B.C. Premier David Eby is throwing shade on the pipeline consensus presented by his colleagues at the meeting between Canada’s premiers and Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this week.
Carney previously said he would support building pipelines if certain conditions were met, one of them being consensus among provinces.
Eby was notably absent from Monday’s meeting, where his peers suggested that the aforementioned consensus had been met, with numerous premiers celebrating the future of pipelines and none opposing.
However, Eby said he would not support building a new oil pipeline through B.C.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that, given Carney’s claim that a pipeline would only occur if a consensus was met, Eby’s opposition adds to the non-consensus within the Liberal cabinet.
“So, despite grand statements, press conferences and meetings, Liberals have no plan to get one built, leaving us helplessly reliant on the Americans. More ‘elbows-down’ from the Liberals,” said Poilievre.
As for the non-consensus within the Liberal cabinet, Canadian Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault previously claimed developers don’t want to build new pipelines. His comments came despite him being shuffled off the environment file.
However, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith demanded that the new environment minister, Julie Dabrusin, disavow the misleading comments made by Guilbeault.
When speaking at the final press conference of the First Ministers’ meeting, Smith outlined the optimal economic scenario for a pipeline to be built in B.C.
“The pathways project is an expensive project. It would cost anywhere from 10 to $20 billion to get built, and to make the economic case for that, having more egress with more barrels to be sold to Asia is a way to pay for it,” said Smith. “If we had a million barrel a day pipeline going to the northwest B.C. coast, that would generate about 20 billion a year in revenues. And so that seems like a pretty good value proposition if both of those projects can proceed at once.”
Eby did not attend the meeting because he had already planned to attend a 10-day trip to Asia to diversify the province’s trade relationship. Deputy Premier Niki Sharma attended in his absence.