I wasn’t going to do a blog this week because I was out of town for some needed R&R, enjoying a few days in Banff with my wife as our traditional jaunt to Phoenix was probably not the best idea given the government shutdown in the United States and the very real possibility of flight cancellations or worse. And I’m not kidding – it was bad for a lot of people. One of my favourite sports columnists has a great post on Substack about his epic flight cancelled journey home from New Orleans which interrupted his “regularly scheduled programming”. Link to substack
Here at home, we continue to deal with the fall-out from the Federal Budget, which seems to be pretty intense for the most part amongst those of us who don’t like generational debt, the potential bankrupting of a country, maintenance of credit ratings and all that jazz. On the other hand, it is par for the course for everyone else, which appears to mean a fairly hefty cross-section of the non-financial world and anyone who already owns a home.
But I’m not here to criticize the government and Mark Carney about the budget. I think I did that already and to be honest, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t listen to what I had to say.
No, I’m here to talk about something much more insidious than that. And I’m going to keep it short because I have limitrd time and this is a day off and I was sued to take a break, as I’ve already said.
So here it is.
The Special Projects Directorate.
What the heck is this thing.
At first it seemed like a fairly innocuous innovation that would allow the Liberal government to circumvent its own rules in order to fast track projects deemed in the national interest and, you know, get things built.
To give it pan-Canadian credibility, the office was opened in and staffed by Calgarians since as we all know, Alberta and Calgary in particulalr is the epicentre of unbuild projects that would ser ev the national interest.
And it seemed like it was maybe going to click. First, we opened the office (huzzah!). Then the first batch of projects was announced including a bunch of mining related projects that were already on the books but that was OK, because also included was LNG, which of course made Alberta happy and BC kinda maybe happy.
But then things started to go off the rails. (note that rail as yet is not a project I the national interest, unless it is running to Churchill Manitoba – then it is in Wab Kinew’s interests (huzzah!).
First was the most obvious exclusion from the list of projects – an oil export pipeline. A tube to transport gooey bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands to a coast of some kind where a boat could load it and take it places where people in need would buy it.
But wait, there was some noise about the Pathways project being in the national interest and playing that off against an oil pipeline as an avenue to get what we want/need.
When pressed on the pipeline – the PM responded with the old saw “well I don’t see a private sector proponent, that’s what we really need to get you on “the list””
Undaunted and knowing there would be another round of projects, Danielle Smith (the most hated premier in CanadaTM) gathered her minions in order to work her magic on the one portfolio she actually excels in – Energy. The thinking was, if a proponent is truly what is needed, then what better proponent than the government of Alberta to kickstart the planning of an export pipeline since only governments would be willing to take that kind of risk while waiting for the Feds to get their poop in a group.
So the GoA put up $14 million towards a feasibility study which of course was widely panned in the media who collectively said “tut tut, where is the private sector and questioning the viability” completely ignoring the billions already spent studying the viability of various routes and the cash flow juggernaut that TMX already is.
Not to be outdone, David Eby, the “worst premier in CanadaTM” took some time away from wrecking the investment climate in his province through title confusion to hold some very solemn announcements where he declared that a pipeline to the coast in Northern British Columbia was never going to happen, completely ignoring the fact that the province has zero jurisdiction over these pipelines.
Whatever.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Surely the Federal government, under Elbows Up Carney, wasn’t about to let itself get cowed by some “premier” and would assuredly step up in the second round of projects and green-light an oil export pipeline or at least announce some form of participation in the analysis and planning. Given that they, you know, own an export pipeline company and assets.
Even the budget seemed to imply something was coming, with all its opaque language about possibly removing the emissions cap under the right conditions and the like.
But then it got weird.
First, the Prime Minister called pipelines boring and said we needed to concentrate on AI and data centres. Sorry, what? In what world is passing up on a sure money maker for all levels of governmental treasury boring? And why do we need to prioritize a nascent industry that many investors are trying to determine whether it’s hype or Ponzi? Is he not following the evolution of the industry south of the border? The self-dealing, the requests for government backstops for data centre development and power generation (in some worlds that is called “debt”).
Surely we aren’t going to put all our eggs and dry powder into Ontario and Quebec Battery Plants Redux 2.0 instead of, like, exporting our most valuable resource to people who really, really want it and don’t have to have us lend them money to buy it.
Then the list came out. And you know what wasn’t on it? And f-ing oil export pipeline. Big surprise. What was surprisingly on it though was the reconstruction of the pier in Whiterock BC, a project which I just recently read was already begun by the previous liberal government in 2019. Look, I get it, it’s a cool place and feel free to invest there, but it ain’t a “major project”, I’m not seeing any supertankers docking there. Fish and chips can only sustain so much of the national economy.
And it dawned on me. The Major Projects Office is nothing more than an LPC candy store like the one’s wwe went to in Banff. I can even smell the treacly sugary fudge smell as I type. Where the powers that be can hand out goodies to provinces that play nice and political allies who curry favour with the powers that be. Favours for thee, accolades for me. Who cares about the cost! And the best thing is, we can call it nation-building and suspend the rules that are standing in the way of allowing some of these to proceed without ever addressing the elephant in the room which are the mind-numbingly stupid and pandering rules that stymie investment in the most profitable project building part of the economy and chase capital away.
It’s genius. Approve projects already approved or already underway. Allow them to be built slightly faster. Say you are building a nation. Take a bow.
I don’t even know how complicit in this Carney is. If he is front and centre then I think he is a bad faith actor. Personally, I think he got played. He’s got the same cast of characters surrounding him as there were for the last 10 years. All the rocket geniuses who came up with the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and all the other specialized investment entities that were capitalized with billions of dollars, staffed with cronies and did sweet f all.
Instead of a powerful nation-building organization where the federal government enjoins the provinces and the private sector to green-light transformative and generational infrastructure investments, we have what is shaping up to be an entity that gives favour to those who supplicate the best and meet purity tests that are out of step with the rest of the world. Provinces reduced to begging for gruel while the world continues to pass us by. Sad.
And we all kind of fell for it. But at least it hasn’t been ten years. This time it has taken ten weeks for the shine to come off.
There are some that hold out hope that maybe there is some discussion happening behind the scenes, that maybe Danielle Smith is advancing things with her federal counterparts and to that end, there was promising news that South Bow – the oil pipeline spinoff from Trans Canada – was working with the province on their proposal (what’s that eh? A private sector proponent?) but I am not going to hold my breath.
There is only one way that the major projects office becomes anything more than another Liberal boondoggle and that is if it makes the narrowly politically unpopular but massively supported by 70% of Canadians decision to throw its weight behind an oil export pipeline, no matter who kick starts the discussion.
And by weight, I mean using the tools it has at its disposal – getting rid of parasitic legislation, asserting federal powers and making it happen. Their job.
