Juno News - Will B.C. Kill Alberta’s Pipeline Deal？

00:00:00.000 The bad day for Stephen Guibo, for BC Premier David Eby, for Elizabeth May, that's a good

00:00:08.480 day for Canada. Hi, Juno News. I'm Alexander Brown, director of the National Citizens Coalition,

00:00:13.220 ending the week here for our show Not Sorry. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for leaving

00:00:17.680 comments. Thanks for subscribing. And while you're here, you can take advantage of our

00:00:22.480 promo code. That's junonews.com slash not sorry for 20% off. It's the topic of the week. This

00:00:29.080 memorandum of understanding now signed. Guibo, he's fled the scene. He may have scaled the peace

00:00:35.300 tower at press time. I'm not quite sure. This audience, and I want to convey this to open,

00:00:41.340 you should take heart in the fact that it's your common sense and your lived reality that's moving

00:00:45.920 the feds here. It's not some sudden onset benevolence. The least productive of net zero

00:00:51.860 delusions don't rate as a pocketbook issue anymore because Canada and Canadians can't balance the 1.00

00:00:56.580 books. We have far greater issues to chase than indulgence payments, wearing a hair shirt,

00:01:02.340 redistributing what wealth we have left, and suffering so our fat and happy can pat themselves

00:01:07.320 on the back and claim they're changing the world when they're only impoverishing a country.

00:01:12.660 But concerns remain, such as is this just a temporary victory for Alberta Premier Daniel Smith?

00:01:18.640 As I said on the Mark Patron show on Thursday, a win today could still be a loss tomorrow.

00:01:23.300 Jamie Sarconic of The Post writes,

00:01:26.440 The main certainties this memorandum provides are the immediate short-term benefits.

00:01:30.960 Smith can carry it into this weekend's UCP annual AGM meeting like a trophy taken from the battlefield.

00:01:37.540 Carney can use the deal to bolster his fiscal conservative image in the eyes of left liberal

00:01:41.960 commentators. Both can enjoy a bit of a detente before the hostilities resume over project delays that

00:01:48.700 are likely to follow. And beyond Alberta needing to raise its industrial carbon price through this

00:01:54.660 memorandum, which our friends and allies are not, and where do we think these costs go? They get passed

00:02:00.260 down the line. We still have a British Columbia problem in the form of David Eby, the potential for

00:02:05.420 two or three indigenous groups in particular, throwing up a stop sign in the hopes of surely 1.00

00:02:09.660 receiving quite the check. Even though recent Angus Reid polling has national support for an Alberta BC

00:02:15.660 pipeline at an overwhelming majority in favor, 60%, and it's even 53% in favor to 37% opposed in BC.

00:02:24.840 For left-leaning BC, that's, you know, that's actually quite a number. So I want you to watch Eby's

00:02:29.640 sullen remarks from Thursday.

00:02:31.620 There is not one private company that has stepped up to say, if you build it, we'll buy it.

00:02:36.400 If the approvals are in place, we'll build it. Not one. It has no root. Currently, taxpayers through

00:02:46.440 the Trans Mountain Pipeline Corporation are funding the development of the root. Not only does it not

00:02:53.240 have permits, it doesn't even have a root. But the third thing it doesn't have is something that the

00:02:59.100 Prime Minister said he believed was core in the House, in the Federal Parliament just recently,

00:03:04.580 that First Nations agree and support projects before they will go forward through the Major Projects

00:03:12.980 Office. And this project does not have the support of coastal First Nations. And that's important to us

00:03:19.200 in BC because all of the projects that I outlined to you, those billions of dollars of investment,

00:03:24.680 those thousands of jobs, depend as well on the support of coastal First Nations. We need to make sure

00:03:31.520 that this project doesn't become an energy vampire with all of the variables that have yet to be

00:03:37.460 fulfilled. No proponent, no root, no money, no First Nations support, that it cannot draw limited

00:03:46.940 federal resources, limited Indigenous governance resources, limited provincial resources away from

00:03:53.280 the real projects that will employ people, provide the country with money that we desperately need,

00:03:59.360 and provide investment and access to global markets to deepen our trade relationships overseas.

00:04:04.160 All complete nonsense. Every word of that was a lie. Plenty of proponents, plenty of support.

