Juno News - Carney backs U.S.-owned LNG project — but still no pipeline

00:00:00.000 And welcome to Straight Up. I am Mark Petroni, your host. Much Ado About Nothing.

00:00:09.700 Well, the Prime Minister announces a list of major building projects to be considered for

00:00:14.040 fast-track approval. The list focused almost entirely on critical minerals and energy.

00:00:20.800 The glaring issue is foreign ownership, particularly of the LNG project, for instance.

00:00:25.960 Billions of dollars will be spent in tax money, the bankroll construction of a U.S. company,

00:00:32.660 U.S.-owned company, and will largely be built in Asia using Chinese steel. Let's listen.

00:00:38.120 As it stands, Western LNG is the owner of the Xilisim's terminal, and it would be built in Korea

00:00:45.540 with Korean and Chinese steel. So how much taxpayer money are we prepared to invest in a project that

00:00:52.460 is American-owned and foreign-built? There are different aspects of the project,

00:00:58.060 as I said. There is the PRGT pipeline, which is necessary, which is Canadian-owned, First Nation.

00:01:07.880 Sorry, can I finish? There is the associated transmission line that comes here. There are

00:01:15.240 structures that come with projects that ensure that there is returns to taxpayers through the tax system, as well.

00:01:25.080 The question is obvious. Are Canadians going to be the main beneficiaries of these projects,

00:01:30.360 or will it be corporate friends and the Prime Minister himself who are the real winners here?

00:01:36.120 Loren Gunter has some thoughts, and he'll be joining us shortly. Conservative leader Pierre

00:01:41.720 Polyev notes the Prime Minister is really just re-announcing projects that were unveiled years ago

00:01:47.000 during the Trudeau government's time in office. Let's listen.

00:01:49.760 Yet again today, instead of getting things done, Mark Carney was standing up doing photo ops,

00:01:57.580 announcing that he's going to approve a bunch of projects that were already going to happen.

00:02:03.580 One of them, the CISN mine in the East Coast. This mine, there was a liberal minister, Dominic LeBlanc,

00:02:13.340 who said that his government was going to make sure this project got underway within a year,

00:02:19.180 and that was back in 2017. Now today, Mark Carney is re-announcing that same liberal promise.

00:02:26.620 There were no new pipeline projects announced, included in Carney's announcement,

00:02:32.380 which is a major priority for the province of Alberta. A pipeline through Northern British

00:02:37.020 Columbia, a project opposed by the NDP government of that province.

00:02:41.100 Aliyev expects the Prime Minister will use BC Premier David Eby as an excuse to block pipeline projects

00:02:49.180 that he wants to block anyway. Let's listen.

00:02:51.980 The federal government needs to do one thing to unlock our resources, and that is get out of the way.

00:02:57.340 The provinces should have exclusive control over permitting projects that are within one province,

00:03:05.180 and the federal government has exclusive control over projects that travel between provinces.

00:03:10.940 And this latter point is very good, because, you know, some people say,

00:03:15.260 well, David Eby is going to oppose a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific.

00:03:21.260 And my answer to that is, who cares? He has no power to block an intraprovincial pipeline.

00:03:28.540 It is a federal responsibility.

00:03:37.020 So Mark Carney will try to use David Eby as an excuse for not allowing a pipeline to go ahead.

00:03:43.100 That is not an excuse.

00:03:44.300 With so much negative media attention focused on Pierre Poliev's leadership style, some are wondering if

00:03:50.700 reporters are ignoring the real story. Conservative strategist Sebastian Skamsky says the legacy media

00:03:57.340 should be more focused on the opposition to the budget inside the Liberal caucus itself.

00:04:02.860 Here he is on CTV's Power Play with that.

00:04:05.100 Let's remember why all of this has been sparked. It's about the

00:04:08.780 prospect of the budget not passing. When you have a former minister putting out a very polished

00:04:16.860 video describing the good, the bad and the ugly of the Liberal budget, I think it begs a lot of

00:04:23.340 questions and I think it should command a lot more media attention. I would recommend, you know,

00:04:28.140 your colleagues at the Toronto Star or the CBC to knock on his door and ask a bit more about whether

00:04:35.020 Mr Carney can find the votes in his own caucus for his own budget.

00:04:39.340 You have word, by the way, that conservative, former conservative MP Chris Dontrema is upset

00:04:44.220 after getting booed at a Remembrance Day event in Nova Scotia this week.

