Western Standard - August 29, 2026


Alberta Oil Is Not Ottawa’s Bargaining Chip ｜ @CoryMorgan


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

192.81

Word count

860

Sentence count

64


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 But let's get into local news, kind of.
00:00:03.880 I just want to talk to Ottawa.
00:00:05.780 Listen here, I'm tired.
00:00:07.660 I mean, I grew up in the national energy program.
00:00:10.740 Bone tired of Ottawa treating Alberta's oil and gas like some communal cookie jar
00:00:14.800 they can rummage through whenever the mood strikes,
00:00:17.260 or if, in this case, the Americans start throwing tariffs around.
00:00:20.700 Hands off.
00:00:21.980 That's pretty much the whole sermon.
00:00:23.160 Keep your federal fingers, your clever little export tax schemes,
00:00:26.880 your national interest lectures, and your sudden urge to play tough guy with our barrels well the
00:00:32.800 hell away from our oil patch. We didn't stumble into this resource. Generations of Albertans
00:00:38.280 built the damn thing. We took the boom and bust punches, the price crashes that emptied towns,
00:00:44.440 the environmental lectures from people who heat their homes with the same molecules they pretend
00:00:48.660 to despise, and now with a trade dispute looming and counter tariffs scheduled for September,
00:00:53.780 some bright lights in the east along with some local failed politicians are suddenly wondering
00:00:58.420 if we should weaponize the one thing that keeps the lights on in this country. Spare me guys.
00:01:03.460 Daniel Smith's right on this one even if it makes the usual suspects clutch their pearls.
00:01:08.020 Slapping an export tax on Alberta crude or threatening to throttle volumes heading south
00:01:11.940 isn't leverage. It's a self-inflicted wound dressed up as patriotism. The U.S. takes the
00:01:17.540 bulk of what we produce. Cut that off or tax it into oblivion and you're not hurting Washington
00:01:22.900 first. You're putting 140,000 Alberta jobs in the chopping block and daring Americans to retaliate
00:01:28.940 on the pipelines that already snaked through their territory or the gas that keeps Ontario
00:01:33.180 worn. Those pipes go south and then north, guys. That's not strategy. That's political sloth.
00:01:38.540 And don't start with the... It's Canada's resource line. Constitutionally, that resource belongs to
00:01:44.480 Alberta. That battle was hard fought back in 1930 and won by the Western provinces. And we aren't
00:01:50.460 going to give it up now. Ottawa's job was supposed to be facilitating getting these products to
00:01:55.840 Tidewater so we weren't held hostage to one customer. Instead, we've got years of regulatory
00:02:01.240 delays, a tanker ban that treats Benjamin like radioactive waste, and an emissions cap that only
00:02:06.700 recently got parked for the time being. Now they're talking about a new potential West Coast
00:02:12.700 line, but they remain non-committal, of course, and as if that erases the previous decades of
00:02:18.240 was obstruction. Hey, if you can do it, fine. Go ahead, build that pipe, capture all the carbon
00:02:22.840 you please. Just don't turn around and decide our production's a bargaining chip in a tariff war.
00:02:27.540 You helped escalate, Ottawa. The hypocrisy is impressive. When prices are high, Alberta's this
00:02:32.760 selfish petro state that should share more. But when the prices are low, well, then it's Alberta's
00:02:36.680 oil. Americans, they get cranky. Suddenly, we're supposed to turn off the taps for the greater good.
00:02:41.580 But a greater good for whom? The same federation that happily doled out Eastern equalization
00:02:46.680 checks funded, no small part by the royalties and taxes that we pay and regenerate with that oil.
00:02:52.580 We've been the cash cow that gets lectured about how we produce. Forgive us if we're not eager to
00:02:58.000 volunteer for another round of sacrifice. Look, a trade war is messy. We've got small manufacturers,
00:03:03.240 farmers, furniture makers, even in Alberta, they're already feeling the squeeze. That's real.
00:03:07.920 Escalating it by playing games with the energy flows would be even dumber, though.
00:03:11.360 The Americans need our oil. Roughly half of their imports of it come from Canada, and they know it.
00:03:16.220 They've left energy off the tariff list so far anyways for a reason.
00:03:20.880 Advertising that we're willing to choke our own industry to make a point
00:03:24.200 is how you turn a negotiation into a brawl that nobody in this province is going to win,
00:03:28.220 much less the rest of the country which has been consuming the fruits of Alberta's labor for generations.
00:03:33.660 So let Alberta develop the resource and sell it at the best price the market will bear.
00:03:37.860 Just leave us alone.
00:03:38.760 Let us build the infrastructure so we're not permanently tied to one buyer then.
00:03:43.480 And then leave us the hell alone.
00:03:44.800 No last-minute federal vetoes, no sudden national security restrictions,
00:03:48.980 no using Alberta's payroll as a pressure tactic because some other province wants to look tough.
00:03:53.660 If Ottawa wants to fight a trade war, it can do it with the tools that don't require us
00:03:57.340 to set our own house on fire first out here in Alberta.
00:04:00.720 We've spent enough years watching distant politicians treat this province like a problem to be managed
00:04:05.180 rather than a partner that actually produces something that the world does want.
00:04:09.780 The referendum talk didn't come out of nowhere, guys.
00:04:12.120 Keep treating the oil sands like a political football.
00:04:14.800 And people here eventually got to decide they'd rather set the rules themselves.
00:04:18.780 And God knows I'm encouraging them to take that choice.
00:04:21.240 So until then, the message is simple and getting grumpy.
00:04:24.420 Canada, keep your grubby little hands off our oil and gas.