00:04:10.100 EB doesn't have a veto. This is federal jurisdiction. But this is still a deal running on trust that is

00:04:15.420 not yet worth the paper it's printed on. And there is every chance the federal liberals could begin to

00:04:20.360 punt on this. I want us to be thankful for some reasons of optimism here, but they're still just

00:04:25.360 reasons, not results. Let's talk to our friend and frequent guest, Dr. Caroline Elliott. She's our 0.87

00:04:31.100 Left Coast correspondent. Dr. Caroline Elliott joins us. She's with the BC Public Land Use Society,

00:04:36.500 Aristotle Foundation Without Diminishment. She's a frequent flyer here on Juno News as a Left Coast

00:04:41.760 Common Sense correspondent. Caroline, welcome. Thanks for having me. Caroline, topic of the day,

00:04:47.140 topic of the week. Is Alberta really getting a pipeline or being sold a pipe dream?

00:04:53.000 Well, look, I mean, I think it's, I have to say it's a positive move. And, you know, I've been pretty

00:04:58.440 critical of the federal government, but I recognize that they're trying to some extent to get some of

00:05:05.280 Alberta's product moving, right? And I think it is a critical part of diversifying away from the US.

00:05:12.480 I mean, I've been critical of the federal government for, you know, doing the whole elbows up thing,

00:05:18.280 but being unwilling to do what it takes to move forward. But that said, I am a little bit, you know,

00:05:24.860 we can't look at this without skepticism either. There's hurdles in the way, big ones, right? And

00:05:30.880 one of those things, obviously, is the First Nations in the region, the Union of BC Indian

00:05:36.280 Chiefs, the Coastal First Nations as well, an organization, as they call themselves, saying

00:05:40.500 there's no way, like, this is not happening. And then, of course, a very reluctant premier who is

00:05:44.940 making all kinds of strange claims about how this is going to hurt economic development instead of help

00:05:48.920 it here in BC. So it's hard to know where to land exactly, but I do think the effort is admirable.

00:05:56.180 Yeah, admirable, but I have the same concerns. Like on the David Eby front and problem, the potential

00:06:03.120 indigenous band problem, you're our expert on the ground in BC. This Union of BC Indian Chiefs, they 1.00

00:06:09.100 are loudly objecting to the MOU. There's territory involved that needs passing through. We know that

00:06:14.500 Eby can't be trusted to play nice in Canada's interest. If BC's approval is a condition, either on

00:06:20.520 paper or off, NDP opposition has tanked projects like the TMX expansion before until Ottawa had to

00:06:26.500 buy it out. So how would conservatives or how should conservatives rally against this kind of

00:06:31.400 provincial meddling to protect a national energy interest?

00:06:35.960 Well, and this is one of these bigger questions, I think, that goes to, like, how do we actually

00:06:39.840 make sure that the public interest is being protected when it comes to resource development

00:06:44.180 and a whole bunch of other issues? So, you know, we have a project that the federal government has

00:06:48.980 said is in the national interest. I think the conservatives would agree it's in the national

00:06:53.700 interest. The liberals agree it's in the national interest. I think we can take that as a pretty firm

00:06:57.160 sign. It is, in fact, in the national interest. But when you have these kind of small indigenous 1.00

00:07:03.760 governments saying this is not happening and absolutely not, I think it's really going to put

00:07:07.880 that commitment to building out in, you know, in Canada's interests, it's going to put that

00:07:12.760 commitment to the test and whether or not they're willing to say, like, you know, we're going to

00:07:18.440 consult. We're going to accommodate. We're going to ensure that your own interests are protected.

00:07:24.940 But at the end of the day, you have to be able to proceed.

00:07:28.160 Yeah. And how do we how are we or continuing to undermine ourselves where even you're seeing sort

00:07:35.500 of Ottawa's backing off the emissions cap, but they're still demanding this big old methane cut

00:07:40.760 from levels that are already being substantially cut beefed up carbon tax on emitters. So on the

00:07:46.800 company side, the industry side, that's obviously going to trickle down, you know, to to costs and

00:07:52.100 consumers, billions in joint funding for for a pathways decarbonization project from from a pro

00:07:57.920 energy standpoint. You know, how do these mandates, these these mandates in this memorandum, how do they

00:08:03.640 undermine our competitiveness and further stifle what should be, you know, a moment for real economic

00:08:09.140 growth in the sector? Well, this is just it is are we tying our hands in one way and then, you know,

00:08:14.920 saying we're proceeding in another way? And what is that balance? I mean, I would like to see just

00:08:20.600 a government that looks around and says, actually, we just want our economy to do well. We just want

