Full Comment - Look what happens in Alberta when we let it do stuff

00:00:00.000 Alberta appears to be on a bit of a tear recently.

00:00:05.080 Three big wins for Alberta Premier Daniel Smith.

00:00:07.700 First, it was the pipeline proposal with the federal government,

00:00:11.460 albeit to a southern route, not the northwest coast.

00:00:14.120 Then an announcement of a pipeline proposal with Ontario

00:00:17.560 that would take oil from Hardesty, Alberta to Sarnia, Ontario.

00:00:20.740 And then finally, the big one, just a couple of days ago,

00:00:23.800 Meta doing a $13 billion investment in an AI data centre north of Edmonton.

00:00:30.300 I'm happy to stand here today and say that Alberta's government has formally filed

00:00:34.080 our West Coast oil pipeline submission to the Federal Major Projects Office

00:00:38.460 for a project of national interest listing under the Building Canada Act.

00:00:44.060 After signing an agreement last year to work together with Alberta and Saskatchewan

00:00:48.360 to build new pipelines through an economic corridor from Alberta to Ontario,

00:00:52.340 The government of Ontario is here today to unveil a potential route for a new 3,300-kilometer oil pipeline from Hardesty, Alberta to Sarnia, Ontario.

00:01:02.840 Meta has announced plans to build its first Canadian data centre in Alberta, representing an investment of more than $13 billion in our province.

00:01:12.500 So what's happening? Are these real proposals? Are these, pardon the pun, but pipe dreams?

00:01:17.460 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment podcast. I'm Brian Lilly, your host.

00:01:20.500 We're going to look at the three proposals, but also the overall investment climate for Alberta and Canada.

00:01:26.600 What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?

00:01:29.380 To help us figure this out as someone who knows the investment world well, Brett Wilson.

00:01:34.040 You know him. You've seen him on Dragon's Den. He's been an investment banker for a decade.

00:01:38.280 He heads up Prairie Merchant Bank in Calgary, and he joins us from his offices there.

00:01:43.400 Brett, it's been a pretty impressive week.

00:01:46.260 whether you like danielle smith or don't and i'm pretty sure you like her um you got to look at

00:01:51.160 this and go these are three big wins well to start with i'm a fan of alberta i'm a fan of canada

00:01:56.760 and within that i love the way danielle is trying to work with the noise and nonsense she's very

00:02:02.660 much aligned with scott moe scott scott moe more than any other premier seems to understand the

00:02:08.120 value of natural resources the value of the west little confusion with ebay little confusion with

00:02:13.440 WAP canoe, but Ford seems to be now aligned with all the noise. And so, yeah, you're absolutely

00:02:18.660 right. We're getting pipelines. We need power lines. There's a lot of things we need, and it

00:02:24.120 looks like we're making some progress. All right. So the last week, though, from a business point

00:02:30.600 of view and a political point of view, how would you rate Smith's last week? Well, the Meta Data

00:02:35.720 Center has been underway for about eight months. I ended up working in the background with some of

00:02:39.520 politics and bureaucrats. I'm not invested in it, but I'm a huge believer in data centers and I am

00:02:45.040 in the power business. So we had been dancing, talking to Meta, and we'll continue to talk to

00:02:49.360 Meta and anyone else who wants to build another data center in Alberta. But what they're doing

00:02:53.760 up in Sturgeon County is unbelievable. A 13 plus billion dollar investment. The cash that's going

00:03:01.680 to come out of that for Alberta is extraordinary. So here's Meta saying, we want to dance, we want

00:03:06.200 to play and what was really interesting is there wasn't a single person from ontario ottawa in

00:03:11.220 particular at the press conference so in other words the federal government had nothing to do

00:03:15.760 with this major project even though they claim and they have a minister for ai i like him i was

00:03:23.440 on his show a few times but he just isn't engaged he just isn't connecting he isn't part of it

00:03:28.780 surprises me that evan solomon wouldn't have been there though maybe he didn't know that we were

00:03:33.660 having the press conference but he clearly he wasn't invited and uh but yeah i sat in on the

00:03:38.840 press conference because i'm very close to the folks at meta and i'm very close to the electricity

00:03:43.080 group and in fact meta specifically thanked nathan newdorf and me for their role our roles in helping

00:03:49.740 in the background but the real point is that the government intervention has been all positive and

00:03:54.800 people are kind of going well just a minute did you check the water did you check the power did

00:03:58.700 you check the gas did you check the land and i'm going just a minute they spent eight months getting

00:04:02.580 this organized, maybe a year. In fact, it's well organized. It's well underway. And in fact,

00:04:07.380 I think construction physically starts this week. We'll talk about the data center in depth in a

00:04:12.860 couple of moments. But first off, let me ask you, what is happening with all this different

00:04:19.760 investment or potential investment in Alberta? Is it just that Premier Smith is setting the right

00:04:27.960 tone? Is it the geography and the natural resources? You know, as one of my media colleagues

00:04:35.780 said, feels like an oil boom out here right now. And the oil industry is doing okay, but it's not

00:04:41.460 oil boom times. Well, it's a little bit of everything natural resource-based, but let's

00:04:45.940 go back to the fall when the MOU was announced and clean energy regulations were punted and

00:04:51.800 Guibo quit. That was one of the most powerful positive messages for natural resource development

00:04:57.120 unimaginable. I'm in the electricity business. We weren't going to build another power plant

00:05:01.620 ever under the MOU rule, under the CER, Clean Energy Regulations, where after 10 years you

00:05:08.140 had to pump the excess CO2, whatever defined excess as, and how you'd pump it, where you'd

00:05:13.340 pump it, why you'd pump it. All that was unknown, but that was going to be Guy Bo's rules.

