Danielle Smith Channels Trudeau to Tout Pipeline to Nowhere

The Alberta premier is putting taxpayers’ money on the line to push a climate bomb of a pipeline toward the finish line. Who does that remind you of? And why is Ottawa taking her seriously?

Oct 05, 2025

You have to wonder how Premier Danielle Smith’s avid followers in Alberta’s United Conservative Party feel about her channeling Justin Trudeau.

Or how any remaining Trudeau loyalists in Ottawa feel about Smith stealing their pipeline playbook.

Smith’s moves this week to spend taxpayers’ dollars to push another unnecessary climate bomb of a pipeline toward the finish line might just prove that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. (Although if that were right, she would really need to work on her surrounding narrative.)

But deliberate misinterpretations aside, there’s a far more likely set of explanations:

• That the fossil fuel lobby is calling Smith’s tune, same as it always does, and as it too often does at the federal level;

• That no one in power in Alberta has any better idea for building the province’s economy than to follow the disastrous example of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and double down on the next project that will be too big to succeed.

And that means Albertans can expect to remain largely unprotected from the now foreseeable annual wave of wildfires and drought, heatwaves and flooding, largely brought to us by the industry that now accounts for one-third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Pipeline Support Crosses Partisan Lines

It’s striking that, for all their differences in style, substance, and ideology, pouring public funds into private sector pipeline projects is something Smith and Trudeau evidently agree on. Even if it would be political suicide for Smith to ever admit that out loud.

In 2018, there was Trudeau, acquiescing to an extraordinary ultimatum from Houston-based Kinder Morgan—the corporate offspring of scandal-ridden Enron Corporation—negotiating to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline with public funds rather than more properly delivering the speech he never gave. The price tag for this massive pipeline megaproject has since ballooned from $4.5 billion to $35 billion, with the strong possibility of further costs down the line.

The biggest difference between Trudeau’s capitulation and Smith’s latest manoeuvre is that she’s playing penny ante, at least so far. She’s betting that blowing $14 million on initial regulatory work (and, no doubt, on her government’s usual intensive bluster and misleading PR) will be enough to embarrass, arm-twist, or corner the federal government into doing the wrong thing.

But what if a federal government led by a former central banker and Value(s)-driven climate hawk had the patience and the strategic insight to wait Smith out until events take their course?

That’s not a prediction—we have not a single crystal ball, anywhere in our office. But it isn’t beyond imagining.

No Clamour from Investors

Smith’s latest positioning statement might work if you really believe that private investors are chomping at the bit to invest in another pipeline, held back by a lacklustre Impact Assessment Act and a less-than-perfect West Coast tanker ban that only served to codify decades of established, common sense practice.

But any clamour to invest in this project has been tough to detect. Last week, the Pembina Institute’s Janetta McKenzie urged Smith to heed the private sector’s caution about new oil infrastructure. Industry, she said, has refused to buy in “after months of pressure from the Alberta government to bring forward a proposal, and offers of concierge service” from the federal government.

“If a new pipeline promised to be profitable, there would be a private sector proposal in some phase of development,” McKenzie said in a prepared statement. “It’s economically perverse that the provincial government will spend public money on a project the private sector has balked at, while simultaneously sabotaging private investment in renewable energy projects the market is demanding.”

So—what if the finance sector is quietly paying attention (very quietly, to dodge the ire of the predatory and fossil-funded sociopaths now hijacking the U.S. government) to the “flashing red warning light” that has the global oil industry facing down years of low prices and profits?

What if they’re keeping a watchful eye on fossil companies that are strapped enough for cash that some of them are cancelling the share buybacks that have been the price of shareholders’ loyalty?

What if they’ve taken onboard the International Energy Agency’s long-standing net-zero scenario that shows no future demand for new oil, gas, or coal projects as a new Age of Electricity takes hold and clean energy investment runs laps around fossil fuels? Meaning that there would be little or no market for the additional carbon-intensive, expensive oil the Alberta fossil industry wants to export by the time a new pipeline could be built?

With all of those factors in play, we may not be too far from the day when Smith will need a lot more than $14 million to push through a project that will increase Canada’s climate pollution when our emission reductions have already stalled out, devastate West Coast ecosystems, and violate the rights and wishes of dozens of Indigenous nations along the path of a new pipeline.

In a looming era of austerity, and with Smith’s own provincial balance sheet in jeopardy if oil prices stay low, you would think that economically ridiculous megaprojects with no private sector support would be among the easiest public expenditures to jettison. Particularly in an industry that is laying off hundreds and thousands of workers and has been scaling back economic benefits for years.

The Next Exxon Valdez

The industry’s push to rescind the West Coast tanker ban may be the most egregious part of this picture. The attacks are accelerating because a new westbound pipeline won’t be viable without oil tankers to carry the product to overseas markets—if those markets are out there, and for as long as they last.