00:08:26.660 to be able to have jobs created. We just want to have people bringing home good paychecks, all those

00:08:30.840 good things. And and it seems like, you know, we take one step forward and two steps back in a way

00:08:35.960 like, oh, we'll proceed with this, but we're going to be nervous about that. And, and then, of course,

00:08:39.960 and I always go back to the province. I mean, in BC, you have have a government like their best

00:08:45.760 arguments right now are that, oh, this is, you know, is that somehow this is going to hurt economic

00:08:50.580 development in BC. And they're saying, oh, well, you know, it's what economic development in BC. And

00:08:56.360 it's like, oh, it's going to cause these other projects not to happen. I'm like, first of all, which

00:09:00.620 projects like name, which projects are not happening, because we're, we're looking at a

00:09:05.800 different project coming out of Alberta and across across BC to the coast, like, tell us

00:09:10.140 which ones. And so I think that they're just kind of, I'm not sure they know what to do

00:09:13.960 with themselves. I think that they would prefer, obviously, that this didn't happen. And I think

00:09:17.420 that's obviously a flawed policy stance in the first place.

00:09:22.060 Now, you would think that with the province facing massive deficits, a productive version

00:09:28.560 of its population is in exodus, healthcare is in collapse. Every week, a healthy young person

00:09:34.140 dies in an emergency room, or, you know, doesn't get timely care. We've hits to industries like

00:09:40.680 forestry, you know, from US tariffs, shouldn't federal incentives be able to flip EB? Like,

00:09:46.800 what's the strategy for leveraging BC's economic woes to advance this project? Like,

00:09:52.500 why would debt deficit and shared misery be part of some hostage taking here?

00:09:57.600 Well, I mean, I hate to say, but that defines the NDP's policy agenda quite well for the past

00:10:04.140 several years, and continuing today. And it's interesting to see the BC public understands that

00:10:10.220 this is actually a good thing for BC. I think there was a poll yesterday that said 53% of British

00:10:14.720 Columbians could get on board with the pipeline versus 37% who say no way. So that's actually a pretty,

00:10:20.680 pretty big proportion of the population that this government just doesn't really want to listen

00:10:24.360 to. And then there's, there's so many other layers to it to like, even just back onto the

00:10:29.060 First Nations consent thing. You know, and we have Mark Carney and David, you'd be talking about that.

00:10:34.240 But I want to know, and I'd love to see like consent from from who exactly? Is it every First

00:10:39.820 Nation? Is it some? Is it? Is it a conglomerate of different First Nations who've come together to

00:10:44.720 say yes or no? Is it hereditary chiefs? Is it elected chiefs? Because we've seen this before,

00:10:49.000 right? With the coastal gas link project where you have every elected band council along

00:10:54.100 that pipeline route saying, yes, this is, this is good. And then you have the hereditary chiefs

00:10:58.760 coming forward and saying, actually, there's no way we'll never let this happen. And that led to

00:11:01.940 the Wet'suwet'en protests and, and everything that we saw in that very kind of messy protest-filled year.

00:11:07.020 So, like how this is going to work is like really the question that I think we need to be looking at.

00:11:14.400 No, unfortunately, it seems like the government, like where the country is going to wear

00:11:17.700 the problem of BC's ill-defined governance question at this point, where we have these

00:11:23.820 indigenous bands who have been increasingly deputized. And we all, I think, believe in

00:11:29.560 reconciliation and, and, and doing right by the relationship between our governments and,

00:11:34.460 and indigenous communities. But whether it's the rise of a kind of reconciliation incorporated

00:11:39.140 or land use issues coming into question, as, as you've been so prominent, you know, explaining to the

00:11:44.360 public, these creeping concerns, it's, you know, who has the right to say yes or no coming out of

00:11:49.420 British Columbia? Like we know that the federal government, this is their jurisdiction. It's

00:11:52.940 interprovincial travel technically, which means it's theirs. They're the hammer. But if you go to BC

00:11:58.080 for, for approval, there's all of a sudden like 50 cooks in the kitchen and, and none of them seem

00:12:04.440 to represent the population who actually want to get this done. And, and 53% to 37% out here,

00:12:10.860 I'm in BC too. Like that's actually a lot. Like that's like an Ontario 85%. We are, we have some

00:12:17.640 kooky folks out here and, and, and God love them. But I think people need to understand that even in,

00:12:23.580 in the left coast that folks want to get this done, but there are now so many different leaders who are

00:12:32.020 being consulted. And, and there's just this question of like, who the heck is actually in charge?

