Premier Danielle Smith is pleased Ottawa has indicated it will greenlight a BC pipeline project, but says that is just a small first step in growing Canada’s LNG sector.Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday said the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline that would transport natural gas from northeastern BC to a proposed LNG facility on Pearse Island near Prince Rupert, BC, is “highly, highly likely.”Smith and Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Monday morning, after Smith’s annual Stampede Pancake Breakfast at the McDougall Centre in Calgary, held a press conference to announce two new Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) on pipelines and trade.Each committed to work collaboratively to build new pipelines and develop energy corridors to link Alberta’s oil and gas with global markets, and together called for Ottawa’s laws and regulations that “unfairly target” Canada’s energy sector to be repealed..Smith explained net-zero targets are established by so-called “forecasting companies that don't do forecasting” — rather they “do backcasting,” where they look at ideological targets in the future and work backwards to come up with policies to implement in the present.“I would prefer to deal in the world of reality, and in the world of reality, we have five billion people on the planet who want the same standard of living as the industrialized countries,” Smith told the Western Standard.“They are going to need energy from all sources to be able to get there.”“(Forecaster) OECD … thinks by 2050 the world is going to need about 120 million barrels a day — up from about 104 today.”“So if it's a growing market, I think the world would benefit from having more supply from a reliable, friendly, safe neighbour like Canada, especially with the heavy oil product that we provide, because it gives a lot of options in developing asphalt, building materials, lubricants, petrochemicals and so on. There's a lot of versatility in the product.”“If we had Energy East, if we had Keystone XL, if we had Northern Gateway, we would be producing two and a half million barrels a day … That would have been generating somewhere in the order of $60 billion a year in revenue for the country, and that would have 40% of that revenue going to various governments.”.Smith said boosting revenues through resource development could help fund both social programs and meet international defence commitments. “That would go a long way towards allowing us the dollars that we need to meet our NATO international target for spending, or any of the social programs that we value,” she said, adding that a shift in mindset may be needed: “If you want to provide the supports for your people, you have to generate the revenue so that you have the money there.”She criticized the fiscal direction of recent years, saying the current model—heavy borrowing and money printing—has fuelled inflation without solving core issues. “It doesn't work,” she said. Instead, Smith proposed an alternative focused on economic growth across sectors. “Let’s make sure that all of our wealth creators and job creators have the ability to do that,” she said. In her view, once the economy is firing “on all cylinders,” governments can then decide how to allocate the resulting revenue.“There’s probably room for more than one pipeline, probably several,” said Smith..Ford said he has been “promoting building pipelines west, east, north and south.”He echoed Smith’s remarks that Canada has the potential to produce 2.5 million barrels a day, and that potential lies in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and elsewhere.“That's what we need to do. We need to be an economic powerhouse, an energy powerhouse around the world,” Ford told the Western Standard.“We need to unleash the opportunities, no matter if it's the great oil here in Alberta or the critical minerals or the energy that we have in Ontario. That's what we need to do. The door is open. We need to go through that door and tell the world Canada is open for business.”.When asked if they think Carney is actually going to move forward on pipelines, Smith replied, “there'll be a moment where the rubber hits the road — you can only talk the talk for so long before you start putting some real action around it.”“That's why I've been saying I'd like to see by the fall. That's my target: to try to get our projects on the (federal) project list by the fall," said Smith.“Let's give Prime Minister Carney an opportunity,” added Ford.“There’s going to be a time when we’re either fully in or we aren't.”He remarked it’s a lot different negotiating with Carney than it was with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as the new leader has “a business mind.”“He's bringing that business approach to the federal government that hasn't had that approach in the last 10 years. He wants to get things going. He comes from Alberta. He believes in prosperity, opportunity.”“So let's see what happens there — but I'm giving Prime Minister Carney the benefit of the doubt. So far, so good.”.Carney on Sunday acknowledged the “scale of the economic opportunity” pipelines present, and said Canada has both the resources and the expertise to be successful in the global LNG sector.“It is highly, highly likely that we will have an oil pipeline that is a proposal for one of these projects of national interest," Carney told the Calgary Herald.“I am confident that my government will do everything we can so that those projects can be built.”“It’s highly, highly likely that that will be the case. And the only reason why I don’t say it definitively, is this is not a top-down approach from the federal government saying, ‘We want this, we want that.’”“The private sector is going to drive it . . . We’ve got legislation, but we’ve also got the people in place at the federal level who can get things done.”
