SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alberta's 'pipeline deal' with Mark Carney
Episode Stats
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Summary
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
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What does Premier Smith's Memorandum of Understanding mean for Alberta taxpayers?
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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You know, I read a lot of government documents.
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Part of my job is actually to understand what government policy means when applied to your
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life, what the consequences, unintended or otherwise, are for everyday people just trying
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And I know what I read in that Memorandum of Understanding between Premier Daniel Smith
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I know that that Memorandum of Understanding requires an increase in the industrial carbon
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tax for Albertans on the promise of potentially nothing.
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There is no obligation for a pipeline to be built before we start paying that enhanced
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Now, perhaps I'm getting something wrong, but I don't think I am.
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So I invited my friend, Chris Sims of the Alberta Taxpayers Federation to come on the show and
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So joining me now is my good friend and good friend of the show and good friend to taxpayers
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everywhere, Chris Sims from the Alberta Taxpayers Federation.
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Chris, let's talk about the gorilla in the room.
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And that is the Memorandum of Understanding with the Prime Minister on the potential for a pipeline
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where a private sector company has not even remotely proposed anything yet.
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It is my opinion that Daniel Smith is engaging in one last Hail Mary to try to get a pipeline
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My concern is, I think Alberta is giving a lot away without a guarantee of something in
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I'm very concerned, but I wanted to start with the positives first.
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I can see that she's trying to maintain hope and keep moving forward.
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As someone who's probably more cynical than she is, I appreciate that she is trying and
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That said, if it happened, if it actually came true, okay, magic sparkles occurred and it all
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came true, if we got the production cap lifted, if we got the West Coast tanker band lifted,
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if we got a pipeline actually built out to the West Coast in order to ship our stuff over
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to Asia, if, and this part got missed, I find a lot, the green energy regulation things that
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were strangling the building of natural gas power plants.
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If all of those things went away, that would be amazing.
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Frankly, I'd be happier if they were talking about getting gas fired power plants up and
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running so that all of us can have less expensive electricity bills and cheaper electricity in
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our homes and in our barns and in our workplaces rather than pumping this whole AI thing.
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So if, if all of it came true, that would be great.
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I'm concerned that the devil's in the details here.
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And one of the big details is what Prime Minister Mark Carney stomped out and said to all of the
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media cameras that were waiting for him right after he signed.
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And that's where he said basically that, oh yeah, that carbon tax that's here in Alberta,
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Um, and so that was a problematic as the kids say.
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And then when I saw economist Jack Mintz, who's no slouch came out in the financial post
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And I'm paraphrasing him, but I spoke with him on my show and I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said,
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yeah, Carney is taking what is currently known as the tier program, industrial carbon tax here in Alberta.
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And he's adding up how much it costs now for carbon credits and carbon taxes, blah, blah, blah.
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Dr. Mintz was saying that if they layer on all of these carbon taxes and all of these complicated
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carbon credit systems with the sequestration and all this stuff, yeah, that it would make
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the production, the production of a barrel of oil much more expensive.
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He said all combined, it could be as high as $10 extra US per barrel.
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And for folks who are listening outside of Alberta, that's a huge hit.
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Okay, if you suddenly make the production by $10 a barrel US higher here in Alberta, that kind of
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And the reason why we talk about oil and gas so much isn't just because it provides great jobs for
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so many people and provides stuff that we all use.
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It's tied directly to the budget of Alberta, like the government of Alberta.
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The revenues go up and down based on the price of a barrel of oil.
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So I am, I'm doing my best to take a page from what Premier Smith said in her last speech
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at the AGM, which I thought was very good tone when she said, and she quoted Ronald Reagan
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We've had the rug pulled out from under us before.
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This agreement is just the first step in this journey.
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And the federal government must earn back the trust of Albertans as we move through
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After all, the people of Alberta have, of course, had the rug pulled out from under them too
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So I will take the advice of a great U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, who said, when dealing
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And on behalf of Albertans, I will be verifying and holding Alberta or Ottawa accountable.
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As you know, every step of the way, you can absolutely count on that.
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Rather than look here at all the fireworks, everything's happy.