00:05:17.800 So they took him out. The good news is that we can now build power plants. The great news is we

00:05:22.760 can add data centers we need more power in canada we need more power everywhere alberta is reasonably

00:05:28.780 flush we have a lot of natural um natural resource based to call it natural gas we also have an awful

00:05:36.700 lot of renewables the renewables are not reliable so consumers end up effectively paying for both

00:05:43.680 renewables and reliable the natural gas i get annoyed and frustrated by that but here we are

00:05:49.520 And we've got a great platform to work from.

00:05:52.420 I mean, look, Alberta moving towards natural gas

00:05:54.760 is actually a good thing from an environmental point of view

00:05:58.080 because Alberta has long used coal.

00:06:00.380 And there's no way to slice it.

00:06:03.500 Coal's not great.

00:06:05.500 It's better than freezing to death.

00:06:07.380 But, you know, if you've got better alternatives, use them.

00:06:11.020 Is Alberta looking at or is anyone in Alberta looking at

00:06:14.500 moving towards nuclear, large-scale, or small modular reactors?

00:06:19.380 I know Premier Kenney, when he was still in office, signed on to Ford's MOU with Mo and with Blaine Higgs in New Brunswick about the small modular reactors.

00:06:31.360 Is Alberta looking at nuclear at all?

00:06:33.920 Very much so.

00:06:34.680 So the Hennuset family is very active.

00:06:36.740 I was actually talking to them yesterday.

00:06:39.100 They were wondering if they got a data center developed quickly, if they could use my power plant until they got their nuclear plant up and running.

00:06:47.360 Obviously, nuclear takes 10, 15 years. They're hoping 7 to 10 right now, so that's an acceleration over where it once was. But no, so nuclear is a big part of the future, but it's really big for Saskatchewan in particular. Saskatchewan is still burning thermal coal, as is China. China's expanding its thermal coal fleet. Saskatchewan's still burning coal, and amazingly, there's no noise, no noise at all.

00:07:11.660 We produce virtually no thermal coal in the West other than in Saskatchewan, but we do

00:07:18.040 produce metallurgical coal, which is valuable.

00:07:21.500 Yeah, the thermal coal plant, the main one in Saskatchewan is Estevan, and I've visited

00:07:26.360 that with former Premier Brad Wall to see the carbon capture and storage, which is now

00:07:32.940 raised up as a big issue again when it comes to the Pathways Project and bringing forward

00:07:38.040 a federal pipeline.

00:07:39.020 So let's talk about the federal pipeline now.

00:07:41.660 you know, my colleague Lauren Gunter thought this would never be built. There were lots of people

00:07:47.380 who said they would never get this far. Were you one of the people that said there's never going

00:07:53.240 to be a West Coast pipeline, too many things in the way? What was your view of this before

00:07:58.380 the MOU and this recent announcement? Well, the greatest impediment to building pipelines

00:08:04.440 was regulatory approvals. And regulatory means local communities. It means indigenous. It means

00:08:10.360 provincial, it means municipal, it means federal, it means all those approvals. So the fact that

00:08:14.920 there's no apparent business that wants to build pipelines, they're all going to sit on the

00:08:20.080 sidelines and wait until they see where this noise settles. And that's where I was a huge fan of the

00:08:25.360 northern pipeline. The route makes sense. It's efficient. It's a great place to develop. Carney

00:08:30.480 had once, I sat with him and chatted and he promised that he would modify the tanker ban in

00:08:36.000 due course and modify, meaning just change it enough that enough tankers could run as they do

00:08:41.940 up and down the coast. Why not in and out? So he had promised that that was a given, but clearly

00:08:46.460 EB and I would call it some First Nation noise. I'm partnered with First Nations in the Yukon.

00:08:52.640 We just invested heavily through the Yukon in Prince Rupert with an indigenous group. We believe

00:08:59.300 in the indigenous groups, sorry, the indigenous groups believe that there's more for Prince

00:09:03.540 Rupert. Now, the reality is LNG and LNG pipelines will be an integral part of what happens in the

00:09:08.980 north. The southern route, which is effectively the third pipeline in the Trans Mountain route,

00:09:14.620 so we've got Trans Mountain, we've got Enbridge, both dancing, both playing, they're going to

00:09:18.280 develop and expand enough that Alberta will have all the excess capacity it needs for the

00:09:25.220 foreseeable future. And by that, I mean three to five years. So I hear your statement on the

00:09:31.400 northern route much more it's the you know uh straight shot to uh to asia it's the closest

00:09:38.540 route it you know less time to to trans uh transit product uh how do you weigh that off against the

00:09:46.720 benefit of going on the southern route and you're essentially using existing right of way which

00:09:52.360 means it should speed things up i think the northern route is going to get parked it just

00:09:57.620 doesn't have the momentum. When you've got EB fighting, and he's even reluctantly saying,

00:10:02.980 I'm going to shut up and stop complaining. That's more or less what he said, because he's getting

00:10:07.040 paid off to do that. So he's allowing that route to go. And the noise in terms of the north,

00:10:13.440 still to be amplified, still to be dealt with. But again, that'll be an LNG pipeline,

00:10:17.260 not an oil pipeline. And that'll come in due course. I'm confident that Prince Rupert's got

00:10:21.740 every reason to grow. My indigenous partners wouldn't be investing in the Prince Rupert region 1.00

00:10:27.320 if we didn't believe in the future.

