TENSION
Alberta breaks with western premiers
Alberta’s signature will be conspicuously absent from a communique Canada’s western premiers have agreed to send Ottawa.
Deputy premier Sarah Hoffman wanted the final letter from the Western Premiers’ Conference in Yellowknife to express support for the Trans Mountain pipeline from every premier at the table, but that didn’t happen.
So Alberta said “no thank you” to signing its support to shared priorities around a multitude of issues, including pharmacare, legalized cannabis, justice, U.S.-Canada trade and infrastructure.
Hoffman told reporters on Wednesday in Yellowknife she agrees with those initiatives, “but pharmacare doesn’t grow on trees.”
“You can’t talk about ways to spend money without talking about ways to grow the Canadian economy, and grow these opportunities for investment in our nation,” she said.
Polite as the final news conference was, tension seemed to simmer between Canada’s two western-most provinces.
B.C. Premier John Horgan said although Alberta made its propipeline case “as it always does — in a strong and passionate way,” he also set out his own concerns about the project’s risks.
His province is involved in a handful of court cases against the project, including two centring on Indigenous rights and one constitutional reference case about where B.C.’ s jurisdiction ends.
When asked if the reference case would spell the end of the court action for his government, Horgan doubled down on the message upon which he was recently elected — that he’ll do all he can to explore every court option available.
Horgan said he’ll make decisions on B.C.’s next move once it comes time for appeals for or against a court decision.
“If you have disagreements, the appropriate course of action is to use the courts,” he said.
Meanwhile, with mere days until the May 31 deadline set by Kinder Morgan to find resolution in the continuing pipeline stalemate, Notley said Wednesday she’s confident the target will be met.
“We know decisions have to
You can’t talk about ways to spend money without talking about ways to grow the Canadian economy.
be made by investors in order to keep construction going forward on schedule, so those are real concerns,” she said.
“We understand and respect that, so we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that we get construction resumed on schedule.”
Also on Wednesday, Moody’s warned that the Trans Mountain pipeline is deemed credit negative for Alberta, despite federal government indemnity for the project.
The indemnity announcement eased Alberta’s credit risk by alleviating some of the project’s financial concerns, Moody ’s wrote in an investor report, but “significant uncertainties remain.”
Reducing the provincial deficit over the next few years in part relies on increased cash from nonrenewable resources, but the project’s cancellation would mean a “potentially significant loss in revenue,” the ratings agency argued.
It would also increase Alberta’s energy transportation costs “and diminish future energy infrastructure investment and oil development at a time when the province is already forecasting a prolonged period of deficits and rapidly rising debt,” it wrote.
Moody ’s also worried the lack of successful cross-border pipeline projects could ultimately impact whether the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S. will proceed.