00:04:49.340 What did he expect would happen?

00:04:51.260 I'm now joined by senior political columnist Lorne Gunter, who is with the Edmonton Sun. Welcome, Lorne.

00:04:57.180 Hey, thanks very much, Mark.

00:04:58.860 You heard the announcement yesterday. Some people are describing it as underwhelming. Others

00:05:03.980 are noting that there's an element of concern here around who owns what.

00:05:08.140 I mean, Canadian taxpayers are going to be on the hook for billions in terms of construction costs.

00:05:13.660 And when you look at the ties to who owns some of these companies, like the LNG firm

00:05:18.940 that was announced yesterday in that announcement, some are wondering who's going to be the major

00:05:24.540 beneficiary here. Is it going to be the Americans? Maybe the Chinese? Do you have any issues around that?

00:05:32.300 Yeah, for sure I do. I mean, I particularly have issues if the Chinese are going to be 1.00

00:05:38.700 the main beneficiaries. I don't worry as much about the Americans because their involvement 0.52

00:05:43.660 in the energy sector in Canada has been big from the beginning. We probably wouldn't have

00:05:48.540 an energy sector if it weren't for the Americans. But it would be nice to see more of that capital

00:05:55.260 stay in Canada. One of the big problems that we have, I think, in Canada is that we don't have

00:06:00.140 capital formation. We don't have big pots of capital that people can go to with big ideas

00:06:05.900 and have it funded in the country. And part of the reason for that is we've had a lot of foreign

00:06:12.140 ownership. But I resist limits on foreign ownership. I'm old enough to remember FIRA, 0.95

00:06:19.340 the Foreign Investment Review Agency, back when Trudeau Sr. was in office. And it just undercut all

00:06:26.700 sorts of projects because there wasn't enough Canadian involvement. And so I'm reluctant to do

00:06:34.140 that sort of thing. But I'm also convinced that this announcement yesterday, and especially the one

00:06:40.140 in September with the first five, is basically just a PR exercise. I don't think that they really

00:06:47.500 intend to get much of this built. And much of it, especially in the first five, those projects are

00:06:57.580 already underway. And three of them are almost half finished. So, you know, what is the federal

00:07:04.140 government going to do other than come in and maybe lavish a few billion dollars on them?

00:07:09.180 Yeah. And as Paliyev noted, one of them was announced in 2017. It was supposed to have been

00:07:16.060 going within a year of that. And here we are re-announcing that same thing. So, you know,

00:07:20.860 you have to wonder exactly what Carney is thinking, whether people have forgotten about those previous

00:07:25.340 announcements or whether people are thinking that this was something special and new. But I guess

00:07:30.620 he had to announce something, right? He was under a lot of pressure to do so. Interestingly enough,

00:07:35.340 we have Enbridge announcing something here. This looks more substantial, 1.4 billion US

00:07:42.060 in terms of an expansion of its pipeline. And that will mean more a heavy oil crude headed south of the

00:07:49.340 border. You know, can you maybe give us your take on that?

00:07:53.180 In some ways, it's a good announcement. In other ways, it doesn't solve our major problem, which is

00:07:59.260 we don't have enough foreign buyers for our heavy oil. And so we have to sell it to the Americans at

00:08:06.940 a discount. They know they're our only customer. And so they force deals with us that reflect that.

00:08:14.540 You know, we send them oil at probably about a, well, the discount's a little bit less since the

00:08:20.620 Trans Mountain expansion opened up in May of last year, but it's still around 12%. And what they do

00:08:28.380 with it is they have 25 refineries in the Midwest in the United States. 24 of them are built to handle

00:08:36.380 heavy oil from Canada. And so they process oil from Canada in the Midwest for domestic consumption

00:08:44.220 around the United States. And then they take their light sweet crude, like their West Texas

00:08:50.060 intermediate, and they sell it internationally at a premium. So that's one of the reasons I always

00:08:55.660 chafed at the idea that Trump was spitting out at the beginning of the year, that they had a trade

00:09:00.940 deficit with us because what we were doing was funding this enormous profit that they were making

00:09:06.860 off of their light sweet crude. So, you know, Enbridge is great, you know, let them ship more

00:09:14.300 oil to the States. You know, it's 1.4 private billion dollars that's going into it. It's not public money.