00:10:29.220 So I'm heavily on side with that.

00:10:31.380 The confusion comes.

00:10:32.720 There was no noise whatsoever, by the way, Brian,

00:10:35.720 when effectively the Keystone XL pipeline

00:10:38.760 was effectively repurposed as the South Bow

00:10:42.160 and whatever the Americans call their version.

00:10:44.360 Bridger.

00:10:45.000 Yeah.

00:10:45.620 So we're effectively building a pipeline

00:10:47.940 that Trudeau wasn't supportive of,

00:10:50.680 that Biden canceled, that Obama canceled,

00:10:53.800 but we've now got that pipeline quietly going ahead.

00:10:55.940 Now, they're doing root work. They're doing supply work. But again, that's private industry building a pipeline. And nobody's talking about it because it's private industry building a pipeline. Well, wow. And so the north pipeline, I think, has been parked. I think that root is still a concept in particular for LNG. But the southern pipeline is all that's been approved. And I don't think there's any point in debating that anymore. I think real money will come.

00:11:20.360 Well, Premier Smith, on the Northern Pipeline, Premier Smith told me recently that if it goes forward, it will have to be once Indigenous groups in the area step forward and say, look, we're interested, we want a partner.

00:11:40.000 Because otherwise, there's just too much, as you say, noise.

00:11:44.380 Although, you know, many of the groups in and around Prince Rupert would be supportive of it, but you've got this activist group called Coastal First Nations, which is not a First Nation in and of itself.

00:11:55.960 It's a not-for-profit set up in Vancouver with American activist money 20-odd years ago that their original name, their legal name still, is the Great Bear Rainforest Society.

00:12:09.020 And then they rebranded as Coastal First Nations.

00:12:11.640 And most of my media colleagues treat them as if it's an actual First Nations band.

00:12:17.700 And, oh, so they have some say in this.

00:12:20.060 No, no, they don't.

00:12:21.860 But I was speaking with several First Nations that I'm close to.

00:12:24.860 And I said, I'd like to start a group called Prairie First Nations and I'll be the leader.

00:12:29.880 And they looked at me and said, what do you mean?

00:12:31.100 I said, well, you got Coastal First Nations without anyone who's a leader.

00:12:33.960 What does it matter?

00:12:35.220 And again, foreign funded.

00:12:36.420 They're clearly anti-resource development, and they're not in favor of the First Nations even playing a thoughtful political role in what's going on there.

00:12:45.580 And as I shared, I've got 14 First Nations in the Yukon as partners.

00:12:48.980 I've got six First Nations signed up as partners with a coal mine that I'm developing in northern Alberta.

00:12:54.340 And I've got six First Nations in Saskatoon, or Sask, pardon me, North Battleford, who I work collaboratively with as we try to grow how we work as a community.

00:13:02.700 And so I'm working with what's a total of 22, 25 First Nations, and not one of them is opposed to the growing of our economy. It's thoughtful. I mean, we've had lots of problems with confusion over hereditary versus elected chiefs. We've had a lot of confusion over whether a First Nation should say we're completely opposed so they can get paid more.

00:13:23.860 That's what's been happening.

00:13:25.600 And that's history has proven it.

00:13:27.160 And that's what causes them not to collaborate, which is my pitch.

00:13:31.200 Why don't we sit down at the table, arm wrestle a bit, figure out what's right.

00:13:35.320 Make sure we take care of your family.

00:13:37.200 And they're in the second and third generation on the reserve.

00:13:40.360 And let's take care of everyone.

00:13:41.500 But we can do this if we work together. 0.79

00:13:44.380 Are you expecting any indigenous concerns or activist groups to try and stop the southern

00:13:50.140 route, given that it, you know, as I mentioned, essentially runs along the same right of way as

00:13:55.720 TMX, all is the same path? There's a bit of new routing. They've got to have a new, I know we're

00:14:00.940 going to go to a new terminal, so there's some work to be done there. So there'll be some work

00:14:04.360 to do to solve those. But again, the bulk of the route is existing relationships. Are the First

00:14:09.940 Nations going to ask for more? For sure. But is that doable and achievable? I mean, they've all

00:14:14.560 signed deals they've all been taken care of so the probability of a solution in a timely manner

00:14:21.380 is pretty high david eby um billions flowing his way into the ndp government of british columbia

00:14:28.600 we saw the housing uh condo bailout we saw it and plus another 3.2 billion dollars in housing

00:14:36.980 and then we found out well he's also going to get there's some tolls on the pipeline that

00:14:42.460 They're going to get paid for everything that goes through.

00:14:46.080 Did taxpayers overpay to get David Eby to shut up?

