Premiers achieve the impossible — an agreement

However, the details of the deal are vague

It’s not as if the premiers walked across the waters of St. John’s Harbour on Friday — but their Council of the Federation meeting was something of a miracle, nonetheless.

Despite a war of words between Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and other premiers, they unanimously signed on to a Canadian Energy Strategy, a deal designed, among other things, to fast-track pipeline construction while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant, who desperately wants the proposed $12-billion Energy East pipeline to ship Alberta bitumen to Saint John, called it a “monumental document.”

It’s not. It is significant and it might even prove to be helpful. It is not monumental.

It is not a legally binding document. It doesn’t explain how the premiers should fasttrack a particular project and it doesn’t spell out emissions targets.

It is a deal that reflects in vague, aspirational language, a commitment by provinces to help each other get their particular energy product to market, whether that’s oil, gas, bitumen or hydro electricity.

Here’s how the strategy is described in its opening pages: “The Canadian Energy Strategy is intended to be a flexible, living document that will further enable provinces and territories to move forward and collaborate on common energy-related interests according to their unique strengths, challenges and priorities.”

It doesn’t exactly lift itself off the page. As Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said, it’s a “high-level document.”

Here, for example, is what it says on ways to speed up projects: “Collaborate to identify, reduce, or remove duplication and inconsistencies between regulatory processes in Canada.”

And here it is on vague ways to reduce emissions, without setting any actual targets: “They can range from the use of new technologies that mitigate, or capture and store carbon, to policies that encourage the marketplace to reduce or eliminate emissions, including setting a price on carbon.”

However, the premiers are delighted to have managed to commit even these fuzzy goals to paper. They call it a framework for better things to come.

It has taken three years of work, starting with an idea proposed by then-Alberta premier Alison Redford at a premiers’ conference in 2012 as a way to get more of her province’s bitumen to world markets.

Redford, a Progressive Conservative premier, is gone but ironically her legacy has been carried on by an NDP successor.

At the very least, the premiers managed to produce something that wasn’t the annual plea to Ottawa for more money on health care or infra- structure.

It is a signal to Ottawa — and all Canadians — they are willing to work together. It is a symbol of a renewed alliance between the provinces.

“We have the premiers of Ontario and Quebec acknowledging that we need to move oil across the country and acknowledging that the success of the industry is Canada’s success,” said a happy Notley after the conference.