The Critical Compass Podcast - December 10, 2025


"Why Can't Alberta Have Nice Things?" Martyupnorth on the Pipeline MOU "Nothingburger"


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

175.93195

Word Count

1,172

Sentence Count

1

Misogynist Sentences

4


Summary

In this episode, we talk about the recent deal struck between the opposition parties in the Alberta government and the opposition party in the House of Commons. We discuss the deal, the deal itself, and the fallout from the deal.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 the memorandum to me is an absolute nothing burger absolute nothing burger they both lost
00:00:08.200 carney lost bigger than smith right so carney you know immediately in the aftermath of that
00:00:14.780 carney lost stephen gilbo and i think carney will lose a few more mps between now and christmas
00:00:21.560 and when parliament resumes in the new year he'll have he'll have lost three or four mps he's going
00:00:27.060 to lose he's lost gilbo he's going to lose um bill blair who's going to go become the high
00:00:33.920 commissioner to england melanie jolie is going to become the ambassador to france i think there's a
00:00:38.900 few ambassadorships that have to be filled and then the liberals in ontario are having their own
00:00:44.940 leadership race so people like karina gould and nathan eskier and some of the other ones have
00:00:52.300 already said that they intend on running in the leadership race of the liberals so i think carney
00:00:57.420 lost big with his mou um uh yves blanchette has been absolutely slamming this um eb is no fan of the of
00:01:07.660 the of the mou like nobody's in favor of it and and i go on french twitter and the quebecers are
00:01:14.120 absolutely angry about this they feel betrayed maybe that's even uh that paints the case for like
00:01:20.620 why alberta negotiating with ottawa is gonna ultimately fail if every little win or a common
00:01:28.560 ground if it feels like a loss to anybody in the east then what are we doing trying to make all these
00:01:35.520 little wins if excellent if it's not even politically excellent like it's not politically
00:01:41.480 viable yeah nobody cheers any wins for alberta ever like exactly i mean if alberta wants a separate
00:01:48.580 pension plan that's bad quebec wants a separate pension plan good for you alberta wants to separate
00:01:53.440 you guys are evil quebec wants to separate you're absolutely right like we we cannot have any nice
00:01:58.000 things in alberta which is why at one point i wondered if danielle wasn't playing carney right
00:02:04.940 because he looks so bad but then i had to look at her and go no you you she took it on the chin too
00:02:09.620 right we'll we'll get into details that it it came out at the agm i mean she she was basically booed for
00:02:15.340 the mou she i i don't know if she's convinced that it's good the way she spoke about it she seemed to be
00:02:21.200 in favor of it she gave up something i mean she gave up on um well she didn't give up on the carbon tax
00:02:28.240 right she's gonna she's arguing that the carbon tax was the industrial carbon tax was set to climb
00:02:34.160 and she sort of got a slightly better deal on the carbon tax so she's gonna say i didn't really lose
00:02:41.180 um she won by by getting no emission caps but she still has uh a few other things so if she if if you
00:02:49.840 look at what she gave up and the potential return okay it's a pretty good deal and uh and and i would
00:02:58.000 have made that same deal perhaps if i was her uh looking at for me i would have made the same deal for
00:03:03.040 different reasons i would have looked at carney like i'll make any deal with you because you're
00:03:06.740 gonna it's gonna you're gonna lose and it's gonna make you bad look bad and you won't be here in
00:03:10.820 three years so i would have made those deals i also would have made those deals because i believe
00:03:16.380 that practicality is gonna always win out on on on um ideology so um in practicality for us in our
00:03:25.420 case is the fact that the world wants our oil and and no matter what our oil will get to market
00:03:30.060 because there's a because people want it so do you feel that both smith and carney both sort of feel
00:03:37.540 like they're like getting one over on each other or do you think that this is it runs a level deeper
00:03:43.280 than that like do you do you think that smith thinks that she's getting a big win and carney also feels
00:03:49.220 like he's getting a big win uh well let me put it this way who do you think actually negotiated at the
00:03:55.120 table in the days before the agm was it carney and smith or was it somebody on carney's team and
00:04:00.780 somebody on smith's team right it was two people yeah it would be a representative from each side
00:04:05.620 which is why the deal is so bad and then they quickly come back and carney goes yeah i'll sign
00:04:09.960 it and smith goes yeah i'll sign it so nobody nobody i don't but it but if it was them negotiating i
00:04:17.560 don't think it uh i don't think either of them would feel like they really got a one up on the other
00:04:22.300 right i mean carney carney is basically she she got a one up on she she didn't sacrifice anything
00:04:29.020 of her own core values i'd say other than maybe stepping back from the ultimatum ultimatums are
00:04:34.580 always dangerous right i mean she she got something she could save face she went as far as saying that
00:04:40.420 she got seven out of nine items on her ultimatum i i call you know that's a stretch i mean maybe three
00:04:46.500 or four out of the nine i because uh bill c69 didn't change the tiger the tanker band didn't
00:04:53.140 change um you know there's some very specific ones that that they promised to change but um so she
00:05:00.840 she didn't sacrifice too much he really went back on his values i mean suddenly he's pro oil he's pro uh
00:05:08.500 he's thinking of reversing some policies he's uh he went back enough that that gilbo quit and i don't
00:05:15.120 think that was just um showmanship by gilbo i i think gilbo is honestly pissed off he's like
00:05:21.260 you know no more electric vehicles no more but but the reality again is that gilbo's idea gilbo's
00:05:28.120 things that they impose they're ideological right like there'll be no electric vehicles by 2035 man
00:05:34.540 that's not grounded in any kind of science so and and to me i think carney's reversing himself on
00:05:41.340 those temporarily because let's be truthful right carney wrote a whole book on this you're you're not
00:05:47.280 going to change your stripes overnight he does believe that that climate change is an existential
00:05:52.680 threat and that free markets are out of control and need to be reined in he kind of showed it right
00:05:58.640 like we'll choose the projects we'll choose who does it you have to buy canadian steel canadian lumber
00:06:05.600 labor you know things like that and i think carney is reversing himself temporarily because he's
00:06:11.800 looking around him and he's like eh trump will be gone in three years maybe i'll still be around
00:06:16.780 you know he he's he's selling out but only temporarily
00:06:20.440 you
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00:06:39.560 you