Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Calgary, on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
The rumours are probably true. Something of great significance affecting Canada’s oil industry will happen on or just before this coming weekend.
Either a memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta which signals a clear path forward for the approval and construction of an oil pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert will be announced—or Danielle Smith along with many other Albertans will blow their collective gaskets.
The Alberta premier has set three previous deadlines for Ottawa to issue a clear and unequivocal statement of support for the prompt approval and construction of the pipeline: Stampede Week, October, and by Grey Cup day. The Carney government has blown past them all.
Many of the pundits who’ve weighed in on the question claim the UCP Annual General Meeting November 28-30 will be a fish or cut bait deadline for both Mark Carney and Danielle Smith. But that’s not the whole story. Even if Smith arrives at the AGM with the memorandum in hand, the document could prove to be little more than the usual Liberal smoke, mirrors and insincere promises. It may take months of additional waiting to determine whether or not announcement of the memorandum is actually followed up with concrete steps toward getting the project underway and completed.
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If no memorandum is provided by the end of this week, it’s a guarantee Smith will have a very rough AGM. Furthermore, the memorandum will be meaningless if it fails to provide a tanker ban carve out to permit operation of a Prince Rupert oil terminal. And it will be a flop if Bill -69, the Impact Assessment Act, is not withdrawn or declawed. In other words the document needs to address many of the “nine bad laws,” Danielle Smith has identified as barriers to the expansion of oil production and exports to countries other than the US.
Similarly, if the federal government insists on a timetable which requires an inordinately high investment in the Pathways Alliance carbon capture project, such that it retards efforts to generate the capital and revenues required to build and operate a profitable pipeline system, the memorandum won’t be worth the paper it’s written on. Indeed, some observers already claim the federal government’s insistence that the pipeline must be built at the same time as corresponding progress on the Pathways project is a form of extortion matched only by some of British Columbia’s Indigenous organizations.
If there is no memorandum of understanding by the end of the week, or it proves to be less than hoped for there is a good chance the national will be strained like it hasn’t been since the days of the NEP. Alienated Albertans and supporters of the independence movement will take advantage of the waiting period between publication of the memorandum and the appearance of evidence of progress on the pipeline to drum up support for independence in the upcoming referendum.
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Meanwhile Carney doubles down on “Nut” Zero
Perhaps the oddest thing of all is the prime minister’s continued insistence on meeting unachievable green transition targets. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized how unlikely it is that its goal of limiting the increase in global temperatures to less than 2o C, and preferably no more than 1.5o C above pre-industrial levels is unlikely to be met. The emissions reduction targets set by the IPCC, based on the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for 2030, 2035 and on to 2050, simply cannot be met without the sort of rapid reduction in fossil fuel consumption that would be economically ruinous and plunge the world into a protracted depression.
Governments in many of the world’s rich countries have run into a political brick wall when it comes to imposing costly emissions reduction measures on voters who are scrambling to deal with an already high cost of living. Green transition and net zero targets have been rolled back in the US, the UK and several European states. Canada’s Liberals, for example, were compelled to remove the unpopular consumer carbon tax and put their electrical vehicle manufacturing mandate on hold.
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The prime minister skipped the COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil , November 10-21. Just as well, he wouldn’t have liked it much. The assembled world leaders were unable to produce a final statement of agreement which called for efforts to seriously limit fossil fuel production. They struggled for 18 hours past the conference’s official closing time to get some tough language adopted around the need to limit coal, petroleum and natural gas emissions. Apparently, there were strong objections raised by several delegations which kept the words coal or oil from appearing in the summary document.
Carney did make it to the two-day G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, which began the day after the COP30 summit was scheduled to end. Notwithstanding the crisis affecting international trade and tension over erratic US foreign policy, our prime minister chose to use his time before the cameras at the G20 to do some grandstanding on behalf of doing battle with climate change.
Carney lectured the G20 leaders on the need for wealthy countries to provide billions in funding to poor countries to help them adapt to the hazards presented by climate change. This has been a longstanding commitment made by virtue signaling rich countries, attending COP climate summits, which has never been met. However, the prime minister has a shiny new acronym for the funding program, JETP (Just Energy Transition Partnership), which will undoubtedly make all the difference required for success.
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JETP is reminiscent of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) which Carney launched at COP26. He had managed to assemble a coalition of CEOs from major corporations and investment bankers committed to eliminating investment in fossil fuels and increasing their support for green energy initiatives. The world has become a much tougher place economically and geopolitically during the four years following COP26. Accordingly, many of the prominent banks and corporations who signed on to GFANZ have jumped ship. Little wonder Carney has moved on to promoting JETP.
Worst of all, our prime minister called on G20 leaders to embrace a whole new system of international tariffs in support of fighting climate change. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will allow countries who have carbon taxes to place tariffs on imports from countries who don’t tax carbon emissions. The idea is that goods and services exported by businesses which have carbon taxes won’t be at a disadvantage in the global marketplace because what they sell costs more to produce than the products of non-compliant CBAM countries. It might work if the vast majority of countries got onside with the program. But until then, it will increase the already excessive cost of living for consumers in the “Boy Scout countries” who do their duty by placing CBAM tariffs on their imports. Our Liberal government has already signaled its intention to get with the program by imposing the industrial carbon tax.
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For extra icing on the cake, Carney promised Green party Leader, Elizabeth May that his government would hold the line on any further retreat from its net zero agenda or its emissions reduction efforts. Apparently, this was May’s price for agreeing to support the Liberals stink bomb budget on November 17.
Time will soon tell if Carney was lying to May or to supporters of conventional energy in the West.
While many countries have sensibly given up on the climate fight or at least put their emissions reduction projects on the back burner, Mark Carney has decided to continue whipping the dead horse.
For all the boasting by Liberals and the mainstream media about Mark Carney’s abilities in the realms of international finance and economics, he is in way over his head at his current job. Leading a caucus full of mediocrities in a country left hopelessly dysfunctional after 10 plus years of Liberal government is obviously tougher than leading the Old Lady on Threadneedle Street; a nickname for the Bank of England.
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