Canadians — you and me — are set to pay for yet another oil pipeline that could devastate an at-risk killer whale population and worsen the climate crisis, provided everything progresses as Prime Minister Mark Carney announced alongside a beaming Alberta Premier Danielle Smith late last night.
Because irony is dead, extreme weather (which is exacerbated by climate change) delayed Carney’s initial Wednesday flight to Alberta, where he was set to receive Smith’s pipeline proposal.
As the two began their press conference to announce the new plan for an oil pipeline, Carney apologized for his tardiness, noting the “biblical weather last night in Ottawa” without a hint of self-awareness.
The details he went on to unveil aren’t pretty for Canadians who care about the climate crisis, many of whom are already living through its consequences: the heatwaves blanketing Ontario and Quebec, the floods drowning homes across the country, and the wildfires forcing community evacuations.
(That’s probably why Trudeau-era environment minister Steven Guilbeault sent me some less-than-pleased comments after the announcement last night. More on that in a moment).
Here’s the deal: Smith is proposing a new oil pipeline that would, if approved, snake its way down to Roberts Bank terminal in Delta, B.C., following the route of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline.
Canadians are set to pay for this project largely out of our own pockets. This is despite Carney’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta calling for any pipeline proposal to be privately constructed and financed.
Sorry, we’re paying for this??
The three partners on the project are the federally-owned Trans Mountain Corp, the Alberta government’s Petroleum Marketing Commission, and the sole private proponent: the Pembina Pipeline Corporation. The announcement also affirmed there will be Indigenous partners with a stake, though none any are currently on board.
The only private partner, Pembina, is only covering 10 per cent of the construction cost — with the option to up that to 20 per cent once the pipeline is operational. That means crown corporations, and therefore taxpayers, are currently left holding the bag for 90 per cent of the cost of this project.
It’s a heavy bag, too. According to Alberta’s submission to the Major Projects Office, the project is estimated to cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, including contingencies.
Ouch.
When pressed on exactly how much taxpayers are spending, Smith said the amount “remains to be negotiated.”
Speaking in French, Carney chimed in that we should think of this not as “spending” but as an “investment.” He claimed this announcement would catalyze “well over” $200 billion in direct investments in Canada and create over 175,000 new jobs.
The impacts of failing to adapt amid the climate crisis, meanwhile, “slow Canada’s economic growth in 2025 by $25 billion annually,” according to the Canadian Climate Institute — and that’s just one of the many incurred costs.
Meanwhile, economists say Canada is still not recouping the costs it paid for the initial TMX pipeline purchase — and is unlikely to ever do so.
“How much more are we expected to pay to keep oil executives happy and help Danielle Smith’s political career?” asked Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.
The new proposed project wouldn’t be completed for at least six to eight years, meaning we wouldn’t see any financial benefit from the flow of oil until long after U.S. President Donald Trump — whose shadow has loomed large over the “crisis” Carney continually tells us demands that we abandon ambitious climate goals — has left office.
Meanwhile, as those years tick by, the world is moving in a different energy direction.
“Countries that rely on oil and gas imports, the countries Canada is hoping to sell to in five to ten years, are now rapidly accelerating their energy transitions to avoid being impacted by the political whims of petro-states and the rollercoaster of global oil prices,” said Emilia Belliveau, Program Manager, Energy Transition at Environmental Defence, in a written statement.
In fact, while this project is set to complete by 2032 at the earliest, global oil demand was projected to peak two years before that, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 report, after which demand will decline. The IEA changed its tune in its 2025 report, but only after the United States (the IEA’s largest funder) pressured the agency to change its methodology.
How is all this going over?
The pipeline news came on the heels of Carney announcing a memorandum of understanding with B.C. Premier David Eby, a behemoth agreement that appeared at least in part intended to soften B.C. to the idea of an Alberta pipeline proposal.
That multibillion dollar memorandum of understanding with B.C. notably included a commitment from Ottawa to keep the North Coast oil tanker ban in place. Meanwhile, Eby publicly committed that BC is “not going to court to fight a pipeline project.”
