Mark and Danielle signed the MOU yesterday and the shock wave tremors are already ripping through the country. Mark and Danielle, as well as the oil industry, as well as other industries, such as ironworkers, are jumping for joy. But a number of parties are not.
Minister of Identity and Culture, Steven Guibeault, resigned from cabinet yesterday in protest over the MOU. Guibeault is stating that environmental issues, must remain front and center.
“That is why I strongly oppose the memorandum of understanding between the federal government and the government of Alberta.”
The liberals have 20 MP’s from British Columbia. They are caught in the middle of this. Premier David Eby, of BC, made that quite clear in his press conference yesterday.
“We have seafood producers . . . who spend their lives out on the ocean, who depend on the clean waters off our coast to put the seafood on your plate across the country, who are terrified of an oil tanker spill destroying their way of life.”
Eby, following the press conference, sent out a fundraising email,
“Folks out east are trying to push forward a bitumen pipeline from Alberta that has no First Nations consent, and makes no financial or economic sense. It has no private proponent, no route, no private funding, and would cost taxpayers billions.”
There is a delicious irony here. It is like there’s a role reversal, between David Eby and Danielle Smith.
Eby, is correct in his claims about First Nations, consent. Coastal First Nations, gave their own version of over my dead body, by saying that the pipeline simply is not gonna happen.
Mark Carney, himself, said that the pipeline will not happen unless there is private industry participation. What company or companies would even consider being in this project given all the uncertainties of BC and First Nations.
This even gets messier though. If this falls through, if BC remains and obstacle, and the entire agreement falls apart, this will give the separatist movement, in Alberta, added incentive to indeed separate.
The Bloc Québécois, are already using this for their next election campaign, saying that if Carney can ignore BC’s issues and install the pipeline, regardless, then Carney, and Canada, are capable of doing the same to Quebec.
Pierre Poilievre, is not getting scott free from this. Yesterday, in Question Period, he was attacking agreement saying that it would never come to fruition. He was saying this at the same time as former Albert conservative premier, Jason Kenney, was saying this.
“This agreement is not a simple path to massively expand our energy sector, but it clears out a lot of the obstacles.”
Pierre, your riding is no longer in eastern Ontario, it is in the heartland of Alberta. Are you really going to decry this agreement, which benefits Alberta, and which puts industry over environment. If you do so, you’re kind of going against the conservative agenda, aren’t you?
This is a mess for all. I’m quite sure that a couple of years from now this will still be a hot topic and construction won’t even have begun.
That’s all I have for today.