Rebel News Podcast - December 04, 2025


SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alberta's 'pipeline deal' with Mark Carney


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

155.53409

Word count

2,254

Sentence count

154

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Chris Sims of the Alberta Taxpayers Federation joins me on The Gunn Show to talk about Premier Daniel Smith's new deal with Prime Minister Mark Carney on the potential for a pipeline between Alberta and the West Coast of Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 What does Premier Smith's Memorandum of Understanding mean for Alberta taxpayers?
00:00:05.900 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:25.600 You know, I read a lot of government documents.
00:00:28.340 Part of my job is actually to understand what government policy means when applied to your
00:00:35.580 life, what the consequences, unintended or otherwise, are for everyday people just trying
00:00:43.320 to live their lives.
00:00:45.160 And I know what I read in that Memorandum of Understanding between Premier Daniel Smith
00:00:51.920 and Prime Minister Mark Carney.
00:00:54.780 I know that that Memorandum of Understanding requires an increase in the industrial carbon
00:01:04.940 tax for Albertans on the promise of potentially nothing.
00:01:10.360 There is no obligation for a pipeline to be built before we start paying that enhanced
00:01:21.380 industrial carbon tax.
00:01:23.260 Now, perhaps I'm getting something wrong, but I don't think I am.
00:01:28.220 So I invited my friend, Chris Sims of the Alberta Taxpayers Federation to come on the show and
00:01:34.700 fact check me, double check my work.
00:01:39.640 Here she is.
00:01:40.640 Take a listen.
00:01:41.340 So joining me now is my good friend and good friend of the show and good friend to taxpayers
00:01:53.160 everywhere, Chris Sims from the Alberta Taxpayers Federation.
00:01:57.160 Chris, let's talk about the gorilla in the room.
00:02:02.060 And that is the Memorandum of Understanding with the Prime Minister on the potential for a pipeline
00:02:11.920 where a private sector company has not even remotely proposed anything yet.
00:02:18.640 It is my opinion that Daniel Smith is engaging in one last Hail Mary to try to get a pipeline
00:02:27.260 done.
00:02:27.640 My concern is, I think Alberta is giving a lot away without a guarantee of something in
00:02:36.720 return.
00:02:37.340 Give me your analysis.
00:02:39.320 I'm with you.
00:02:41.320 I'm very concerned, but I wanted to start with the positives first.
00:02:46.540 If they happen.
00:02:48.100 Okay, I'm going to try.
00:02:50.260 Because I can see the Premier is working.
00:02:53.380 I can see that she's trying to maintain hope and keep moving forward.
00:02:57.760 And I appreciate that.
00:02:59.720 As someone who's probably more cynical than she is, I appreciate that she is trying and
00:03:05.540 she is trying to get a good deal for Alberta. 1.00
00:03:08.480 That said, if it happened, if it actually came true, okay, magic sparkles occurred and it all
00:03:15.840 came true, if we got the production cap lifted, if we got the West Coast tanker band lifted,
00:03:23.260 if we got a pipeline actually built out to the West Coast in order to ship our stuff over
00:03:28.500 to Asia, if, and this part got missed, I find a lot, the green energy regulation things that
00:03:34.060 were strangling the building of natural gas power plants.
00:03:39.000 Right.
00:03:39.160 If all of those things went away, that would be amazing.
00:03:43.360 Like straight up, that would be great.
00:03:44.860 That would be very good for Alberta.
00:03:46.900 Frankly, I'd be happier if they were talking about getting gas fired power plants up and
00:03:51.740 running so that all of us can have less expensive electricity bills and cheaper electricity in
00:03:58.860 our homes and in our barns and in our workplaces rather than pumping this whole AI thing.
00:04:04.800 But I digress.
00:04:06.940 That's me.
00:04:07.520 I was raised on Terminator movies.
00:04:09.260 So I get it.
00:04:10.380 So if, if all of it came true, that would be great.
00:04:14.800 I'm concerned that the devil's in the details here.
00:04:18.860 And one of the big details is what Prime Minister Mark Carney stomped out and said to all of the
00:04:24.480 media cameras that were waiting for him right after he signed.
00:04:27.440 And that's where he said basically that, oh yeah, that carbon tax that's here in Alberta,
00:04:32.800 that's going to be six times higher.
00:04:34.980 Thanks very much.
00:04:36.120 Um, and so that was a problematic as the kids say.
00:04:41.860 And then when I saw economist Jack Mintz, who's no slouch came out in the financial post
00:04:48.360 right away.
00:04:49.000 And I'm paraphrasing him, but I spoke with him on my show and I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said,
00:04:56.500 yeah, Carney is taking what is currently known as the tier program, industrial carbon tax here in Alberta.
00:05:03.560 And he's adding up how much it costs now for carbon credits and carbon taxes, blah, blah, blah.
00:05:09.420 And he said, yeah, that's around six times.