00:14:50.820 I'm convinced that Eby's one of the greatest impediments to Canada, to the West, to natural

00:14:57.060 resources, his disdain for everything.

00:15:00.180 And I mean, just spend two seconds on that condo issue, bailing out condo developers.

00:15:05.520 Where the hell did that come from?

00:15:07.200 And I'm having trouble not dropping F-bombs.

00:15:08.920 It makes no sense whatsoever to bail out those guys.

00:15:12.680 If they lose money developing it,

00:15:14.540 they write it off at a federal level on tax,

00:15:17.160 but they don't need a bailout.

00:15:18.360 I just don't get it.

00:15:19.140 I don't see it.

00:15:19.820 I don't understand it.

00:15:21.680 And you're saying that as someone

00:15:23.120 who's probably taken a few haircuts over the years

00:15:25.800 when it comes to your investments.

00:15:28.100 I'm heavily invested in the Kelowna region right now.

00:15:31.780 We were looking at building five towers.

00:15:34.200 The inbound interest in building those towers

00:15:36.600 disappeared the moment the Cowichan and the noise around who actually owns the BC lands lots of

00:15:43.860 confusion over First Nations do they have rights what is EB giving them EB says everything's fine

00:15:49.220 the First Nations go yeah we like everything we're going to get nobody really knows what they're

00:15:53.240 going to get and I can tell you right now that businesses have shut down their interest in

00:15:58.000 helping me develop in Kelowna and I don't have the balance sheet to build five towers but the guys in

00:16:04.040 Vancouver, who would have, have said, whoa, can't play right now. And that's because we still need

00:16:08.660 to solve, call it the EB problem. Why would you if you don't know who's going to own the land?

00:16:15.260 Yeah, we had Dwight Newman from the University of Saskatchewan, a legal scholar, on to talk about

00:16:21.500 that whole issue around Squamish, around Musqueam, and property rights. And his take was that all

00:16:30.640 the people saying there's nothing to worry about are wrong. He also said all the people saying

00:16:35.540 your property rights are gone already are wrong. He said, there's a lot of confusion. And I said,

00:16:40.920 well, if I'm a property owner, should I be worried? He said, yes. That's enough uncertainty

00:16:47.560 for anyone to back out of a land deal at that point. The way my partner and I are looking at

00:16:53.520 what we've got going on in Kelowna is that we're going to continue to run the businesses that are

00:16:57.920 on the land, but we're going to park the idea of redevelopment for a decade. There's just no point

00:17:04.340 in expanding. And I've got inbound. I've got some land over in West Kelowna. I've got three major

00:17:10.340 retailers wanting me to build on my own land. And even now I'm hesitant. And that's with inbound.

00:17:17.060 We didn't phone them. They phoned us. So there's people who want to do stuff in Kelowna or in BC.

00:17:22.740 is just confusion. Back to the pipeline, you said that you're pretty sure a private sector

00:17:29.080 proponent will come forward. So you seem sure that this is going to happen. There are folks

00:17:33.680 in the oil patch that are saying, oh no, there's only a 50-50 chance this will happen. There's a

00:17:38.440 lot of very skeptical people on this. You don't share the skepticism that the pipeline will

00:17:45.620 actually proceed one day and be financially viable. So I have some off-the-record conversations

00:17:52.120 with people in the pipeline business.

00:17:54.460 But let's be clear,

00:17:55.200 there isn't a single pipeline company

00:17:56.820 that's going to wave a flag and say,

00:17:58.800 oh yeah, we'll do it.

00:18:00.380 Until all the regulatory uncertainty is solved,

00:18:04.860 and that's the idea of the MOU started it,

00:18:07.440 the announcement now of the Southern Pipeline Route

00:18:10.980 makes a huge difference

00:18:12.460 to allowing real conversations in the background.

00:18:15.580 And is Enbridge dancing?

00:18:17.100 Is Trans Mountain dancing?

00:18:18.460 And Trans Mountain has the balance sheet

00:18:19.820 because they're federally owned.

00:18:21.520 Are they going to do it?

00:18:22.780 The odds are high, very, very high.

00:18:24.900 The question is, how much do we need to expand our oil production in Alberta?

00:18:30.180 So we've got, obviously, the new corridor, which Doug Ford and Smith announced.

00:18:39.540 And they call it a corridor.

00:18:40.680 It's not a pipeline route.

00:18:41.620 But the idea is getting better routing from Alberta down into Sarnia rather than looping through the United States,

00:18:48.720 which is the shortest route, the most logical route,

00:18:51.740 but as you know, the state of Minnesota?

00:18:56.700 Michigan.

00:18:57.280 Michigan has attempted to undermine our own pipeline,

00:19:00.820 which is our oil coming into the U.S. and back out of the U.S.,

00:19:04.280 and Michigan's still getting in the way.

00:19:06.260 And also, there's a spur line on it that supplies a good chunk of Michigan

00:19:11.400 and the Chicagoland area.

00:19:13.720 They need the product, but by the way,

00:19:15.880 we still haven't solved getting a bridge working.

00:19:18.720 We can't get a bridge to work in that same region.

00:19:21.760 So there's lots of confusion over, call it cross-border disdain, but these are all solvables.

