Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.As I said in the lead-up to the announcement of this recent Carney-Smith pipeline deal, “the devil is in the details.” And now that I’ve had some time to digest the details in Thursday’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), I will say, the details are positively demonic.Now, that doesn’t change the fact that I am very much in favor of building out our pipeline infrastructure. Oil and gas are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and they need to get to market. And pipelines that get those products to tidewater to be shipped abroad, like this one, play a particular role in combatting the “petro-loonie discount,” the 20% to 40% discount our oil trades at, because the US is among our only customers. That creates real downward pressure on the Canadian dollar..MORGAN: Smith's UCP is in danger of rupturing.We desperately need to push back on that pressure because, as I’ve written before, the loonie is in bad shape, and that affects us all.These problems are the product of a decade of anti-resource sector policies from green ideologues like Justin Trudeau, Jonathan Wilkinson, and Steven Guilbeault, who dramatically announced his resignation shortly after this agreement was made public.Of course, Mark Carney is a green ideologue too. But his career in finance has also taught him how to do one important thing: read economic forecasts. And Canada’s are pretty bleak..Decelerating GDP growth. Trade tensions with the US. Rising unemployment. Concerns about a further credit downgrade. Market watchers predicting we slip into recession within the next six months.Carney has been desperate for some good economic news, and he got it when markets responded positively to the MOU announcement, with energy stocks outpacing the broader TSX. On the deal itself, I have some real concerns..FILDEBRANDT: Can Danielle Smith break the independence wild horse?.First, yes, Alberta gets an exemption on so-called “Clean Electricity Regulations” and an emissions cap reprieve, but in exchange, the Industrial Carbon Tax jumps from $95 to $130 per tonne next year, a 37% tax hike on all economic activity that will be paid for by Albertan consumers. And as bad as that is, it is just the floor of the new Industrial Carbon Tax regime, with potential escalations, and perhaps full harmonization with the Federal rate, left for later negotiations. That’s liable to mitigate any benefit this project produces.The deal recommits all parties to net-zero by 2050, an impossible target even environmentalist heroes like Bill Gates are beginning to admit is fantasy. .It commits both governments to building out the world’s largest Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) network at a cost in the tens of billions in taxpayer dollars. Carbon capture remains an absolute boondoggle, which will produce negligible global emissions reductions while lining the pockets of well-connected Big Green firms, most of whose executives are old friends of Carney’s.Then there’s the BC issue, which could well prove insurmountable..ADOLPHE: Canada’s AI champion or America’s Trojan horse?.The MOU pledges that Canada and Alberta will engage with BC’s NDP premier, David Eby, to hammer out the details on the project, which Eby has called an “energy vampire.”He’s frustrated at not being included in talks, and he’s expressed concerns about the lack of buy-in from coastal First Nations communities, which is going to make actually building it extremely difficult.He’s facing political pressure, with recent polls finding that more than 60% of Eby’s voters oppose the project. The NDP is fundraising off of their opposition to it, saying in an e-mail to members, “we’re not going to jeopardize our coast for Danielle Smith’s pipe dream.” .They’re clearly concerned about the province’s Green Party cutting into their vote share in the next election, and they should be.Eby has rightly pointed out that the project currently lacks private backing, something that it needs to move ahead. But concerns about project uncertainty will make it harder to pull that funding together. Investors aren’t stupid. They’re not likely to sink tens of billions into a pipeline project that could be strangled by a provincial or federal government in a year or two..MacKINNON: The Cowichan ‘iceberg’ is melting: Why BC property owners shouldn’t panic.And that brings us to perhaps the most troubling issue here, which is the process itself. Because, thus far, there isn’t one. This is a backroom deal between a couple of politicians. Major infrastructure projects can’t be built on Prime Ministerial fiat. What we need is a predictable, transparent process coupled with a reasonable regulatory regime. .The approach of this MOU breeds corruption.Unfortunately, government by personal whim, rather than by law, is what we’ve been getting from Mark Carney from day one. Instead of scrapping Bill C-69, the “No More Pipelines Act,” he’s personally signing off on a single new pipeline, wrapped in red tape. Instead of repealing Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium, he offers an exemption. This is in line with his prior decision to zero out the Consumer Carbon Tax and postpone enforcement of the EV mandate..COGGINS: Meet the family living beyond its means and why that family is Canada.A healthy Canada, one with a pro-market culture, would repeal these legislative monstrosities. Mark Carney prefers to keep them in his back pocket, in case they ever come in handy somewhere down the road.Canadians deserve better.Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
