OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is softening an
Prime Minister Mark Carney several months ago, saying she hopes to negotiate a resolution of the nine federal laws she says are throttling Alberta’s oil and gas sector by Grey Cup.
“I can tell you that we are hoping to have some kind of agreement with the prime minister, by Grey Cup, where he gives a clear indication that he’s prepared to address the nine laws that have created an investment climate that is hostile to private investment,” Smith told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Smith was taking questions from the media a day after meeting briefly with Carney, just before he left Ottawa for a visit to Washington, D.C.
She wouldn’t divulge too many details from the meeting but said she was “very hopeful” that she and Carney could reach an agreement on the
She also didn’t say what the consequences of not reaching a deal by Grey Cup would be.
Smith said last spring that the winner of April’s federal election would need to repeal or substantially revise the laws
— which include the electric vehicle mandate, West Coast tanker ban and emissions cap
— in the first six months of their term “to avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis.”
So far, the Carney government has paused the electric vehicle
and reportedly opened the door to
, in exchange for emissions reductions commitments from Alberta and the oil and gas industry.
that her government would act
of a new heavy oil pipeline to northwest British Columbia. She added that she hoped to submit an application for the pipeline to the new federal Major Projects Office by May 2026.
The project’s viability will hinge largely on whether the
federal moratorium on tanker traffic
along B.C.’s North Coast is reversed.
Federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson
on Friday whether he’d support lifting the tanker ban to make way for the new pipeline, saying that the matter was a “hypothetical question right now, because there is no project before us.”
Smith wasn’t asked about Hodgson’s remarks, but took aim at B.C. Premier David Eby, who called
her pipeline announcement “fictional”
in recent comments.
She called Eby’s comments “un-Canadian” and “unconstitutional”, noting that the
that B.C. cannot unilaterally block Alberta oil from reaching the coast.
“The reason we have a country and (we’ve) trade and commerce power … to the federal government is for exactly this reason, so that a parochial premier isn’t able to block nation building projects,” said Smith.
Eby said on Monday that a new coastal pipeline would too great a risk to Great Bear Rainforest and B.C.’s North Coast, which he called one of the world’s “most precious and intact ecosystems.”
that a reversal of the tanker ban would be a “direct economic threat” to his province.
The Grey Cup, set for Nov. 16 in Winnipeg, will coincidentally kick off almost six months to the day after Carney named
his first post-election cabinet
in mid-May.
National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com
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