00:09:23.340 But I think it's also one of the reasons why Enbridge is less keen to get into a pipeline from Alberta

00:09:30.940 to the BC coast because they're already expecting to make this big investment in existing pipelines.

00:09:36.700 And speaking of that pipeline to the coast, I mean, there was no new pipeline obviously announced.

00:09:42.780 I don't think there was a huge shock to anybody, but there is talk of this imminent agreement between

00:09:49.500 the feds and Daniel Smith, Premier of Alberta, that we're going to see some kind of agreement coming up

00:09:55.340 or movement forward in terms of projects involving specifically Alberta and energy. Is that going

00:10:03.340 to happen? Do you think? And to what degree does yesterday's announcement maybe put a damper on that?

00:10:08.940 Well, take a look. I think what we're talking about here is probably a two-step process for Alberta. And

00:10:15.660 that is they're going to try and sign a memorandum of understanding with Ottawa about what would be

00:10:21.900 needed to build a pipeline. And the talk out here is that they'll have to go big into carbon capture

00:10:28.380 in order to get the Greens and the Liberal Party to agree to let them sell oil to the rest of the world.

00:10:35.500 But the International Energy Agency came out earlier this week and said,

00:10:41.020 oil demand in the world is going to go up until 2050. You can have all these fantasies about the great

00:10:47.900 transition or about replacing oil with wind and solar, whatever it is. Oil demand is going to go up

00:10:55.340 for at least another 25 years. And so it would make sense for us to sell our conflict-free oil to the

00:11:03.260 rest of the world. But there's such a green mafia in the federal government that they want us to promise 1.00

00:11:11.740 there won't be any carbon coming out of that oil. So they want us to have these big carbon capture

00:11:17.100 projects. And then maybe they'll decide that we can have a pipeline. But that's just a memorandum of

00:11:23.420 understanding. To be really considered a real project, and I'm not even sure this is true, but to be considered

00:11:30.380 a real nation-building project, you've got to get on the list. And so even if we get a memorandum of

00:11:36.380 understanding, we're still not on Carney's list. So I think this is a delaying tactic in a lot of ways

00:11:44.460 by the federal government. Which is kind of what Pierre Polyed was talking about when he said that

00:11:51.420 Premier Eby in British Columbia, of course, has continued to be in opposition of that pipeline,

00:11:58.220 the Northern Gateway style. I realized it would be called something else, presumably,

00:12:02.700 if it's reintroduced. He doesn't want that to happen. And you've got potentially this kabuki 0.98

00:12:10.140 theater happening between him and Carney, who may be using the intransigence by the New Democrat

00:12:16.860 Premier in B.C. to say, hey, I can't do this. I'd like to, Premier Smith, but you've got B.C. next

00:12:26.700 door and we can't move forward. Despite the fact that it's the Feds, really, who have jurisdiction on a

00:12:32.540 project like that? That's right. The Constitution gives the Feds the right to put a pipeline. It 1.00

00:12:37.900 doesn't say pipelines in the Constitution, but it says interprovincial trade routes. And so that's

00:12:43.500 a pipeline. And that was the power that they used to get Trans Mountain to go through. It was, you know,

00:12:51.500 over B.C.'s objections was, no, no, no, constitutionally it was ours to say, yes, it gets to go ahead.

00:12:57.420 But I do think Carney's going to do that. And whenever you're talking about Liberals,

00:13:02.700 you have to consider the electoral math. They always worry about their reelection. Everything

00:13:12.220 they do is driven by how many votes they can get out of it. And they have 20 seats in B.C.

00:13:18.620 and they have two in Alberta. And the two in Alberta always are hand by a thread. So their

00:13:27.500 calculation about where they could get more seats, where they need to protect their seats,

00:13:33.500 always comes back to B.C. over Alberta. And so I think, you know, as you correctly point out,

00:13:39.980 Carney's going to use E.B. as an excuse for not giving a pipeline to Alberta.

00:13:44.380 That sounds pretty disingenuous. I mean, especially given all the talk of growing the economy. I mean,

00:13:53.100 we're in a recession right now. We could really use a project like that. And the fact that we're

00:13:58.060 not moving forward to it, you know, it's troubling because there are other political considerations

00:14:02.700 around Premier Smith in Alberta. I mean, she's got to look like she's playing hardball with the feds. 1.00

00:14:07.260 And if, you know, she is seen as kind of accepting this MOU with the feds that doesn't really cover the

00:14:15.260 bases in terms of what Albertans want. I mean, could she be in trouble amongst her supporters?