00:12:36.420 Totally. And I think, and, and, and the other thing that becomes very apparent when you start

00:12:42.820 looking at it is that this government loves to profile groups that are opposed, indigenous groups

00:12:48.520 that are opposed to resource development. And they never seem to profile the ones who are actually

00:12:53.600 like, this can bring jobs to our community. You can bring opportunity.

00:12:56.400 No, go to like IPSS. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's, there's some, there's some great groups doing

00:13:02.240 wonderful things for their communities. And somehow those are never, they never seem to be the ones that

00:13:07.440 the premier is, is, is standing with and saying, let's bring jobs and prosperity to this province.

00:13:12.560 No, you and I have been to some of these like kind of energy galas where it's, there's, there's tons of

00:13:17.600 people who are, who are on side with this. This is a province filled with, you know, leaders like Ellis Ross,

00:13:23.600 who, you know, want to do right by their communities. And then there's others who want to,

00:13:28.080 you know, maybe just get a check or, or be difficult or who do the hereditary chiefs who

00:13:32.880 are stepping on other bands. Now, Caroline, I got a John Rustad question for you and I'm,

00:13:38.720 and I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but seemingly to me, the BC conservatives are in turmoil at the

00:13:44.640 absolute wrong time where my worry right now. And I, and I said this on Mark Patron's show yesterday,

00:13:51.040 which is, there's a concern that if, if EB wants to put his back up here, he is seemingly buoyed by

00:13:57.440 the fact that he has high polling numbers at present and that there's a chance he calls for

00:14:01.120 a spring election. And that is not because he's doing a good job. Like this, this province isn't

00:14:05.600 freefall. Like, you know, emergency rooms are closing overnight. Like it's an economy that doesn't grow.

00:14:11.120 Real estate is impossible, but the BC conservatives are in a self-inflicted turmoil at present.

00:14:17.680 Surely they need to get it together. Do they not?

00:14:20.480 Well, they need to get it together. They absolutely do. And it is, you know, I look around at the,

00:14:24.880 what's happening under this NDP government and you've got a failing healthcare system,

00:14:28.560 as you've mentioned, we've got public safety disasters, you know, left, right, and center,

00:14:34.160 horrible incidents that are hurting innocent people. We've got our soul destroying drug crisis going on.

00:14:39.040 We've got our housing affordability issues. We've got, I mean, I'm not mentioning so many things.

00:14:44.240 There's just so much going on. And the fact that this issue is taking up so much airtime in the media

00:14:50.800 and so much attention within the party in the caucus is concerning because we should be holding

00:14:58.160 David EB to account for all of this that he's doing to British Columbia. And, you know, and then,

00:15:03.600 so, I mean, I look at that and I think there has to be, frankly, some kind of change, right? There's

00:15:10.160 got to be a refocus on the issues that British Columbians are worried about. And we're not seeing

00:15:16.320 that. And I don't know that this is going to go away anytime soon, but the issue I see is like

00:15:22.080 an election in the spring could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Where it's like,

00:15:25.600 it happens because David EB sees the conservatives in disarray, even as the conservatives don't necessarily

00:15:30.720 want to make a move because it might put them into disarray before the election. You know what I

00:15:34.160 mean? It's a chicken or egg situation. And at the end of the day, you just have to look at the numbers,

00:15:41.520 like British Columbians, but very large numbers of them in any poll you look at think the province

00:15:46.880 is on the wrong track. They're very worried about the future. They're very worried about their own

00:15:50.320 security and their homes in light of a lot of this government's radical reconciliation agenda and

00:15:54.960 other things. And those numbers are not translating into meaningful support for the conservatives. That

00:16:02.720 sets them ahead of the NDP to the, to the extent that you would think given those wrong track numbers.

00:16:07.440 So I think that's where people need to be looking right now.

00:16:09.840 Yeah. And, and for our readers who aren't totally up on BC politics, and I understand our viewers,

00:16:15.840 and I understand if they're not, because it is very confusing. I'm an Ontarian. This has been a crash

00:16:20.560 course. It's, it's a different ecosystem out here. All of this was resonating, resonating with voters

00:16:26.560 heading into the last provincial election in British Columbia, like the conservatives lost by a hair.

