MACLEOD: Pipeline political theatre — this time the overruns come with carbon capture

As Alberta’s independence movement grows, critics say the latest West Coast pipeline proposal is designed to calm voters—not deliver market access.

The latest talk of a new West Coast oil pipeline should be treated for what it is: political theatre. It is not policy, nor infrastructure, nor a national energy strategy. It is simply theatre.

Ottawa is suddenly pretending to care about Alberta energy because Alberta is getting restless, organized, and dangerous to the federal status quo. The independence movement has forced the conversation. Now, right on cue, federal and provincial politicians have found a shiny new pipeline announcement to wave in front of Albertans like toys in front of a toddler.

The message is obvious: “Calm down. Stay in Canada. We are listening this time.” No, they are not.

If Ottawa were serious about Alberta’s energy future, we would not be here. We would not have watched Energy East die, endured Bill C-69 or watched the tanker ban (which remains in place) continue to kneecap northern access. We would not have had to nationalize Trans Mountain after private capital walked away from Canada’s regulatory circus. We would not have spent years watching the same federal government demonize the energy sector and then expect applause for pretending to rescue it.

This new pipeline proposal is not a green light. It is not even yellow. It is a press release dressed up as nation-building.

Even worse, it is tied to the absurdity of the Pathways carbon capture project — a $20-billion-plus monument to federal climate obedience. Before Alberta can get a pipeline to sell its own product, it must apparently bow at the altar of carbon capture, spend tens of billions of dollars, and pretend that pumping carbon into the ground is some grand technological moral achievement. This is absurd.

Alberta produces some of the most responsibly regulated energy on earth. The world needs oil. Asia needs oil. The U.S. needs oil. Canada certainly needs the revenue. But instead of simply allowing Alberta to build infrastructure, export products, create wealth, and strengthen the country, this Liberal government insists on attaching ideological baggage to every barrel. 

First, Alberta must apologize. Then it must decarbonize. Then it must subsidize both the BC government and any given number of indigenous groups along the route. Then it must consult forever. Then it must promise to feel guilty while doing the very thing that funds the country.

Only in Canada could a government take a profitable industry and make it beg permission to remain useful.

The Pathways project is not being presented as an optional innovation. It is being treated as a precondition for political acceptability. In plain English, Alberta may get a pipeline if Alberta first helps finance a massive carbon burial scheme to satisfy Ottawa’s climate narrative. That is not free enterprise. That is ransom.

And nobody should miss the most important point: private capital is not lining up to build this pipeline. That tells you everything.

Investors are not stupid. They can read legislation. They can price the risk in this. They watched Trans Mountain become a federal rescue operation. They watched Kinder Morgan walk away as costs exploded, while activists, courts, regulators, politicians, and federal departments turned a straightforward infrastructure project into a national endurance test. They watched the final cost balloon into the tens of billions.

Now we are supposed to believe private capital will enthusiastically return to Canada’s energy sector because politicians held another press conference?

Capital goes where it is welcome. It goes where rules are stable, where permits mean something, deadlines matter, governments keep their word, laws are enforced, and success is not punished by another round of morality lectures.

Canada offers none of that.

Canada has created a regulatory environment so hostile, so unpredictable, and so politically contaminated that serious pipeline investment now requires government ownership, government guarantees, government shielding, and taxpayer risk. That is not a market, but it is a clear warning sign.

The Trans Mountain expansion should have been a national embarrassment. Instead, Ottawa is now using it as a business model. A private company could not justify staying. The federal government bought the project. The cost soared. Years were lost. Taxpayers absorbed the risk. Politicians congratulated themselves for eventually completing what they had helped make almost impossible in the first place. The irony? It is now held up as an example of how this Liberal government supports and protects Alberta’s interests!

And now we are being offered the sequel.

A new one-million-barrel-per-day pipeline to the BC coast sounds wonderful. Albertans should support the concept. Alberta needs tidewater. Alberta needs access to Asian markets and leverage beyond the United States. Alberta needs to stop selling into a captive market while Ottawa lectures us about national unity from the comfort of federal revenues generated by western energy.

But an idea is not a project. A press conference is not a permit. An MOU is not a construction start. A political announcement is not steel in the ground. What we have today is not a pipeline. It is a talking point.

The timing is too convenient to ignore. Alberta is moving toward a referendum. The independence argument is gaining traction because Albertans are tired of being treated like a revenue colony with bad manners. Suddenly, Ottawa discovers market access and energy security. Suddenly, Ottawa discovers that Alberta might have a point.

No. All Ottawa has discovered is fear.

This announcement is designed to weaken the independence movement by giving soft federalists and nervous conservatives something to cling to. It allows them to say, “See? Canada can work. We just need patience.”

Albertans have been patient for decades. Patience gave us equalization, cancelled pipelines, federal emissions caps, tanker bans and regulatory paralysis. Patience gave us a country that happily cashes Alberta’s cheques while treating Alberta’s core industry as a national embarrassment. At some point, patience becomes stupidity.

Will this pipeline ever be built? Maybe. Anything is possible once politicians become frightened enough. But under the current Canadian regulatory environment, it is more likely to become another endless maze of consultations, conditions, court challenges, environmental demands, indigenous equity negotiations, federal-provincial bargaining, and climate-policy horse-trading.

The likely outcome is delay. The second-most-likely outcome is a taxpayer-backed megaproject that costs far more than promised and takes far longer than advertised. The least likely outcome is a clean, privately financed, efficiently approved pipeline built on time because Canada finally remembered how to act like a serious country. That Canada no longer exists.

Albertans should not be fooled by this theatre. The specifics are missing on purpose: confirmed route, permits, financing, ownership, timelines, legal protections, tanker access, indigenous agreements, federal guarantees, and a hard commitment that construction will proceed without being held hostage to every climate lobbyist, federal regulator, and activist lawfare shop in the country.

Until then, this is not a pipeline. It is a pacifier for the growing and obvious discontent amongst regular hard-working Albertans. 

Ottawa is not offering Alberta construction or even regulatory certainty. It is simply another promise to Alberta, wrapped in carbon capture, delayed by regulation, financed by taxpayers, and timed conveniently to calm the independence rebellion
https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/macleod-pipeline-political-theatre-this-time-the-overruns-come-with-carbon-capture/74765