00:19:27.300 That's from my perspective, the idea of a route, of a corridor, whether it's ultimately

00:19:32.700 used for pipelines or power lines or however we want to connect our country, and there's

00:19:39.340 talk of electricity being the greatest issue, ultimately, in terms of how we produce it

00:19:44.260 and where we deliver it.

00:19:46.160 But I'm a big fan still of what we're doing.

00:19:49.140 And these pipelines, again, let's not forget, Keystone XL, effectively approved.

00:19:53.860 The pipeline to the West Coast, effectively approved.

00:19:57.040 And are there economic providers in the background working on that?

00:20:00.380 Well, Enbridge and Trans Mountain are real.

00:20:02.620 And now the question is, how much does the government fund various indigenous groups?

00:20:06.760 How are they going to help various parties?

00:20:08.560 And I think indigenous will be a big part of the next step in terms of what's announced.

00:20:13.580 Well, let's take a break and then come back and talk about that Doug Ford proposal.

00:20:18.340 And it really is an Ontario-driven proposal to get a pipeline from the west to the east.

00:20:23.580 I think that's great politics and good for national unity.

00:20:27.420 We'll talk about that when we come back with Brett Wilson.

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00:23:09.520 The Northern Shield Energy Corridor will include a new pipeline built using Canadian steel by Canadian workers

00:23:17.280 that will bring oil from Heart of Sea, Alberta, to new and expanded refineries in Sarnia, Ontario,

00:23:24.920 including Sarnia's vital energy and shipping routes.

00:23:28.920 That's Ontario Premier Doug Ford talking about his pipeline project.

00:23:32.660 But Brett, were you a little surprised to hear an Ontario premier talk about he wants to build a pipeline to transport Alberta oil?

00:23:40.200 It's not what you really think about at the moment.

00:23:43.700 It wasn't my expectation.

00:23:45.440 And part of it is my historical frustration that we've imported oil from other parts of the world for the East Coast to refine and process.

00:23:54.500 And we have some oil going to the West or to the East from Western Canada.

00:23:58.100 But the amount of oil that we bring in and people say, well, it's not that big a deal.

00:24:01.520 well yeah but we're losing economically the ability to produce our own oil and paying

00:24:06.420 foreign countries that don't care about the environment or the politics of north america

00:24:11.340 they don't care at all and so it's been confusing and so that's where with doug ford stepping up

00:24:16.040 and as you know wab canoe didn't seem to be at the press conference and doug ford or pardon me

00:24:21.340 scott mo said we're on side but yeah canoe has basically said we're not there we're not going

00:24:26.600 to support this and with wab canoe and nahid nenshi effectively now reporting to avi lewis

00:24:34.020 who's anti-fuel fossil fuels period how does the ndp play a role in developing our country and that

00:24:40.920 confuses eb it confuses nenshi it confuses wab canoe yeah um it's interesting that uh the canoe's

00:24:50.420 not there. Ford did say, I get along great with them. He's a good guy. We'll try and bring him

00:24:56.520 on side. I mean, let's see. Ford spent years in sales. Let's see if he can do that. Hopefully he

00:25:01.500 can. Is it a pipe dream though? I mean, 3,300 kilometers. That's a very long pipeline. Goes

00:25:09.540 through some rough terrain, goes over the head of Lake Superior, loops around, back down to Sarnia,

00:25:14.980 the origins of Canada's oil and petrochemicals sector.

00:25:20.660 That's why Sarnia has long been a processing plant.

00:25:23.700 It's the terminus of line five, which currently brings your oil.

00:25:27.860 And by the way, in defense of my province,

00:25:29.480 we're 80 to 85% Canadian oil and 15% imported.

00:25:34.480 Once you get past us, it flips.

00:25:37.460 It flips completely.

00:25:39.080 And we need to fix that.

00:25:42.000 Well, that goes back to the big question though, Brian.

00:25:44.140 global reliability and if the straight removes is concerning us then why aren't we focused on

00:25:50.720 improving our own capacity to produce oil from our own natural resource and and use it as a country

00:25:58.860 so the idea of increasing what we ship to ontario is a to me it's compelling now how are they going

00:26:05.100 to get i mean you don't some of the pipe will be overground um some of it's going to go through

00:26:09.920 existing right-of-ways and lots of confusion. But this isn't the first time pipelines have been

00:26:14.220 built. And in fact, pipelines are being built left, right, and center all over the United States of

00:26:19.560 America. And there's no noise. It's just happening. They're just doing it. Well, and I think that's

00:26:25.140 what we should be doing. But, you know, Ford's been pretty adept at dealing with First Nations

00:26:30.140 groups trying to get the rain of fire. He got them to lead a indigenous-led environmental

00:26:37.220 assessment on the rain of fire for the road to get up there, you know, there's still a

00:26:43.220 lot of hurdles there and there's always going to be, but that has to give you some hope

00:26:47.460 that the bands are looking and saying, okay, we're living in poverty right now.

00:26:52.660 This is not good.

00:26:53.640 This can bring about prosperity and they can have a Ross Ellis moment to take it back to

00:26:58.020 BC.

00:26:59.800 You know, he had a big change of heart when he was chief in his home band.

00:27:06.460 Well, and to make somewhat fun of it, I mean, from Alberta, Hardesty, to the Manitoba-Ontario border, it's relatively flat. Long slope, maybe a few hundred feet, a few valleys, a couple of rivers, but it's so easy in the context of traversing, where we want to describe it, our provinces.