Environmental advocates were happy to see that the tanker ban is staying — but unlike Eby, that didn’t silence their pushback on the proposal of a new oil pipeline.
Trudeau’s environment minister, who resigned from Carney’s government as he pushed for a pipeline with Alberta, was among those sounding the alarm. In an Instagram message he sent me last night, Guilbeault laid out his four main concerns.
“Good news, or less bad news: the southern route will mean less environmental impacts and less opposition from Indigenous nations,” he wrote.
“Bad news: after promising in the MOU that if a pipeline was to be built, it would have to be financed and operated by the private sector. We’ve learned that « Canada and Alberta will be equal partners… »”
Guilbeault’s frustrations didn’t end there.
“It looks clear now that the Clean electricity regulations will be, if not abolished, seriously weakened to allow more fossil fuel electricity generation (even if it’s more polluting and expensive for rate payers (renewables are now cheaper than all other forms of electricity)),” he said.
“All of this is happening (as) we are seeing heatwaves hitting numerous corners of the globe and that northern Quebec is seeing 4 times the amount of forest fires we would normally have for this time of the year.”
“Oh, and we will pay for the pipeline because those companies will only be making 60B$ in profit this year.”
Guilbeault was far from alone in his concerns.
Environmental Defence’s Belliveau warned that “pipelines are not a nation-building project, no matter the route.”
“They’re a divisive distraction from building the infrastructure that would actually benefit Canadians. No number of new pipelines will lower the price of gas at the pump or protect Canadians’ pocketbooks, especially as climate change continues to make life more expensive.”
The proposed project also poses serious risks to the environment and wildlife that so many Canadians hold dear, Johnston warned.
“Yet another pipeline would saddle Vancouver – a global city renowned for its beauty – with more supertanker traffic, more industrial activity, and greater risk of spills and explosions,” she said.
“It could also be the nail on the coffin of the Southern Resident Killer Whale.”
Should we prepare to say goodbye to the whales?
To allow for the export of the increased flow of oil and gas to through the Vancouver-area port, the government is committing $10 billion to expand the Roberts Bank export terminal — a project that poses major risk to the Southern Resident Killer Whale population, despite the government’s announcement of some protections for the local orcas.
The government signalled in a discussion paper that it hopes to give its cabinet the power to exempt major projects from the Species At Risk Act’s jeopardy test. That means, if cabinet says so, projects could drive an entire species to extinction.
“We know that they need that power because the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project in Vancouver can’t go ahead under the existing SARA rules because it would jeopardize the survival and recovery of Southern Resident Killer Whales,” said Johnston.
In fact, back in May, the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj reported that the government’s proposal that would let companies drive species to extinction was “directed at projects, such as ports and pipelines, that jeopardize the existence of the endangered southern resident killer whale population.”
The government pushed back on the reporting at the time, pointing to previous protections it put in place to protect at-risk whale populations — protections it announced before proposing the SARA exemptions.
In the face of that exemption, Johnston said the measures to enhance orca protections will not be enough.
“Those protections – things like reducing fishing quotas, voluntary noise management and slowdown measures, and rules for whale watching tour boats – can’t compensate for removing the critical SARA legal protection.”
A grand bargain? Or a grand sham?
In the end, Carney and Smith’s announcement yesterday could see Canadians pay for yet another oil pipeline — one that would exacerbate the climate crisis, could drive the southern resident killer whale population to extinction, and wouldn’t be operational until long after Trump is out of office.
Not only that, but the climate-related concessions Carney supposedly extracted from Alberta under this deal don’t appear to be materializing.
“Alberta was also supposed to strengthen its carbon pricing scheme. It isn’t doing that, either. Under the new deal, its emissions will continue to grossly exceed those of any other province. It was supposed to agree on equivalent methane rules. Hasn’t done that, either,” Johnston said.
“Turns out the grand bargain the Prime Minister promised Canadians was a grand sham.”
