Breakenridge: 'Awkward' for Smith to celebrate MOU while Poilievre dismisses it

Premier Danielle Smith’s antics earlier this year didn’t exactly help the Conservative election cause, so perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to be doing her any favours right now.

Still, it’s incumbent on Poilievre to tread lightly when it comes to potentially undermining the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that Smith signed with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Those who profess to support pipeline development should have a vested interest in this venture succeeding.

That success is obviously not guaranteed, for a variety of reasons. Certainly, the federal government’s feet should be held to the fire when it comes to holding up their end of the bargain and seeing this through to the end. In that, the official Opposition has a key role to play.

What we saw last week in Parliament with the motion presented by the Conservatives fell well short of that. Politically, it’s fair game to point out the divisions within the Liberal caucus over the MOU — not to mention the natural resources minister’s preposterous claim that the Liberal caucus is united in support of the deal — but it’s short-sighted and reckless to present this as a phoney deal or that the government is secretly opposed to the very commitments they’ve publicly agreed to.

It’s awkward for Alberta’s premier to be holding up this MOU as a major achievement, only to have her political allies dismiss it as not being worth the paper it’s written on.

There’s an obvious contradiction in the Conservatives’ strategy: if the deal is phoney, there is no reason for any internal dissent or angst within the Liberal party. Unless we’re to believe that Steven Guilbeault’s resignation from cabinet is also some elaborate political theatre, we should view these disagreements as evidence of the gravity of the agreement.

The silver lining is that there is considerable public support for energy development — including pipelines — and politicians are eager to be seen as champions of the cause. However, that isn’t enough on its own to suddenly make all of this an easy task. There are no shortcuts here.

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Poilievre is now framing this as “carbon tax, no pipeline” versus “pipeline no carbon tax.” In other words, Alberta has been duped into accepting a higher industrial carbon price as part of this phoney deal, whereas the Conservatives would deliver these projects without any such trade-offs.

That seems to be Smith’s preferred interpretation of Poilievre’s actions here — that he’s not so much casting doubt on the agreement, but instead laying out how he would have done things differently. None of this is deterring Smith from offering the embattled Conservative leader her endorsement. Yes, a Conservative government would have surely embraced a project such as this, and no, it wouldn’t have demanded such a concession from Alberta.

But if federal support was all that mattered, then the previous Conservative government would have ushered the Northern Gateway project to the finish line well before the 2015 election. It’s also worth noting that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — the project that did get completed — had its roots in another Ottawa-Alberta arrangement that included policy trade-offs.

Let’s not lose sight of where we need to get to.

All stakeholders need to know that both the federal and Alberta governments are committed to this MOU. That’s crucial to bringing in private investors on a pipeline and for industry to make necessary commitments to carbon capture technology. Negotiations with affected First Nations and other provincial governments need to be premised on that certainty.

It’s fair to hold Ottawa to all of that and even to argue that a different approach to energy development and environmental policy would be preferable.

At this stage, though, it’s counterproductive to be signalling that this MOU should be disregarded.

Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com