I get the humour, but one heck of a lot of Canadians winter in warm parts of the USA. Like here in my town far from Arizona. And odds are they’re the kind of people comfortable with USA-like politics. Especially true if they winter in AZ, a hard red bastion of the looney Right since forever. And are well-off enough to afford living in two countries. So likely to be right-leaning, or at least business-first in their thinking.
All of which means if you talk to 10 Albertans in e.g. Edmonton you might get 2 fans of separatism. If you can corral 10 Albertans in Tucson, 5-7 of them will be separatist-friendly, if not fully hardcore.
Labeling this as an “astroturf oil plot” is a convenient way to avoid engaging with the actual concerns being raised. Many Albertans, including people who don’t work in oil, believe the current federal framework disadvantages the province economically and politically while we’re still expected to continually pay others who make those decisions. Disagree with that if you want, but don’t pretend those concerns are manufactured by some secret boardroom directive. If you have evidence of corporate orchestration, present it. Otherwise, address the arguments instead of attacking the people making them. Do you even know what they are?
Name one challenge we face that isn’t of your own making? You can’t blame tariffs, even Carney says we have the best deal in the world right now (for now) with CUSMA, so it isn’t Trump that has caused whatever ‘challenges’ you are referring to.
No one is stopping anyone from developing sustainably by whatever definition you want to use. Explain how Alberta companies developing its resources prevents you from doing that? An investor in oil or Alberta is not taking away money from the industry of your choice.
What is grinding to a halt? What evidence are you presenting? I’ve linked to stats canada reports on lack of investment in industrial equipment in Canada from 2015 onwards. Essentially zero growth while in the US it is 20% year on year. What happened around 2015 that killed that activity?
Please link to the equivalent. But no, you think talk of independence is blocking investments over the last 6 months? Not the moratorium on tankers, or the 15 year approval timeframes, or the flip flop when an approvals are finally made, or any of the other business killing government activities that introduce risk that companies hate when deciding where to invest money?
Well, I think it has more to do with embezzlement of collected funds. I think they are out to spend every penny on trips south for the winter.
Honestly, no matter how many Canadians winter in the States, I refuse to believe that it’d be more advantageous to hunt for valid separatist Alberta snowbirds in Arizona then it would be to plunk one petitioner at the local bar in Rimbey (pop. 2,500) for one evening.
But hey, perhaps this rally will attract thousands of eligible signers.
It’s attracting eyeballs. Including yours and mine. That may be the larger goal. Looking big on the internet is an end in itself. It affects fundraising, it affects how seriously one is taken by the conventional media, etc. Regardless of which cause you champion, creating buzz is good.
Demand in Asia remains weak, with LNG shipments to China — the biggest importer of the gas — dropping 11 per cent in 2025. Some of the nation’s buyers are reselling cargoes, adding to subdued spot demand from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
And a pipeline from Alberta would still be cheaper. But keep trying to justify not buying within Canada as somehow being beneficial to the environment.
Wait. I thought we were desperate to convert LNG pipelines to carry bitumen to eastern Canada?
Anyway Repsol basically owns the LNG terminal in New Brunswick and supplies natural gas to eastern Canada and eastern US. There’s no real LNG link from around Quebec City to New Brunswick as NB’s LNG import terminal is focused on selling to the rest of the Maritimes and the NE US. Keep in mind that it’s an import terminal for a Canadian region that only has natural gas provide 3% of their energy consumption ( Energy Use in Canada: Publications | Natural Resources Canada )
As for selling a connection across Quebec to NB has to face the fact that currently neither province needs natural gas. Quebec is basically hydro and NB/NS/PEI lack local infrastructure to use the NG and only a small localized area would benefit from building an export terminal. I’ve not heard any business case from Repsol arguing to expand their terminal and bring western LNG to the coast.
They want a Shrodinger’s pipeline. It carries the material that will give you the biggest complaint against the federal government. This may change day-to-day.
You know I took a quick look and I think NS/NB consume about 200MMcf/d of natural gas (~5.6 million cubic meters per day). At $0.12 a cubic meter (Enbridge Ontario rate) that’s $672k a day or $245M a year. Assume a profit of 20% and you get about $50M a year.