00:27:31.860 And so, ultimately, Scott Moe was on side, and ultimately, Wob Canoe's just going to get paid off to allow a pipeline through his own land, which his people want.

00:27:40.240 He needs revenue.

00:27:40.980 He can't just say, no, we don't do this.

00:27:43.460 Did you see the polling recently?

00:27:45.080 I think it was a, yeah, it was a global story.

00:27:46.900 David Akin at Global got a hold of polling done for the Privy Council office for the PM, and it was 67% across the country agreed with more pipelines, and it was a majority in every province, including Quebec and B.C.,

00:28:01.860 But Canadians, I think, understand that A, we need electricity, B, we need fossil fuels to run.

00:28:09.660 Like, it's that simple.

00:28:10.700 And they may prefer to be slightly objectionable over environmental concerns and economic sharing and who's got what rights.

00:28:19.620 Those are all debatables.

00:28:21.220 But the end game is that we need the capacity to, again, make and ship electricity and then drill and ship natural gas and crude oil.

00:28:30.160 the um the toronto star as opposed to this pipeline which i think is one of the main reasons to say it

00:28:37.540 should go ahead but the um the michigan uh democrats as we talked about earlier is another

00:28:43.220 reason that i think we have to do this i don't think that that's going away and as much as people

00:28:49.000 want to thump their chest about donald trump this has been about 10 years of democrats in michigan

00:28:55.440 constantly talking about shutting down this pipeline

00:28:59.260 and for environmental reasons.

00:29:02.180 The home of the auto industry

00:29:03.520 wants to get rid of fossil fuels.

00:29:05.940 That's not going to end,

00:29:07.540 especially, you know,

00:29:09.220 the Democratic Socialists of America

00:29:11.480 is a rump group that has inserted themselves

00:29:15.040 into the main Democrat party in the U.S.

00:29:18.080 And they seem to be taking over,

00:29:19.380 including in Michigan.

00:29:20.380 So I think that in the next 10 years,

00:29:22.980 there's a good chance that line five is shut off that the taps are done and the jets at pearson

00:29:28.620 will be idled that's that's the outcome but the good news is if they do that they themselves are

00:29:36.280 screwed relative to the fuels that they need that are coming in so there's going to have to be some

00:29:41.240 trade-offs and it's really confusing as to how a group of people in the united states can say

00:29:45.760 we won't allow you to have a product that you're shipping to us it just doesn't ultimately make

00:29:52.420 sense except for the democrats i guess all right to back up and look at all of this to look at

00:29:57.520 the southern route into vancouver to look at south bow which as you mentioned it's going ahead

00:30:03.700 and nobody's noticing the the i call it the frankenstein keystone xl because we're reviving

00:30:10.200 part of it from the dead yeah the the ford proposal at this point you know sure carney's

00:30:18.340 trying to do what he can carve out for this carve out for that but what premier smith calls the nine

00:30:23.960 bad laws still exist yeah do you think that to help these projects other projects the business

00:30:31.660 climate overall that they actually need to be repealed or in some cases repealed and replaced

00:30:37.280 well that's where the nine the nine rules ranging from tiger tanker bands to uh all the noise that's

00:30:44.240 been created anti-development. And that's where Hodgson claims to be on side. They've hired

00:30:49.560 Ms. Farrell to be the head of the major projects office. She is brilliant, but I think she's also

00:30:56.540 been forced to sit on her hands. I haven't seen her engage. I haven't seen her be active. I mean,

00:31:01.840 we talk about all these new projects coming, but Metta came to the table without a single element

00:31:07.500 of federal involvement. Nothing. And this pipeline that goes from, you know, Alberta to through Doug

00:31:14.420 Ford's land, that had no federal involvement at all. And yet everything we're doing in Alberta

00:31:19.940 right now to ship to the East Coast or the West Coast is all tied to what EB and Kearney

00:31:26.040 effectively negotiated. So it's kind of bizarre the fact that we can get a pipeline, the new

00:31:31.320 modified Keystone XL. The route changed a little bit, but it's still the same practical outcome.

00:31:36.220 It's going, and there's very little noise.

00:31:38.840 And now all of a sudden, Doug Ford wants a corridor to take oil from Alberta into Sarnia,

00:31:43.960 which is where they consume and produce and revise, refine, and use oil.

00:31:49.000 It's just bizarre that we've got political confusion over who's in charge.

00:31:54.340 And as you point out, they do call it a corridor, so it could be more than a pipeline.

00:31:58.280 It could also be the electricity transmission towers.

00:32:04.020 Yeah, there's a lot of talk of increasing

00:32:05.880 or what they call the inter-ties.

00:32:08.340 But part of that ties to which province

00:32:10.580 can create excess power capacity.

00:32:14.780 And right now, Alberta has just enough.

00:32:18.080 We could ship a bit more, but we're generally tight.

00:32:22.120 And BC claims now that they're going to run short.

00:32:25.620 So they're having a problem trying to figure out

00:32:27.320 why they said no to natural gas-fueled power plants

00:32:31.200 in their own province, given the capacity they have for fuel or natural gas.

00:32:37.240 So it's a bit confusing as to where electricity goes on a national basis.