Before things get completely out of hand, let’s pause and remember why a ban was needed. Here’s how the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recalls the March, 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, just north of the North Coast of British Columbia, on a page that Trump’s censors apparently haven’t noticed yet:

On March 24, 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil. The ecologically sensitive location, season of the year, and large scale of this spill resulted in one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history….
The spill affected more than 1,300 miles of shoreline, with immense impacts for fish and wildlife and their habitats, as well as for local industries and communities.
The oil killed:
· An estimated 250,000 seabirds
· 2,800 sea otters
· 300 harbour seals
· 250 bald eagles
· As many as 22 killer whales
· Billions of salmon and herring eggs.

We’re beginning to see wild claims that that was then, this is now, and an Exxon Valdez-like disaster could never happen off B.C.’s north coast. But that’s not what we’re hearing from David Anderson—the long-ago federal environment minister who began pushing for a coastal tanker ban in the early 1970s as a backbench MP, then carried the fight when he entered the federal cabinet in the early 2000s.

“With a new push for development under way across the country, it’s important to look at what the tanker ban—finally enshrined in law by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2018, after 50 years in the making—means for the country as a whole,” Anderson wrote for the Globe and Mail in July.

He continued:

The threat posed by oil tankers carrying crude oil—especially diluted bitumen, which can sink, can’t be effectively cleaned up, and can devastate the ocean floor—is simply too great to ignore. The Hecate Strait is among the most hazardous waterways in the world for tanker traffic. This is why the unanimous opposition from the Haida, the Heiltsuk, and the other coastal First Nations, alongside the concerns of other West Coast communities, must be respected and upheld. Their voices, joined by Canadians from coast to coast to coast who cherish this land, have been key to this effort.
The tanker ban is not a punishment to one province or industry; rather, it is intended to protect our marine environment and the communities and the livelihoods it supports….
Our economy here in B.C. depends heavily on tourism, fishing, and sustainable industries that rely on a healthy, unspoiled environment. An oil spill would be catastrophic, causing irreversible damage and economic hardship for generations. By any sane calculus, the risks greatly exceed the supposed economic benefits.

And yet, this week Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe went so far as to claim that “there is no B.C. coast, it’s Canada’s coast. ” Just a week back from a trip to Southeast Saskatchewan, Moe’s position leapt out at me—not least because it undercuts his own constituents. If the narrowest imaginable definition of the national interest outweighs local concerns, it means fossil-dependent communities in his own province needn’t expect any consideration, funding, or respect as they navigate the industry’s decline.

Which makes Moe’s guiding principle for ending the tanker ban an attack on coal miners in Estevan, as surely as it represents an existential threat to communities in B.C. Neither side of that story should be acceptable to any of us.

The Grand Bargain and the Climate Bomb

There’s also been far too much talk about a “grand bargain” that would clear the way for a new pipeline, with Prime Minister Mark Carney rhapsodizing about the prospect of producing “decarbonized” oil during a meeting with provincial/territorial premiers in early June. A month later at the Calgary Stampede, the PM said a new oil pipeline to B.C. was “highly, highly likely”.

The notion had B.C. climate scientist Simon Donner, co-chair of the federal Net Zero Advisory Body, reminding Carney there was zero scientific basis for his claim.

“There is no such thing as decarbonized oil and gas,” Donner said at the time. “Oil contains carbon. It is high school chemistry. And [it emits] carbon dioxide when they’re used.”

He warned that “the government is going to embarrass itself by using such industry and marketing speak.”

Even key oil and gas voices are raising flags about the notion of “decarbonized” oil, somehow concluding that the industry is being persecuted by any call to get its emissions under control. But the bigger, more credible question is how Carney’s optimism would play out in the real world.

It all hinges on the $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage hub that oil sands producers have been touting for years, and was name-checked when the PM announced his first list of priority nation-building projects. But as The Energy Mix has reported extensively, Pathways is a project the industry has been:

promoting for years, but refusing to launch without massive taxpayer support. Independent analysts have warned the project could be “scuppered” without permanent subsidies and won’t break even without efficiency gains and steadier revenue. The technology’s biggest boosters admit it won’t be ready for prime time before 2035—long after global climate targets will require steep reductions in the oil sands’ massive climate footprint.

Bear in mind as well that, even if CCS technology is some day ready to scale, it will only ever capture the 20% or so of oil and gas emissions that occur at the point of production. The other 80% or more are released when the product is exported, delivered to its end consumer, and used as directed. Which means it’s still a carbon bomb, even if it shows up in some other country’s emissions inventory.

How’s It Working For Us So Far?

While we’re here, let’s remember that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about grand bargains involving fossil fuel infrastructure. Last time, the deal between Trudeau and then-Alberta premier Rachel Notley called for completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline in exchange for a federal carbon price.

Seven years later, we can see how that worked out: federal taxpayers are shouldering the $35-billion debt, the consumer carbon tax is history, and now the industry is taking aim at the industrial carbon price, the less visible piece of the pricing system that actually delivered the best results.

The bottom line would seem to be that if any bargain, grand or otherwise, is going to succeed, both parties have to be operating in good faith. That’s a standard that Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, and their fossil industry patrons have never been able to meet, and they don’t seem inclined to start meeting it now.

Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix, The Energy Mix Weekender, and our weekly feature digests, Cities & Communities and Heat & Power.