Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper project in 2009. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
It is time to admit that in the absence of a political earthquake the Mark Carney government will do nothing of consequence to facilitate the building of a new oil pipeline from the prairies to the West coast.
Over the past several months many of the people who support non-renewable energy production have taken hope from even the faintest signals that our Liberal government might deign to allow the construction of new oil pipelines.
This is despite knowing somewhere in the back of our minds that our optimism is misplaced. We have a prime minister who introduces his policy positions by saying “Let me be clear,” which he follows with a string of noncommittal words and meaningless platitudes.
Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers opening remarks at the Liberal caucus in Edmonton on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken
To paraphrase Lyndon Johnson—while you struggle to remain optimistic it is starting to feel like Mark Carney has been pissing on your leg and telling you it’s raining.
Sure, there are rare occasions when it appears he will support a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. He got our hopes up during an election campaign stop in Kelowna and once again at the Calgary Stampede pancake breakfast.
But what he has actually done is to give Quebec a veto over a revival of the Energy East Pipeline and presented us with Bill C-5, which by itself will do little to get strategically important projects built, including a revived Northern Gateway pipeline.
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Still, many diehard optimists remain hopeful. We anxiously awaited the promised September announcement of the first five projects being developed under the Building Canada Act. Perhaps our country’s economic revival would soon be underway.
What we got was the announcement of previously announced projects.—some had already been launched. Carney announced a new mine for Saskatchewan — a project that was planned years ago. Importantly, for the Liberals, the new mine will support jobs at a smelter in Quebec.
Nothing was said at the Building Canada projects announcement about approving a new oil pipeline to any coast.
But others saw grounds for hope. The re-announcement of a gas pipeline to a new LNG terminal on the West Coast seemed like a positive step. Now that there are environmentally sanctimonious governments in Europe (Mark Carney’s safe space) who want our gas the Liberals have decided it’s okay to export it.
During the 2025 federal election campaign, virtually every prominent CEO and conventional energy industry leader in Western Canada had signed onto what was referred to as the “Build Canada Now” letter.
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The letter presented a clear and concise action plan to “unlock Canada’s world class oil and natural gas resources to strengthen Canada’s economic resilience, sovereignty and prosperity.” The letter presented
a list of five things the federal government needs to do to achieve those objectives.
First on the list is the need to significantly simplify the regulatory framework for energy production and pipeline projects. The letter specifically identifies the Impact Assessment Act (Bill C-69) and the West Coast Tanker Ban (Bill C-48) as major impediments to development.
After the April 28 election, the CEOs sent a follow-up letter which welcomed statements the prime minister had made during the campaign about “Canada becoming an energy superpower, one that harnesses both conventional and clean energy resources.”
Then, on September 15, four days after the prime minister announced the previously announced projects, 96 conventional energy CEOs sent him a third letter. This one reiterated the assurances and policy changes the CEOs said were required to ensure progress contained in the original Build Canada Now letter sent in March.
One conclusion we can draw is that the CEOs are not convinced Bill C-5 provides the assurances and policy changes required to generate significant development in the conventional energy sector.
It’s gratifying to see the leaders of successful Canadian businesses stand up for their industry and the interests of the producing provinces.
Less comforting is the fact they saw a need to send a third letter.
What comes next? Do we keep sending Carney copies of the original letter, say once every month, until something good happens?
Come on people. This is starting to get really embarrassing.
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The way the majority of the people from Saskatchewan and Alberta voted in the last federal election is a good indication we actually know at some level that the federal Liberals are incompetent and frequently corrupt. And we also know Liberals from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City aren’t really our friends, despite the equalization welfare we send them.
So why aren’t we doing much about it besides keeping our fingers crossed and sending reminder notices?
It is quite true that Albertans have far more skin in the game regarding the need for a new pipeline to the coast than those of us in Saskatchewan. However, another export pipeline to markets other than the US will make more room for Saskatchewan crude oil in the US and would stand to increase production here. It would assist us in achieving our goal of increasing production from ~450,000 barrels per day to one million barrels per day within a decade or so.
In addition, the coastal pipeline issue is politically significant to both provinces because it symbolizes the subservient status of the Prairie provinces within Confederation. It is a reflection of the injustice of the equalization program; emissions mandates; overly zealous COVID-19 restrictions; a ridiculous EV mandate; carbon taxes; censorship of speech about oil; planned restrictions on nitrogen fertilizer use, and threats to tax methane emitted by cattle.
Ottawa has only rarely made it easy for the West to succeed. In the wake of the Arab Oil embargo in 1973, the federal Liberals defied the BNA Act by raiding the revenues generated by Western oil. Ottawa’s National Energy Program (NEP) included a provision requiring the producing provinces in the West to sell oil within Canada at less than the world price. And it gave Ottawa the ability to charge taxes on oil production that cut into provincial royalty and tax revenues.