00:32:43.260 Look, Ontario is trying to expand, but expand to meet their needs.

00:32:47.940 I don't think they're looking to become, although Ontario does export to New York State,

00:32:54.920 Michigan, and Wisconsin already.

00:32:56.360 um but the the only premier i've talked to who really wants to expand is tim houston in nova

00:33:02.500 scotia he wants to put out a big offshore wind farm and ship it west now i don't think you can

00:33:10.300 ship that all the way to alberta yeah there's inefficiencies in the power lines the other thing

00:33:15.240 is so here we have several months ago the federal government says we're running short of electricity

00:33:19.640 not once have i seen any media about the 1.3 gigawatt pipe a power line that was built from

00:33:26.780 ontario or from quebec country or the province of quebec don't know what the desk where it started

00:33:32.480 but down into queens effectively shipping into new york that's 1.3 gigawatts and again we as a

00:33:38.980 province alberta produces 10 000 gigawatts or 10 000 or 10.3 gigawatts and we got 1.3 gigawatts

00:33:46.240 shipping to the US. And yet we claim nationally that we're running short of power, but we're

00:33:50.960 willing to ship to the US. Well, just a minute, there's a bit of confusion over, and they want to

00:33:56.000 stop us shipping oil or crude through the land. There's some sorting out that has to be done at

00:34:01.680 a pretty high level. Let's talk about the meta deal in a bit more detail. How big is the AI

00:34:09.140 economy going to be? Are you invested in AI yet? I don't want to sound like market call on BNN,

00:34:15.200 But are you invested in AI at this point? Is it something that you foresee being beneficial to the economy, detrimental to the economy and jobs? You know, we're seeing progressives and, you know, this is on the extreme side of the progressive political movement, literally attacking data centers.

00:34:37.060 some politicians are saying they'll never have them others are saying well not that interested

00:34:43.600 because it doesn't generate that many jobs once it's built what are your thoughts on on the ai

00:34:49.300 industry everyone seems to want to get in on it it's a huge part of the s&p 500 perhaps

00:34:54.840 overweighted we'll see but what are your thoughts on it overall but big picture a lot of wheels

00:35:00.500 spinning a lot of confusion over who can do what where the ability in alberta to build a power

00:35:06.620 plant and then access adjacent land in remote areas is high. You can't build a major data center

00:35:13.780 in downtown Ontario, Southern Ontario, whatever you want to call it. So it's hard to create those

00:35:19.680 things. I'm a little concerned about where data centers go over the next 10 and 20 years because

00:35:24.700 the technology will continue to improve. So the data centers get smaller. Do they go higher? Do

00:35:30.440 they need the same amount of electricity? Don't know. But the fact that Meta has made the decision

00:35:35.360 it did to step up at 13 billion and by the way i do run a power company are inbound for the power

00:35:42.080 company in terms of phone calls from data center developers and end users middlemen there's a whole

00:35:48.820 series of in the world of hyperscalers there's a whole series of people who think they're in charge

00:35:53.620 they've been calling and a lot of them are working with without a balance sheet a budget or the

00:35:59.780 information needed but i can tell you if indivia or meta or google wanted to build a data center

00:36:06.420 in alberta another one there'd be people able to do that in alberta because we do have enough power

00:36:12.180 we have the ability to grow i think on a global basis there's confusion over what data centers

00:36:17.560 are going to be yeah i think it can be beneficial for jobs will it replace some yeah sure atms

00:36:23.840 replace bank tellers but banks still employ thousands and thousands of people and this

00:36:28.160 will change work it doesn't mean it will end work and jobs that's my view on it when i had some

00:36:35.060 conversations with people at meta and politicians they talked about they have a called a rack tax

00:36:41.360 and the property taxes and whatever the talk was that this data center over the next 20 years

00:36:46.300 would generate four to five billion dollars four to five billion it doesn't you don't need a lot

00:36:54.060 employees to justify having that kind of money coming into the system how big was it that alberta

00:37:03.020 allowed for what we used to call in the industrial world co-gen so i grew up in hamilton with the

00:37:10.540 steel mills stelco and defasco used to co-generate or generate their own power uh meta's coming in

00:37:18.220 they're going to start off using power from the grid but they're building their own power plant

00:37:24.060 That's what Trump has allowed them to do in the States.

00:37:27.680 There are advantages to being in cold Northern Alberta

00:37:31.500 that, you know, as opposed to Nevada.

00:37:34.540 But how important was that part of it saying,

00:37:38.280 yeah, you can build your own power center

00:37:39.780 because some places they would say, oh no, 0.74

00:37:42.140 here in Ontario, I could see the NDP freaking out

00:37:45.360 saying, oh no, power plants must be publicly owned,

00:37:48.380 even though not all of ours are.

00:37:50.680 Yeah, see, Alberta is completely independent in that sense.

00:37:53.000 We are all privately owned by, whether it's Transalta or my company, Maxim, or the various power companies, Pembina, Kineticore.

00:38:02.640 There's lots of people who own electricity generation, and they're growing, Transalta, et cetera, et cetera.

00:38:07.700 That's what makes Alberta different.

00:38:10.040 But the fact is that when they set it up, they created a platform where there was a zero tax if you have your own power.

