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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is embattled and – as much as I loathe using cliches – is between a rock and a hard place. Smith is trying to appease federalist voters at the same time as she is trying to satisfy Albertans who want independence for their province. The latter group just happens to comprise a sizable majority of the membership and voters of her United Conservative Party.
So when I last interviewed her, of course I asked about that contradiction – leading a federalist party that is now dominated by separatists – but I also wanted to know if she was still a true believer in her memorandum of understanding with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Does she really believe a pipeline will result from this incredible political and personal gamble she is making on trusting a man that for most Conservatives is no better than former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“But I said nobody I’ve spoken to in the business, any company – and I’ve spoken to three or four different CEOs – nobody thinks that the MOU is not going to add at least $10 a barrel to the cost of production in Alberta.” — Jeff Rath
Because if the pipeline doesn’t emerge from this agreement, there might be little other political capital to gain from this exchange. Jeff Rath, the legal counsel for the Alberta Prosperity Project, had some interesting news for me when I last interviewed him – that Carney’s industrial carbon tax is adding $10 to the price of Alberta oil and is already costing the province energy projects.
Although Smith clearly believes the pipeline is not just a pipe dream, as Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has called it, she is definitely emphasizing other aspects of her contract with Carney and even suggesting it has stopped “the woke agenda” of Trudeau and his extremist environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, who first resigned from the Carney cabinet and then announced he was leaving politics.
And as much as I want this to work out for Danielle because I think she’s the best damn premier in Canada and she has done some outstanding work to advance the conservative cause — not the least of which is her commitment to protect children from genital mutilation and to take the “Pride” flag out of the classrooms of Alberta — I think she is wrong in her contract with Carney, whom I believe cannot be trusted and is actually a worse prime minister than Trudeau.
“I know everyone is focused on the single pipeline, but that wasn’t the full extent of what the MOU is about. The MOU was to address nine terrible policies from the Trudeau/Guilbeault/NDP era. Remember the NDP were propping up the Liberals and pushing this agenda to keep it in the ground, right along with them, all of the woke agenda, all the direction that we’ve gone on in the last 10 years of safe supply and revolving a door of criminals going through our justice system and the keep it in the ground narrative – all of that has come from that that partnership, so I’m glad to see Guilbeault is gone – and that should tell you something, that he determined that we were unwinding a lot of his legacy, and I’m very proud to say that we had a very large role in that, because I think he did the most to damage unity of any politician,” Smith told me.
But Jeff Rath says the MOU has already done damage to the Alberta energy sector that most people are not even aware of.
“Like there’s no way in hell anybody’s going to even invest in pipeline design as long as the West Coast tanker ban’s in place, right? I mean, why would you spend five or $10 million designing a pipeline or a pipeline route when you can’t offload the oil at the other end, because it’s against federal law?”
“Well, I want to thank you first of all for doing that interview and basically creating so many static targets for us to fire on … I went through it for the second time and took notes. I mean, there’s so many things that [Smith] said that were just patently false, completely untrue things that she knew were outright lies. And I’ll go through them in detail. I mean, one of the big whoppers, right off the bat, is she’s talking about her vision of Alberta sovereignty within a united Canada, right? And you know that she’s going to stop Canada - this is an exact quote - ‘bossing Alberta around.’ Well, how is telling Alberta that there are quote unquote ‘preconditions for a West Coast pipeline’ [not bossing Alberta around]? And you know, telling Alberta that they’re going to have to raise their carbon tax, 600% forcing Alberta industry to invest in decarbonization. You know, how is that not bossing Alberta around within our own areas of jurisdiction?” Rath said.
“So there’s Danielle pretending that somehow or other she’s standing up for Alberta, when really she just completely capitulated, and people in the oil and gas industry, who I speak with on a regular basis are livid over how badly she was played, how badly she was out-negotiated and how badly she has screwed the oil and gas industry in Alberta,” Rath continued.