It took the election of a Conservative federal government in 1984 to eliminate the hated NEP.
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By 2015, a fanatical brand of environmentalism, opposed to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, had been embraced by Canada’s Liberal Party leaders. Taxing the industry and controlling prices would no longer be the goal. The new mission is to destroy the prospects for expanding the petroleum sector.
The Liberals were similarly hoping to regulate and tax natural gas production out of existence until the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused an energy shortage in Europe. The Liberals have deigned to allow exports of LNG in support of their European role models while continuing to restrict its use in Canada by way of industrial carbon taxes and mandates such as the clean electricity standard.
For more than 10 years now the Liberals have failed to acknowledge the economically ruinous effects of their environmental and climate change mitigation policies.
Danielle Smith succinctly summed up the past five decades of conflict with Ottawa over Western resources when she said, “The Liberals under Pierre Trudeau only wanted to steal our oil, the Justin Trudeau Liberals wanted to kill the industry.”
And, there is little evidence to show the Carney Liberals’ conventional energy policies will be significantly different than that of Justin Trudeau’s.
Notwithstanding all of the challenges noted above there are people from Alberta and Saskatchewan taking action in support of the petroleum sector.
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Earlier this year, Danielle Smith presented a list of nine energy-related demands to the prime minister. She insisted there be progress made on addressing them by September. The Liberals have only a couple weeks left to deliver. We have no indication of what if anything will happen when they don’t.
Smith’s government has also made it easier for Albertans who support independence to successfully file a petition requiring a provincial referendum on separation.
Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith speaks to media prior to the first ministers’ meeting in Saskatoon on Monday, June 2, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards
The Government of Saskatchewan has defied federal laws by eliminating the consumer carbon tax on home heating fuels and ignoring the 2030 deadline for ending coal-fired electrical power generation.
And of course both Alberta and Saskatchewan have backed lawsuits challenging ill-conceived, federal legislation such as their challenge of Bill C-69. As a result of that challenge the Supreme Court of Canada ruled sections of Impact assessment Act were unconstitutional because they infringed on provincial jurisdiction.
But, clearly none of the above have been sufficient to move the needle much when it comes to satisfying our longstanding grievances with Ottawa and federalism as it is currently constituted.
Hopefully, there are smart people who can come up with a strategy for achieving the seismic shift in Canadian politics required to achieve meaningful change. But how long we might have to wait to see that change is a concern. Remaining patient and thinking meaningful change is something that occurs incrementally over the long-term is not all that satisfying. We have been doing that with only occasional success since Alberta and Saskatchewan joined Confederation in 1905. Furthermore, in the long-term we’ll all be dead.
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It appears that plenty of the investors who normally support big resource development projects have been voting with their wallets. They have decided Mark Carney’s Canada is a poor place to invest.
Who can blame them?
You have to wonder if we are committing the sunk costs fallacy, assuming we have too much invested in the conventional energy sector to give up on its future expansion. Our motto might be “Let’s go on beating our heads against the wall and hope that the next time we complain we will get a different result.”
It is hard to blame the separatists for assuming something radically different will be required before the two Western-most prairie provinces will feel like they have some control over their future.
Yet some of us still can’t help ourselves. We continue to grasp at any little excuse for optimism. It is after all still possible there are solutions to some of our problems that could plausibly arise in the next few months or years.
One welcome eventuality would be an early defeat of the Liberals’ minority government in the House of Commons, followed by a majority Conservative election victory. It couldn’t help but be an improvement.
Note to readers: just prior to publication of this article, a prominent, well-respected, energy industry analyst from Alberta bet me a loonie that I am being overly pessimistic about the potential for expanding western Canada’s petroleum production and exports.
He claims Canada’s economic prospects are so grim our prime minister has no choice but to get another large oil pipeline from Alberta to a year-round coastal port approved and completed. Exporting more oil; especially to countries other than the US—is Canada’s best chance to boost its flagging economy within a relatively short amount of time.
I really hope I lose the bet.
Jim
Editor’s note: At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9, Pipeline Online Editor Brian Zinchuk and Bronwyn Eyre will have guest Eric Anderson of the Saskatchewan Industrial and Mining Suppliers Association (SIMSA) on the Pipeline Online Podcast. The discussion will focus on SIMSA’s Energy Suppliers Forum on Oct. 8 as well as the organizaiton being tasked to put together a supply chain for nuclear power generaiton in Saskatchewan. You can watch live on:
X at https://x.com/Pipeline_Online (best option)
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pipelineonlineca
or YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/brianzinchuk
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