Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday his consultations with provinces and territories on lowering the federal carbon pricing standard in line with Alberta will begin in his sit-down with B.C. Premier David Eby later in the day.
Carney was in Vancouver addressing the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade days after signing an energy agreement with Alberta that included a reduced carbon price and altered timeline, which Eby had complained would put Alberta at an unfair advantage.
The prime minister told the assembled B.C. business leaders that he was committed to ensuring the province and all other parts of the country are brought to the table not just on carbon pricing, but the rest of his government’s energy and infrastructure strategies — including a future pipeline.
“In the weeks ahead, we will engage with British Columbia — in fact, in the hours ahead, I’m going to see the premier in a moment — and all the provinces and territories on changes to the federal carbon pricing benchmark to align with these new commitments,” Carney said.
“And we’ll do it fast, so we have one consistent and predictable approach.”
Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed an agreement on Friday to bring Alberta’s effective carbon price — the market price for credits — to $130 per tonne by 2040, while the headline price in Alberta would also reach $100 per tonne by 2027, before rising to $130 per tonne by 2035.
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That’s far below the current federally mandated carbon pricing level of $170 per tonne by 2030.
The Alberta agreement also sets a pathway for a yet-to-be-approved new oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast, which Eby and several B.C. First Nations have opposed — particularly if it’s routed to northern B.C.
“The message I have for the prime minister is a pretty straightforward one: British Columbia backs Canada, and we need Ottawa to back British Columbia,” Eby told reporters Tuesday in previewing his meeting with Carney.
“We need to have at least as much enthusiasm from the federal government for B.C. projects as they’ve shown for Alberta projects.”
Carney noted Wednesday that the majority of projects referred to the new federal Major Projects Office for expedited approvals are based in B.C.
He stressed that the new pipeline will only be approved if British Columbians “share substantial economic and financial benefits” and First Nations are fully consulted, which includes “ensuring Indigenous economic benefits, partnerships and opportunities for co-ownership.”
That same cooperative approach will also be applied to other major projects in B.C., Carney added, including expanding capacity at the Port of Vancouver, which will be necessary as Canada seeks to double its non-U.S. exports and expand trade with Asia.
“We’re going to run out of capacity at the Port of Vancouver over the course of the next — well, less than the next decade,” he said later during a fireside chat with Greater Vancouver Board of Trade CEO Bridgitte Anderson.
“We would like to run out of capacity sooner than that, because we would like to be growing our exports faster than that. Which means we need to act now.”
Carney noted that the war in the Middle East had disrupted energy supplies around the world, with some countries “increasingly in the next few weeks” set to face questions of availability.
While he said that gives Canada an opportunity to increase its energy exports from B.C. and beyond, he said port expansion and new energy projects will be pursued in a collaborative way between governments, First Nations and industry stakeholders.
“The worst thing to do is to do this piecemeal and not get the overall benefits: not have a better waterfront here, not have greater productivity, not have the South resident killer whales protected, not have First Nation partnership,” he said.
“We can do all that if we do it all together with a sense of urgency that the moment demands. Because if we don’t do this, to be clear, it is going to be very hard for us to become materially more independent, more resilient, as a country.”
More to come…
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