PJ The Belt - August 21, 2026


Trump Just Made Alberta AN OFFER WE CAN'T REFUSE


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

175.63

Word count

1,535

Sentence count

103


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, here's what I think many people are missing about this whole Keystone XL story
00:00:05.100 which is making the news now. This isn't just another pipeline, this is about Alberta's
00:00:09.820 future and who actually recognizes the value of this province. Because while Ottawa has
00:00:15.140 spent decades and decades treating Alberta's energy like something that needs to be controlled,
00:00:19.400 taxed, or apologized for, you got Donald Trump talking about bringing Keystone XL back from
00:00:25.620 the dead. A pipeline designed to take Alberta crude from Hardesty into the American market
00:00:31.640 and the refineries down in the Gulf Coast. Now think about that for a second. The President of
00:00:37.120 the United States looks at Alberta and sees energy, jobs, money, security, and opportunity
00:00:42.940 for North America, while the federal government here in Canada looks at the same oil patch and
00:00:47.980 apparently sees another problem to regulate. And this didn't start with Mark Carney. You can go
00:00:53.480 back to Pierre Trudeau's national energy program in the 1980s, which a lot of Albertans will
00:00:58.000 remember. Price controls, new taxes, export taxes, and a massive federal fight over Alberta's energy
00:01:04.880 wealth. Then decades later, Junior, Justin, arrives with the carbon tax and years of fights
00:01:11.160 over pipelines and climate change and whatever. Different Trudeau, different decade. Same basic
00:01:16.720 question in Alberta. Why does Ottawa keep treating the industry that pays so many Canadians' bills
00:01:22.240 like the enemy. Now the Mark Carney Liberals want us to believe that they've suddenly discovered
00:01:26.780 the importance of Canadian energy and economic sovereignty. How convenient is that? After years
00:01:32.780 of Liberal governments making investment difficult here in Alberta, now that Trump is playing hardball
00:01:38.520 and Canada desperately needs economic leverage, they've discovered that oil and pipelines might
00:01:44.880 actually be useful. You can't make this stuff up. Now, President Trump is also hinting he may revive
00:01:50.360 a long-abandoned pipeline project that starts right here in Alberta.
00:01:54.560 Tim Brooke joins us with more on that.
00:01:56.240 And Tim, the Keystone XL expansion was originally proposed back in 2008.
00:02:01.720 Well, in the 18 years since then, Tara,
00:02:04.440 this project has seen a number of political, economic,
00:02:07.800 even permitting problems in the almost two decades since it was first announced.
00:02:14.560 In fact, as of just yesterday morning,
00:02:16.320 it seemed like the proposed route had been abandoned
00:02:19.540 and the proponent was focused on some other projects.
00:02:22.980 Well, now we can tell you because of these new trade talks,
00:02:26.580 there's reason to believe the original Keystone XL pipeline might get built after all.
00:02:32.700 The U.S. president wasn't saying much about the Keystone XL pipeline Wednesday.
00:02:37.260 We had a very good conversation with the prime minister last night,
00:02:40.900 and we've come to a deal with Canada.
00:02:43.380 But Tuesday night on his Truth Social,
00:02:45.980 Donald Trump hinted the project, killed by previous Democrat-American administrations, could be back from the grave.
00:02:54.200 Meanwhile, Trump's message is a lot simpler.
00:02:57.180 We've got the oil, we've got the refineries, the capital, and the customers.
00:03:02.020 Let's do business.
00:03:03.180 Keystone XL was designed to move as much as 830,000 barrels per day towards the Gulf Coast.
00:03:09.160 And now the project is back in the conversation.
00:03:11.340 This is why I've been saying for a long time that Alberta should be pursuing greater economic integration.
00:03:15.980 the United States and not running away from it. America isn't some random country 8,000 miles
00:03:21.740 away. It's the biggest economy in the world and it's directly south of us. Our natural customer
00:03:26.640 and really our most important trading partner. And notice who has generally refused to join the
00:03:32.660 anti-America chest-thumping. Alberta and Saskatchewan. Daniel Smith has rejected using Alberta
00:03:39.040 energy as a retaliatory weapon. And Scatmo, basically the same thing. Refusing to escalate
00:03:44.900 against the Americans. That doesn't mean that they love everything Trump does,
00:03:50.860 but it does mean that they understand basic economics. You don't set fire to your relationship
00:03:57.120 with your biggest customers so that some Liberal cabinet minister can look tough
00:04:01.060 for 30 seconds on the CBC. You negotiate, you find common interest, and you make money together.
00:04:08.500 And Keystone could be the perfect example of that. The expansion would carry Canadian crude
00:04:13.560 from Hardesty, Alberta to the Gulf Coast.
00:04:16.860 Trump says he's always been on board.
00:04:19.300 And of course, we saw how the president was willing to invade, frankly, Venezuela over energy.
00:04:25.520 So this has always been a priority.
00:04:27.980 And experts say the project should be relatively easy to bring online and fill.
00:04:33.420 Some work has already started.