Dump all of that into a 40 year amortized pipeline and the pipeline cost would be about $2 billion. However the current Alberta to BC pipeline (Coastal GasLink pipeline) seems to have cost $12 Billion but it is going over harder terrain so maybe we assume a $6 Billion pipeline. Which means we would have to triple the natural gas consumption of NB/NS. Sure you could export it to Africa/Europe but then we need to dial in the development of an export terminal.
Now I’ve likely messed up the math and I dont even play a gas executive on TV so any actual proposals would be interesting to read.
I was initially going to be snarky, but couldn’t be clever enough to make it stick.
I’ll just leave a few points:
The market for a pipeline would be
Europe
Ontario
Quebec
NE USA
And, as an aside, household consumption in NS/NB, which is the basis for your business case.
Pricing is driven by wholesale and global benchmarks. The relevant comparison isn’t today’s local utility rate; it’s the long-term cost of transporting Western Canadian gas via pipeline versus importing LNG priced off global markets.
There’s a broader economic question: what is the cost to the Canadian economy of importing energy and sending those dollars abroad? Even if domestic supply were marginally more expensive at times, or at all times, keeping production, transportation, royalties, and industrial activity within Canada has multiplier effects.
For the Team Canada Elbows Up types out there. You think buying from overseas when at the same time hampering Alberta industry with regulations that our competitors don’t have to comply with. Combine that with the infrastructure constraints that drive prices lower, we artificially hamstring ourselves while promoting others. We’re playing the game with our hands tied behind our backs for no good reason.
Give me ONE example of a regulation on “Alberta industry” that Canada has that is imposed by the federal government that no other country has, and is there for “no good reason”.
Imposed by the federal government
No other country has this regulation
Is only on “Alberta Industry” (whatever this means)
There are no “good reasons” for the regulation (explanation required for why the reason is not “good”)
I’m sure someone thinks they have a good reason to do whatever they think they are doing even if it is just to spite Alberta.
How about the MOU and carbon capture? I’ve heard it can add up to $20/bbl to the cost. Effectively making production untenable and allowing the government to say, “We didn’t close down the oil sands”, while effectively doing so.
Also, you don’t have to buy LNG from Alberta. It can be extracted from Quebec, from the reserves they chose not to produce. That’s right bloody next door. What kind of insanity is this? Better Alberta leaves and rejects this lunacy.
No, I do not believe this makes sense in any way shape or form.
You have not fully answered my question.
Give me ONE example of a regulation on “Alberta industry” that Canada has that is imposed by the federal government that no other country has, and is there for “no good reason”.
Imposed by the federal government
No other country has this regulation
Is only on “Alberta Industry” (whatever this means)
There are no “good reasons” for the regulation (explanation required for why the reason is not “good”)
Your framing sets an impossible standard for which I’m not interested in responding to. Very few regulations anywhere are unique globally and without stated rationale. The issue isn’t whether Canada has a reason good or not, it’s whether the cumulative federal regulatory burden (carbon pricing, methane targets, impact assessment, emissions caps, laws blocking tanker access, etc) is proportionate relative to major competing oil-producing jurisdictions and whether the economic costs are distributed fairly within Canada. That’s a competitiveness and governance question, not a “no other country does this” question.
I have never said to do away with regulations, I have always argued they must be competitive and not just drive production to another area of the world where they don’t have them or where they are less stringent. No amount of regulations in Canada will prevent a barrel of oil from being produced somewhere else in the world if there is a demand. It just ensures that someone else benefits from the sale.
This applies to all industry in Canada. If a project takes a decade or more to approve using a process that is politically driven and where the approval can be challenged even after being granted, or the next party elected can just cancel it, then we all lose the investments and economic benefits of those projects. If you can’t acknowledge that the approval process in Canada drives away investment, even when the current PM has to setup a special bureaucracy or project office to bypass it, then what is the point of debating further?
Yet you had no problem boldly stating "For the Team Canada Elbows Up types out there. You think buying from overseas when at the same time hampering Alberta industry with regulations that our competitors don’t have to comply with. Combine that with the infrastructure constraints that drive prices lower, we artificially hamstring ourselves while promoting others. We’re playing the game with our hands tied behind our backs for no good reason. "
And now you say " The issue isn’t whether Canada has a reason good or not,"
Then explain why eastern canada is buying from anyplace other than western canada? You don’t have an economic argument for it as it would be cheaper to send oil and gas through a pipeline than from shipping it from Australia. What prevents that from happening?