00:14:21.980 Steve McLaughlin She could. I think where they're really in trouble, if it gets to that,

00:14:28.220 would be a breakaway group that goes to the right of where the UCP is. They're not in much danger of

00:14:37.340 support shifting over to the NDP because the NDP would be as pro-green as the feds. So that doesn't

00:14:44.540 solve the problem. But if the vote splits on the right, we saw that happen in 2015,

00:14:51.020 then you elect an NDP government. And so she has, I'm sure she's very, very conscious of that. And she

00:14:57.660 has to, she has to do everything she can to keep that split from happening. So she's talking now about

00:15:05.020 having sensitive negotiations with the feds. She's talking about they're still talking. And she's

00:15:11.020 trying to convince those of us who are very skeptical about the liberals, that we should hold off

00:15:17.740 criticizing her because something's coming. Well, so is Christmas. Well, there could be a referendum

00:15:26.940 coming as well, right here, maybe. But we'll have to see because of course, she's under great pressure.

00:15:33.820 You talk about the right wing party maybe coming, forming out of dissatisfaction with what Smith has

00:15:42.540 done and ongoing intransigence at the federal level. I mean, to what degree would the independence

00:15:49.660 movement in Alberta benefit from having the feds not come through on this pipeline commitment?

00:15:57.180 Big time. I've said since the talk about separation, after the April election, there was a lot of talk

00:16:06.540 coming out of Alberta that, you know, we might have a separatist movement. I kept saying, it's not going

00:16:13.100 to prove to be a real threat until Ottawa does something concrete to upset Alberta and rejecting a 0.99

00:16:22.140 pipeline would be one of those things. So yeah, I think there's a possibility. Would it be 55% of the

00:16:31.900 electric? Would there be a successful referendum to separate? I don't see that at the moment, but could

00:16:41.420 it take away 15 to 20% of the UCP's support and in the process elect the NDP? I think that's a real

00:16:51.900 possibility. So you're saying that this independence movement will run as a party in the next election?

00:16:58.220 Well, I think they have to. You know, it's all well and good to go around and set up rallies and talk

00:17:05.660 about taking back Alberta and being independent of the feds. But if you look at what happened in Quebec,

00:17:14.300 you have to follow that example. And that was the Parti Quebecois finally got elected. They ran as a

00:17:19.900 party. They did an election or two where they didn't win, and then they won. And I think you

00:17:26.780 have to form a party. There is this thing called the Republican Party of Alberta, which is an

00:17:33.260 independence movement. It got next to no votes in a by-election in an area where it should do very well.

00:17:40.220 So I think they have to find a different name. I think they have to find a different leader. But if

00:17:45.580 somebody who's currently in the legislature and has a little bit of name recognition provincially,

00:17:51.340 decides they want to become the leader of a separatist party, it could happen.

00:17:55.420 Yeah. And I guess the fear then becomes, could the NDP be the beneficiary of that?

00:18:00.780 Oh, sure.

00:18:01.820 And you spoke about that earlier. And you've got this kind of urban rural split in Alberta as well,

00:18:08.140 where you've got most of the left-leaning votes concentrated in cities where you're talking about

00:18:15.180 Edmonton and Calgary to a degree. And so then much of the support for independence and perhaps a right

00:18:23.980 of UCP party is going to come in maybe the rural parts, ranchers and the drillers and oil workers and

00:18:32.060 all that kind of thing. So you've got potentially a lot of chaos in store.

00:18:37.740 Oh, for sure.

00:18:38.460 If it doesn't navigate this properly and carefully.

00:18:43.340 Yep. I think that's, that's a very prescient review of what's going to happen in Alberta

00:18:48.460 in the next three or four years. Smith has, she's walking a tightrope. I mean, to some extent,

00:18:53.660 so is Carney. I think Carney has a big green caucus within the liberal party that he has to deal with.

00:19:00.380 If he wants to keep that, that caucus from drifting back to the NDP. I mean, the only,

00:19:06.700 the only way that, that conservatives win nationally, if is, if the NDP are strong,

00:19:13.820 because they steal enough votes from the liberals, the conservatives can come up the middle.

00:19:18.460 It's the same thing in Alberta, but in reverse, the only way that the NDP can win is if the vote

00:19:23.820 on the right is split and then they can come up. And that's exactly what happened in 2015.

