Truthout reports on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement, alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, of a proposed pipeline — a federal–provincial partnership with Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation running from Bruderheim, Alberta, to the Roberts Bank export terminal in Delta, BC. Alberta’s submission to the federal Major Projects Office pegged the cost at between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, with construction potentially starting in 2027. The announcement, made during a record-shattering heat wave marking the five-year anniversary of the 2021 heat dome, drew sharp criticism from climate groups including 350 Canada, Environmental Defence, and the Wilderness Committee, and came shortly after Carney and BC Premier David Eby announced a “cooperative prosperity agreement.”
The article’s coverage relevant to this archive is newly elected federal NDP leader Avi Lewis’s public rebuke of the project. As reported by Truthout, Lewis said:
Canada’s New Democrats unequivocally oppose this pipeline proposal. If anything, this is a pipeline to the courts. It ignores the federal government’s legal responsibility to meaningfully consult nations, including Treaty 8 nations in Alberta, threatens endangered species, and accelerates climate change. It will sow the very divisions the prime minister claims he wants to avoid.
We do not achieve unity or prosperity from projects that pit communities against one another, all while a handful of oil and gas CEOs walk away with enormous profits. While we’re stuck fighting yesterday’s battles over pipelines, and the prime minister openly admits that our emissions will rise, the rest of the world is racing ahead on renewables.
Lewis framed the NDP as an alternative to what he called “the Liberal-Conservative consensus”:
New Democrats are ready to build something bigger, safer, and better — a Canada that is a superpower, with an east-west clean electricity grid and good green jobs in every region. Lower costs for families with home retrofits and heat pumps for all. Investing in the care economy as a nation-building project. That’s what it looks like to build big things that actually unite this country.
The piece also notes that Eby, an NDP premier and previously “a prominent critic of the Carney government’s work with Alberta on pipeline plans,” appeared at Carney’s side for the announcement, cutting short a trip to Beijing — a contrast the article draws with Lewis’s opposition.
Excerpted for research and archival purposes under fair dealing (Copyright Act, s. 29). Full article at the source link above.