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And, you know, that $6 to $10 a barrel per oil in additional production costs, that's a
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lot easier for the big five players like CNRL and Murray Edwards to absorb, given their
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involvement in the heavily subsidized carbon capture project, the Pathways Alliance, than
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the juniors and middle-of-the-road producers, this sort of additional cost can make their
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projects and their investments completely unviable.
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And that's my concern in all of this, is this can become a damper to anybody but the big
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Yeah, it's one of those things that once you live here and work here and, like, get around
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in the industry and stuff, you start to understand.
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I think a lot of people who are outside of Alberta might be thinking, oh, well, you know,
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if the oil companies are in favour of this, this must be a good thing, right, for their
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They want to get their product out to the port.
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But as my friend Franco Teresano pointed out in his book, those big oil company guys and
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gals, they were on stage when former NDP Premier Rachel Notley announced her consumer carbon
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She created a brand new one just for the province of Alberta under this notion of a social license.
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And if I'm taking her at her word, okay, let's just say for argument's sake, she really
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wanted a pipeline and I'm taking her at her word.
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Where she was making the argument, she was making, Notley was making the argument then.
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Listen, folks, we want to get a pipeline built out to the West Coast.
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And in order to do that, we have to pay a price.
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I thought we left the flawed idea of social license in the dustbin of the Notley era and
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And I hope we haven't, I really hope, okay, this is my hope.
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I hope that they have Carney signed on to these promises of lifting the production cap, getting,
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Like for realsies, a pipeline being built out to the West Coast without using taxpayers'
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They have to get private people coming in here willing to build it, okay?
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And getting that tanker ban suspended and all of those good things.
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I really hope they're able to do that while really whittling down that carbon tax, that
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Because I'm hearing from some proponents, Sheila, and I don't know if this makes sense
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Dr. Mintz told me yesterday that it doesn't make sense to him, but I'm hearing from some
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people who are around industry saying, listen, this is not the same as a consumer carbon tax.
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We can whittle this thing down to where it's basically oil companies passing monopoly money
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back and forth to each other in a closed circle without cost to consumers and without cost to
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I don't know if that makes sense, but that's what I'm hearing people tell me.
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Mintz said that it doesn't make sense to him as an economist.
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But I'm really hoping that they're able to get that carbon tax level way down while still
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Yeah, I've just about had it over the past week with conservative insiders telling me
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that I'm not bright enough to understand what I absolutely just read.
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I find that irritating as all get out because I can completely understand what I just read.
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And it feels a lot like not least social license and the conservative party federally
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just got cut off at the knees on this issue because they're out there in the House of Commons
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saying this industrial carbon tax is just a shift upstream so that the people no longer
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They just see that things cost more and they don't really understand why.
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And they no longer see carbon tax as a line item on their natural gas bill or their electricity bill,
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thus insulating the Liberals from the political fallout.
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They're hammering that issue in the House of Commons.
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And then their greatest ally in the fight against the carbon tax just sort of decided
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that she's going to concede the first ditch to the Liberals in the battle.
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Remember during the election when Carney kind of laughed at the idea of axing the tax?
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And he said, we're going to change the carbon tax.
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This is what we've been warning about now for ages.
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And so this is where it gets really frustrating when you're looking around saying, guys, come on.
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He warned the entire time that he was going to change the carbon tax and strengthen it.
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Like, speaking of books, please, folks, if you have not read this book, it's important that you do.
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You know, I'm not telling you to love it or like it or endorse it.
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Let's read stuff that helps us understand what's going on.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney, when he was the UN Special Envoy on blah, blah, blah, all these
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And in it are chapter after chapter of things like carbon taxes, various forms of them.
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He quotes Greta Thunberg in earnest, repeatedly.
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And so this is where I'm trying to see the good parts of like actually get, I am, I'm trying
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I look at this pipeline proposal without a private sector pipeline proposal involved
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So if you were a private sector pipeline company and the American ethos right now is drill, baby
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drill, and you're looking at Canada and it's like net zero plus 600% potentially more in
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upstream carbon taxes, why would you invest here?
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It's one of those things where I'm glad you pointed out the United States.
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Um, and we're, I know we're in a tussle with U.S. President Donald Trump and we're in the
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middle of a tariff war and we just saw Algoma Steel.
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By the way, Algoma Steel could have made a heck of a lot of pipelines for Western Canada,