federal government’s newly stated ambition of becoming an energy superpower,” Jean added in his canned news-release quote, although it’s worth noting that the iron Law of Supply and Demand still suggests that more supply is not going to result in higher prices for Alberta bitumen.
As for Smith’s insistence that Alberta’s just taking the lead on drafting the proposal next May to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office (just in time for a snap early election) and any resulting actual project is bound to be financed by private investors, you can believe that if you wish.
But BC Premier David Eby was undoubtedly right when he described the subject of yesterday’s big announcement as “not a real project.”
“There is no project,” Eby said in a statement posted to social media. “There is no bridge to cross, unless the Albertan government and the federal Canadian government are committing billions of taxpayer dollars to build this project. And if that is the plan, then they should be transparent about it.”
No pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast will ever be built unless it’s bankrolled by taxpayers, and you can take that prediction to the bank.
Meanwhile, the ghastly state of Alberta’s health care system, which is apparently being allowed to crumble under the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s ongoing “refocusing,” just got ghastlier.
A leaked memo to many non-union exempted employees of Alberta Health Services (AHS) posted on X last night by @TheBreakdownAB informs them they will be required to take two days of unpaid time off between yesterday and March 31.
Describing the two-day layoff as “a one-time cost saving measure,” the memo from AHS Senior Finance and Shared Services Vice-President Erin O’Neill says, “vacation and personal leave time cannot be used in lieu of unpaid time off.”
“We understand that this will be difficult news and that any financial impact is particularly challenging at this time,” the memo says. “Please know that we explored many options before taking this step, but that it is necessary to meet our financial commitments….”
Presumed translation: We’re following UCP orders.
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