“And I’ll give you an example. Recently … they were looking at a $10 billion Pearl Lake mine expansion. Okay, so what ends up happening? They are told that, ‘okay, well, if you want to do a $10 billion mine expansion, you’re also going to have to invest $10 billion into decarbonization.’”
Rath says the management took one look at that and said, “[We’d] like to expand our mine [but if] you’re just going to arbitrarily double our capital expenditure costs, we’re not doing it. So they quietly shoved the project.”
“I know everyone is focused on the single pipeline, but that wasn’t the full extent of what the MOU is about. The MOU was to address nine terrible policies from the Trudeau/Guilbeault/NDP era. Remember the NDP were propping up the Liberals and pushing this agenda to keep it in the ground, right along with them, all of the woke agenda, all the direction that we’ve gone on in the last 10 years of safe supply and revolving a door of criminals going through our justice system and the keep it in the ground narrative – all of that has come from that that partnership.” — Premier Danielle Smith
“They were trying to get an expansion done to link their two main mine sites. All of the red tape with the federal government major projects office, all of the rules that GBO put in place, they’re still there. Nobody can do a major mine expansion in Alberta because of all of the red tape and the regulations and now on top of it, if they do a major expansion, they’re literally having to match their capex on the mine development dollar for dollar with decarbonization costs through the pathway project,” said Rath.
“It’s really, really confusing to a lot of us that is [Smith] really that naive, or … completely advised by people that are complete idiots and I actually suspect that it’s the latter. Like, a couple weeks ago … I get a call from a guy by the name of Larry Kaumeyer — he’s the deputy minister of energy for Alberta, and I didn’t recognize the number on my phone.
Rath explained that the caller identified himself as Larry Kaumeyer and that he indicated his position with the province. He then said that an X post that Rath had written about the MOU adding $10 a barrel to the cost of production in Alberta was wrong.
Rath responded that he had he had obtained “those numbers directly from a CEO who got them directly from his production accountants, and you know this guy’s a pretty good operator, so I think he knows his numbers.”
Rath said that Kaumeyer indicated the cost would be lower.
“So, I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you send me your numbers, right? I’ll send them to the CEO that I was talking to, and then he can contact you, and the two of you can talk.’ And I said, ‘I’m sure you know him, right? So, you guys just talk and work it out.’ But I said nobody I’ve spoken to in the business, any company – and I’ve spoken to three or four different CEOs – nobody thinks that the MOU is not going to add at least $10 a barrel to the cost of production in Alberta.”
Rath says he then learned from an oil executive that Kaumeyer’s background was “not even an oil and gas guy … He used to be the executive director of Ducks Unlimited … and [Smith] made him the deputy minister of energy.”
I confirmed the veracity of that observation.
Rath maintained that “people in the industry are going like, ‘What the hell? Like, you negotiated a deal that has literally 500 billion to a trillion dollars in economic implications for Alberta in terms of the overhang over our industry, and now you’re telling us you didn’t know what you signed.”
The lawyer said the irony of the MOU is that even though it promises a pipeline for Alberta, the crushing government burdens in the agreement are working against the reification of that goal.
“So, I mean, people in Alberta that I know on the oil and gas side are livid over this … West Coast pipeline thing: like there’s no way in hell anybody’s going to even invest in pipeline design as long as the West Coast tanker ban’s in place, right? I mean, why would you spend five or $10 million designing a pipeline or a pipeline route when you can’t offload the oil at the other end, because it’s against federal law?”
That’s a very good question, Jeff.
And it makes me think that Danielle might have been conned by Carney.
After all, Carney always likes to say that he understands “the real world.”
Unfortunately that world is not the best world for Alberta or its energy sector.
Even if Steven Guilbeault has left the building.
WATCH: Ottawa's Worst Nightmare: Jeff Rath on the New Battle for Western Independence! | Stand on Guard CLIP
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