00:05:12.760 And he was really raising the alarm bell.
00:05:15.760 Dr. Mintz was saying that if they layer on all of these carbon taxes and all of these complicated
00:05:23.500 carbon credit systems with the sequestration and all this stuff, yeah, that it would make
00:05:28.380 the production, the production of a barrel of oil much more expensive.
00:05:34.440 He said all combined, it could be as high as $10 extra US per barrel.
00:05:40.980 And for folks who are listening outside of Alberta, that's a huge hit.
00:05:44.760 Okay, if you suddenly make the production by $10 a barrel US higher here in Alberta, that kind of
00:05:51.000 prices us out of the market.
00:05:53.180 And the reason why we talk about oil and gas so much isn't just because it provides great jobs for
00:05:58.340 so many people and provides stuff that we all use.
00:06:01.720 It's tied directly to the budget of Alberta, like the government of Alberta.
00:06:07.960 The revenues go up and down based on the price of a barrel of oil.
00:06:11.560 So this is why this is so essential.
00:06:14.760 So I am, I'm doing my best to take a page from what Premier Smith said in her last speech
00:06:21.140 at the AGM, which I thought was very good tone when she said, and she quoted Ronald Reagan
00:06:27.920 saying, trust, but verify.
00:06:30.040 We've had the rug pulled out from under us before.
00:06:32.940 We're going to be really cautious.
00:06:34.760 I think that's the better tack to take.
00:06:37.560 I am under no illusions.
00:06:39.420 This agreement is just the first step in this journey.
00:06:43.300 There is much hard work.
00:06:44.760 ahead of us.
00:06:45.960 And the federal government must earn back the trust of Albertans as we move through
00:06:50.140 the next stages of this process.
00:06:51.920 After all, the people of Alberta have, of course, had the rug pulled out from under them too
00:07:02.860 many times to count over the past 10 years.
00:07:05.020 So I will take the advice of a great U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, who said, when dealing
00:07:09.040 with a former adversary, trust, but verify.
00:07:12.140 And on behalf of Albertans, I will be verifying and holding Alberta or Ottawa accountable.
00:07:17.940 As you know, every step of the way, you can absolutely count on that.
00:07:28.400 Rather than look here at all the fireworks, everything's happy.
00:07:31.780 We don't look at the details.
00:07:32.940 The details matter here.
00:07:34.940 Right.
00:07:35.440 And, you know, that $6 to $10 a barrel per oil in additional production costs, that's a
00:07:42.560 lot easier for the big five players like CNRL and Murray Edwards to absorb, given their
00:07:50.760 involvement in the heavily subsidized carbon capture project, the Pathways Alliance, than
00:07:56.460 the juniors and middle-of-the-road producers, this sort of additional cost can make their
00:08:02.520 projects and their investments completely unviable.
00:08:06.200 And that's my concern in all of this, is this can become a damper to anybody but the big
00:08:13.600 five.
00:08:14.660 Yeah, it's one of those things that once you live here and work here and, like, get around
00:08:20.640 in the industry and stuff, you start to understand.
00:08:23.320 I think a lot of people who are outside of Alberta might be thinking, oh, well, you know,
00:08:27.960 if the oil companies are in favour of this, this must be a good thing, right, for their
00:08:31.940 product.
00:08:32.460 They want to get their product out to the port.
00:08:34.700 They want to move their stuff through pipes.
00:08:36.800 You'd be forgiven for thinking that.
00:08:38.560 That sounds logical.
00:08:40.160 But as my friend Franco Teresano pointed out in his book, those big oil company guys and
00:08:47.760 gals, they were on stage when former NDP Premier Rachel Notley announced her consumer carbon
00:08:55.400 tax.
00:08:56.220 Right.
00:08:56.400 She created a brand new one just for the province of Alberta under this notion of a social license. 0.74
00:09:03.500 And if I'm taking her at her word, okay, let's just say for argument's sake, she really
00:09:07.680 wanted a pipeline and I'm taking her at her word.
00:09:10.320 It sounds so similar, Sheila.
00:09:12.620 Oh, completely.
00:09:13.040 Where she was making the argument, she was making, Notley was making the argument then.
00:09:16.400 Listen, folks, we want to get a pipeline built out to the West Coast.
00:09:19.280 And in order to do that, we have to pay a price.
00:09:22.760 A carbon tax.
00:09:23.880 Like, literally, it's the same argument.
00:09:25.640 I thought we left the flawed idea of social license in the dustbin of the Notley era and
00:09:31.340 we've resurrected it.
00:09:32.680 And I hope we haven't, I really hope, okay, this is my hope.
00:09:37.240 This is my hope.
00:09:38.660 I hope that they have Carney signed on to these promises of lifting the production cap, getting,
00:09:45.760 you know, approving, approving, approving.
00:09:47.980 Like for realsies, a pipeline being built out to the West Coast without using taxpayers' 1.00
00:09:52.520 money.
00:09:52.960 They have to get private people coming in here willing to build it, okay?