00:38:17.480 A 1% tax if you rely in part on the local grid up to a certain capacity, and then 2% if you had no other supply except the grid.

00:38:29.420 So there's some pretty healthy fines or penalties or fees payable, but that goes back to the big picture.

00:38:35.300 There's very few people who really understand how to build and operate a power plant, which is why in the case of this project, Green Lights, I think they're calling it,

00:38:44.440 Meta might be the data center, but between Capital Power, Pembina Pipelines, and Kineticor, and I think it was Morgan Stanley or one of the big U.S. funds was putting some cash into all this, they're building huge power plants.

00:38:58.580 I mean, a gigawatt, 900 megawatts, 1.8 megawatts of power.

00:39:02.860 Now, the other thing is that the government of Alberta did promise that they would allow a percentage of their grid capacity to go to data centers because they had enough surplus grid capacity.

00:39:12.920 and that's really how meta got to the table so quickly they're building a plant it'll take three

00:39:17.860 to four years to get a power plant but they should be online with a meta or pardon me with a data

00:39:22.320 center much quicker power plant engines take three to four years right now that's just to get the

00:39:27.200 engine then you got to finish installing it and grow it like our power plant we've announced that

00:39:31.900 we bought three months ago we won't get delivery of it until january of 2030 so three years just

00:39:38.000 to get delivery and we're putting up a couple hundred million dollars so we're pretty serious

00:39:43.060 about this that is impressive um let's back up away from alberta away from pipelines data centers

00:39:50.560 to the overall business climate in canada because you've dealt in every province in the country

00:39:57.300 you deal internationally is canada still a good place to invest we've got mark carney

00:40:03.140 just last week over in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia,

00:40:06.580 trying to drum up business.

00:40:08.400 We saw the story that UAE was going to walk away

00:40:12.040 from their 70 billion.

00:40:13.140 I've since talked to Jean Charest,

00:40:14.940 who's co-chair of the Canada-UAE Business Council.

00:40:18.640 He says, no, no, they're not walking away.

00:40:21.000 It's just the major projects office said

00:40:22.780 they're not able to take investment now,

00:40:25.260 but they are looking all over the place,

00:40:26.920 including in Alberta.

00:40:27.940 Is Canada a good place to invest,

00:40:30.000 or do we still have too many regulatory burdens

00:40:32.300 in the way i still believe i still believe in canada i think the regulatory burdens will weaken

00:40:38.800 and soften with time and that says as as the market proves its capacity and ability to do

00:40:44.940 things and again quietly keystone xl is being built quietly a southern pipeline will get built

00:40:49.860 quietly a northern pipeline will get built when i say quietly it's not going to have the amplified

00:40:54.480 noise remember when trudeau said we're opposed to all of this carney says at least we're on side

00:41:00.600 And then Eby says, I'm opposed, but now he's just saying, all right, well, as long as you pay me

00:41:04.440 enough, I'm on side. You got the First Nations opposed, but they're getting paid off to be

00:41:08.660 opposed, but they're getting paid off to be on side. So again, there's just more politics to

00:41:13.600 solve. And that's where I wish that the major projects office and its ability to just make

00:41:18.240 things happen could accelerate private capital investment. And that's the biggest delay we've

00:41:24.600 got is getting true private capital at the table. What about this major summit coming up in

00:41:31.720 September? It's the 14th and 15th of September here in Toronto. Mark Carney bringing in sovereign

00:41:38.240 wealth funds, pension funds. Is that a worthwhile endeavor? Will it put money into the system?

00:41:48.540 I think he has to be able to prove to the audience that his regulatory delays are being

00:41:54.440 managed in a more thoughtful way if we don't keep the conversation alive with global investment

00:41:59.300 and at one time i mean i was i started as an investment banker in the energy in the late 19

00:42:04.500 mid 1990s the inbound capital from american oil companies gas companies and investors was

00:42:11.460 compelling by the billions and that's even to this day i mean cnrl is probably half owned by

00:42:17.740 foreigners so they're they're heavily invested in what we're doing as canadians whether it's

00:42:22.160 through public companies or a direct investment. 0.90

00:42:24.320 And that's where I think what Carney's pitching

00:42:26.560 is the right thing to pitch.

00:42:28.180 Although as long as he doesn't say

00:42:29.340 it's ultimately for Brookfield,

00:42:31.120 we've all got something to work on.

00:42:33.620 Which every time he announces something,

00:42:35.760 a critic somewhere says,

00:42:37.360 it's just for Brookfield.

00:42:38.920 There's a Brookfield angle, yeah.

00:42:40.340 Which is problematic.

00:42:41.740 Anyway, Brett, thanks so much for your time today.

00:42:44.020 Thanks for helping us understand this

00:42:45.280 from the world of major investing

00:42:47.720 as opposed to, you know, what I do with my RRSP.

00:42:51.100 Thanks so much.

00:42:52.060 I'm looking forward to more.

00:42:53.680 Full comment is a post-media podcast.

00:42:55.560 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:42:57.000 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx.

00:42:59.040 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:43:00.340 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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00:43:14.460 There were so many missed opportunities to catch this

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00:43:33.920 When I give talks at law schools, it's that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority.

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Full Comment - July 13, 2026

Look what happens in Alberta when we let it do stuff

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