00:19:29.020 I remember getting in a debate with a political scientist and I said, look, if you just put the

00:19:34.220 Wild Rose and the PC vote together, they'd be 52% and they overwhelmed the NDP. And then this

00:19:42.940 political scientist said, oh, it's not that easy. It's not clear that the PCs could get together with

00:19:48.700 the form. So Jason Kenney came along, put the two parties together and they got 53% of the vote. So it

00:19:54.460 was as simple as all of that. So the only way the NDP can, can win is if Smith can't hold her 0.62

00:20:00.140 coalition together. And that's a real possibility if Ottawa starts making a mess of all of this.

00:20:06.380 And it is interesting, as long as you mentioned Ottawa, that they didn't, despite the collapse of

00:20:12.620 the NDP in the last election, the liberals could not muster up enough to get a majority. I mean,

00:20:16.940 they came close, but then you look at the conservative vote, which was at 41.5%. I mean,

00:20:24.460 most years you and I know that would be, you know, that would be enough for a majority government.

00:20:29.740 It'd be off the races with 41.5% of the vote. Harper won his majority in 2011 with just a little

00:20:37.020 more than 41.5%. And so here, you know, we have to wonder what's going to happen with this. There's a

00:20:43.420 lot of uncertainty in Ottawa. I mean, around this budget. I mean, you've heard all the talk around

00:20:50.060 opposition within the liberal ranks, some of the whining by some of those who think that there's

00:20:56.940 not enough money allocated for, you know, climate initiatives. Are you buying into that? I mean,

00:21:02.060 could the liberals find themselves at the wrong end of a confidence vote here around the budget?

00:21:07.660 No, I don't think so. I mean, the only people who would benefit from a snap election

00:21:13.420 are the liberals. So if the NDP are smart, they will get their tiny little caucus into a minivan

00:21:22.540 and go across the river to haul and have some beers while the boat's going on. Because abstentions

00:21:27.740 would push the liberals over the top too. The NDP aren't ready. They're in the middle of a leadership

00:21:33.580 race. They have no money. They're expecting about a $12 million refund from the federal government

00:21:41.180 for the election expenses they spent. But that's not going to come right away. So, you know, you can

00:21:46.140 borrow against that, I guess. But they're in real trouble. They don't want to go. And I have to say

00:21:51.260 that I don't think the conservatives are right ready for it either. I mean, I don't think there's

00:21:57.580 any more discontent in the conservative caucus than there is in the liberal caucus. But Polyev is just

00:22:04.860 not popular enough yet with voters, particularly voters in Ontario, to beat Carney out. It would be

00:22:15.500 a better race because Trump isn't flapping his gums during the middle of the race and pushing

00:22:22.860 people to Carney. But people just like Carney as a prime minister. They think he looks like a prime

00:22:29.180 minister. And if they're not paying close attention, and they're not, then he will win. He'll get his

00:22:37.980 majority. So I think the conservatives, the bloc, and the NDP have to do whatever they can

00:22:43.980 to keep the liberals from losing the budget vote and forcing an early election.

00:22:50.540 So you're saying they could, the liberals could engineer their own defeat?

00:22:55.020 Of course.

00:22:55.740 Well, is this, you know, this is not up.

00:22:57.980 That's what they did in 74. You remember, under Trudeau, there was a majority government in 68 and

00:23:03.100 a minority government in 72. And then in 74, they went out and they ran and won a majority. They

00:23:09.740 engineered their defeat in 74 to force an election. And then they went around during the campaign saying,

00:23:15.740 oh, the NDP, oh, they caused this election. It's not our fault. You have to give us a majority because

00:23:22.460 if we don't have a majority, then the NDP can keep doing this to us. And they would do exactly

00:23:27.180 the same thing now. Yeah, I think that has something to do with wage and price controls.

00:23:31.820 It did.

00:23:33.180 Dr. Mark Sanfield, Trudeau said, no, not us. And then he went ahead and did it after.

00:23:38.060 He did it anyway.

00:23:40.140 Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it.

00:23:42.860 You bet, Mark.

00:23:43.980 Lauren Gunter.

00:23:45.580 And that is it for this edition of Straight Up. Appreciate you tuning in, my friends.

00:23:50.860 Let's do it again real soon, shall we? Bye-bye for now.

Juno News - November 14, 2025

Carney backs U.S.-owned LNG project — but still no pipeline

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