00:09:56.320 And getting that tanker ban suspended and all of those good things.
00:09:59.580 I really hope they're able to do that while really whittling down that carbon tax, that
00:10:07.620 industrial carbon tax hard.
00:10:09.700 Because I'm hearing from some proponents, Sheila, and I don't know if this makes sense
00:10:15.300 because I'm not in the industry.
00:10:17.360 Dr. Mintz told me yesterday that it doesn't make sense to him, but I'm hearing from some
00:10:22.120 people who are around industry saying, listen, this is not the same as a consumer carbon tax.
00:10:27.260 We can whittle this thing down to where it's basically oil companies passing monopoly money
00:10:33.460 back and forth to each other in a closed circle without cost to consumers and without cost to
00:10:39.160 the government slash taxpayer.
00:10:41.200 Just trust us on this.
00:10:42.760 We just need to get the checkbox.
00:10:45.640 I don't know if that makes sense, but that's what I'm hearing people tell me.
00:10:50.200 Mintz said that it doesn't make sense to him as an economist.
00:10:52.760 But I'm really hoping that they're able to get that carbon tax level way down while still
00:11:00.060 getting all of the good stuff done.
00:11:02.520 Yeah, I've just about had it over the past week with conservative insiders telling me
00:11:08.700 that I'm not bright enough to understand what I absolutely just read.
00:11:12.160 I find that irritating as all get out because I can completely understand what I just read.
00:11:17.340 And it feels a lot like not least social license and the conservative party federally
00:11:24.000 just got cut off at the knees on this issue because they're out there in the House of Commons
00:11:28.800 saying this industrial carbon tax is just a shift upstream so that the people no longer
00:11:37.600 see it as a line item.
00:11:39.800 They just see that things cost more and they don't really understand why.
00:11:43.360 And they no longer see carbon tax as a line item on their natural gas bill or their electricity bill,
00:11:49.560 thus insulating the Liberals from the political fallout.
00:11:53.640 They're hammering that issue in the House of Commons.
00:11:56.740 And then their greatest ally in the fight against the carbon tax just sort of decided
00:12:00.580 that she's going to concede the first ditch to the Liberals in the battle. 0.90
00:12:04.960 And this was it.
00:12:06.380 Remember during the election when Carney kind of laughed at the idea of axing the tax?
00:12:12.120 And he said, we're going to change the carbon tax.
00:12:15.200 This is what we've been warning about now for ages.
00:12:19.120 Of course.
00:12:19.720 Of course.
00:12:20.400 And so this is where it gets really frustrating when you're looking around saying, guys, come on.
00:12:26.280 Like, this is a hidden carbon tax.
00:12:28.420 He warned the entire time that he was going to change the carbon tax and strengthen it.
00:12:33.320 Like, speaking of books, please, folks, if you have not read this book, it's important that you do.
00:12:38.580 Take it out of the library.
00:12:40.060 Don't buy it.
00:12:40.760 Thank you.
00:12:41.760 Take it out of the library.
00:12:42.380 Don't give them your money.
00:12:42.960 Borrow it from a friend.
00:12:43.880 You know, I'm not telling you to love it or like it or endorse it.
00:12:47.340 Like, come on.
00:12:47.780 We're all adults.
00:12:48.420 Let's read stuff that helps us understand what's going on.
00:12:51.600 Prime Minister Mark Carney, when he was the UN Special Envoy on blah, blah, blah, all these
00:12:56.940 issues, he wrote this book.
00:12:58.880 And in it are chapter after chapter of things like carbon taxes, various forms of them.
00:13:05.180 He quotes Greta Thunberg in earnest, repeatedly.
00:13:08.580 This book was endorsed by Bono.
00:13:10.600 Okay.
00:13:11.240 Carney just wrote this a couple years ago.
00:13:13.680 And so this is where I'm trying to see the good parts of like actually get, I am, I'm trying
00:13:22.280 to be possible.
00:13:22.600 I know you are.
00:13:23.140 I look at this pipeline proposal without a private sector pipeline proposal involved
00:13:34.540 yet.
00:13:35.480 And I look at the tangibles here.
00:13:39.960 Russia isn't doing this.
00:13:41.040 OPEC isn't doing this.
00:13:42.120 The Americans aren't doing this.
00:13:43.900 So if you were a private sector pipeline company and the American ethos right now is drill, baby
00:13:48.860 drill, and you're looking at Canada and it's like net zero plus 600% potentially more in
00:13:56.320 upstream carbon taxes, why would you invest here?
00:14:00.960 Why?
00:14:02.260 You know, I guess the proof is in the pudding.
00:14:06.100 It's one of those things where I'm glad you pointed out the United States.
00:14:09.240 Um, and we're, I know we're in a tussle with U.S. President Donald Trump and we're in the
00:14:14.780 middle of a tariff war and we just saw Algoma Steel.
00:14:18.240 I just hate seeing those stories.
00:14:20.900 By the way, Algoma Steel could have made a heck of a lot of pipelines for Western Canada,
00:14:27.560 but we, we're not a serious country.