00:16:31.520 And then there's been a ton of turnover there, a ton of internal turmoil. And in the case of Rustad,

00:16:38.000 you know, there's even boards that want him to step down and they're just not, they're hanging on

00:16:43.040 and their numbers are dwindling. And a group like 1BC is becoming more and more popular. And so no,

00:16:49.120 we need to get that together. My concern is that a spring election could be framed around,

00:16:53.920 let's be jerks about this project. Let's be jerks about Team Canada. I don't know if you saw,

00:16:58.720 but the Victoria legislature this week, the Canadian flag is down. Like that, that big old guy is like,

00:17:05.360 are we going back to, to defenestration and self-loathing? Like, is EB going to try to take

00:17:10.960 his ball and go home here? And so my, my, my worry is, is, is certainly there. And thankfully,

00:17:17.040 you've been providing good leadership for, for our audience and for common sense folks

00:17:21.040 from BC on that front. Now, Caroline, our pal, Anthony Koch, popular conservative strategist

00:17:27.120 and commentator in the national post, he, he's in the paper today. He's, he's with a piece calling for

00:17:32.560 the need for a Pierre Trudeau of the right to remake Canada, arguing that you can't defeat

00:17:37.280 charter entrenched liberalism with tax credits and the conservatism of the last decade. Plus,

00:17:42.080 there's been a recent discussion in our sphere of late surrounding where the conservative movement

00:17:46.720 goes from here. How does it stay young and new? How can it win federally and better influence positive

00:17:52.480 impacts provincially? What do you make of this debate between those who were, who want to perhaps,

00:17:57.200 let's say, continue a kind of status quo libertarian minded approach. And then those who want to work

00:18:02.800 within, let's say a big government framework to inflict big change.

00:18:06.320 Yeah, it's, it's such an interesting debate that's been happening. It's been fun to have been part of

00:18:12.880 it. I know you've been part of it, Anthony, obviously, and some other folks who, who land,

00:18:17.040 I think probably on a different side of the equation than we would. But I do think there's,

00:18:22.480 there's absolute validity to, you know, Anthony doesn't use these words exactly in his column,

00:18:27.280 but this idea that like, if we don't, if we don't start understanding our role,

00:18:34.240 and the government's role in, in shaping things like culture and national identity,

00:18:38.480 it's not the be all and end all when it comes to those things, but it's an important part of it.

00:18:42.800 And so when you see, you know, people say, well, look, like conservatives shouldn't be talking about

00:18:47.360 any issue that doesn't have dollar figure attached to it, you know, stick to your marginal tax cuts,

00:18:51.680 stick to your deregulation, stick to your, you know, your, your fiscal policy, all of which,

00:18:56.800 as I always say, these are important things are very important things. But if we don't understand that

00:19:01.520 there's a tug of war over things like national identity, who we are as Canadians, how we see

00:19:06.240 each other as Canadians, how we look at our past, how we plan for our future, all those big kind of

00:19:13.040 not dollar figure questions, but almost values and principles and foundations questions.

00:19:18.480 If we don't, if we don't look at those, I mean, the tug of war is happening.

00:19:22.160 It's just whether or not we're pulling on our end of the rope or not, right? And we, we know how

00:19:26.240 tug of war is work. If you, if you're not pulling on the end of your rope, you end up in the mud puddle

00:19:30.320 in the middle.

00:19:30.640 No, I, I, I greatly respect and understand the just leave me alone position. I've got a lot of

00:19:38.880 time for it. I wish that that were a winning argument and I wish that it was real, but we

00:19:46.080 know that in a vacuum, there's always someone working against conservatives. We've seen this

00:19:51.200 march through our institutions. We've seen our bureaucracy grow beyond belief. I think there are

00:19:56.080 folks now in the political ecosystem. I think of the impacts of someone like Chris Ruffo who,

00:20:00.960 in America, who understand that you kind of like fight with what you're given. It, it, we all want,

00:20:06.480 you know, just next to no government and, you know, the trains run on time and we have emergency services

00:20:13.200 that actually work, but you know, the state has its hand off of you, but it's, it's impactful. It's,

00:20:19.440 it influences culture. Stephen Guibo just resigned. You know, that was a man who was funneling a ton of

00:20:25.680 money to all these NGOs who would then give them exactly what they want on this, on this permission

00:20:32.320 to tank every energy project and make life more expensive. And so seemingly you have to work within

00:20:37.760 that framework. And so lots to think about there. I'm, I'm looking forward to hearing more from

00:20:42.000 yourself on that and Caroline Elliott, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

Juno News - November 29, 2025

Will B.C. Kill Alberta’s Pipeline Deal？

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