00:04:35.500 Southbow, which is the company that owns it now,
00:04:37.420 has already entered into an agreement with the American company, Bridger, to revive it.
00:04:41.460 They've already had what we call an open season.
00:04:43.560 Where producers contract out a portion of the pipeline, that was very successful, up to 550,000 barrels, and they plan a final investment decision next year.
00:04:52.520 If built, the Keystone expansion could potentially increase crude exports to the U.S. by more than 12%.
00:04:59.540 Alberta gets more capacity and access to its most important energy market.
00:05:04.340 America gets reliable North American energy, and really energy security.
00:05:09.000 Producers get another route. Workers benefit on both sides of the border.
00:05:13.560 Trump gets a win. Alberta gets a win.
00:05:16.880 And the Carney Liberals can maybe take a five-minute break
00:05:19.320 from explaining why getting into an economic fistfight
00:05:22.320 with our biggest customer is some kind of master plan.
00:05:27.140 And then there's October 19th, of course.
00:05:30.100 Albertans are going to the polls in a historic provincial referendum
00:05:33.660 with one of the questions putting Alberta's future in confederation
00:05:36.580 directly before Alberta voters.
00:05:39.360 Now, I know how I'm voting.
00:05:41.120 I think Alberta would be much better off independent, but it's your decision to make.
00:05:46.140 Albertans are being asked to think about their future.
00:05:49.000 At the same time, the most powerful economy on earth is once again looking north on our resources, our culture, and saying, we want more of it.
00:05:57.360 We want to partner up with you.
00:05:59.460 That should make people in Ottawa very worried.
00:06:02.060 Because how did we get to a point where Washington sometimes sounds a lot more excited about Alberta energy than our own federal government?
00:06:10.440 Maybe Alberta doesn't need less America.
00:06:13.140 Maybe Alberta and Saskatchewan need more of it.
00:06:15.880 More pipelines, more trade, more energy integration,
00:06:19.360 more cross-border investment,
00:06:22.140 and fewer Ottawa politicians trying to convince us
00:06:24.940 that our biggest customer is our biggest enemy.
00:06:28.240 Because if Keystone XL really does come back from the dead,
00:06:31.880 the big story won't just be that Donald Trump helped revive a pipeline.
00:06:36.000 It'll be that Alberta once again has been reminded
00:06:39.080 just how valuable it is to the United States and vice versa.
00:06:43.540 And the question Albertans should be asking themselves
00:06:45.520 is whether the people running Canada value us as much as America does.
00:06:51.780 This is the fundamental problem we have in Canada,
00:06:54.480 is that the power of trade and commerce was given to our federal level of government
00:06:58.460 with the idea that provinces might be scrapping over jurisdiction
00:07:02.600 and might be wanting to block each other's products.
00:07:04.580 And so the federal government was given that power
00:07:07.080 so that they could streamline the process to make sure that we could get our products to market.
00:07:11.260 They're using it in an offensive way.
00:07:12.980 They're using it to block access for our products to get to market.
00:07:16.260 So my view of it is this, that we were prepared to work collaboratively
00:07:20.540 with the federal government taking the lead, and now we're going to take the lead.
00:07:24.340 The issue that we have right now is we've been making our proponents of a pipeline
00:07:28.260 fight every little battle on their own.
00:07:30.240 So they propose the route.
00:07:32.240 Then they have to negotiate with every single landowner.
00:07:34.740 They have to negotiate with every single municipality.
00:07:36.340 They have to negotiate with the different levels of government.
00:07:38.880 They have to negotiate with the federal government.
00:07:40.240 Then they have to go through court.
00:07:41.180 And there's First Nations.
00:07:42.120 And then on top of that, you can have a court process that throws the whole thing out.
00:07:46.440 So if we reverse that process and said, you know what, we're going to do the work in advance.
00:07:51.600 Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, we're going to get together and we're going to identify the corridor.
00:07:55.540 We're going to work with our First Nations and Métis to make them equal partners in ownership.
00:07:59.060 We're going to address the environmental issues of caribou habitat and other endangered species.
00:08:04.240 We're going to make sure that we're avoiding the areas that are archaeologically or ceremonially significant for our First Nations communities.
00:08:13.180 And once this corridor is built, then we'll invite the proponent to come in, because then we will have done our work of clearing away all those hurdles and be able to reduce those billions of dollars in regulatory costs.
00:08:24.840 And that's a scrap that I'm willing to have with the federal government.
00:08:27.700 This is their work, and they have failed to do this.
00:08:30.500 We've been asking for them to do this since the 1930s.
00:08:33.040 remember youtube doesn't like conservative channels like this one but if you do remember
00:08:37.260 to like and subscribe it's completely free and it helps me continue bringing you this
00:08:41.600 updates and this reports i'll see you in the next one peace