Joe Oliver: Rhetoric and MOUs don't make us an energy superpower

The Alberta-Ottawa agreement seems promising but doesn't yet move the country closer to realizing its energy potential

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Though superficially promising, last month’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa is in fact restrictive and self-contradictory, leaving the over-arching economic and strategic question of Canada’s future energy development mired in uncertainty.

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Questionable support for pipelines from the prime minister and his energy minister, obstructive laws and regulations, and at least implied vetoes for the provinces and Indigenous communities alternate with resource superpower cheerleading to create an incoherent policy environment.

The fog may be understandable but it is not justifiable. Mark Carney is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable: on the one hand, harsh economic reality and his own campaign promises and, on the other, a restive Liberal caucus, alarmed environmental activists and his personal climate obsessions. Will potential pipeline sponsors be willing to pour billions of dollars into such a fraught, dilatory and costly political and regulatory environment? Gwyn Morgan, former president and CEO of Encana, certainly doesn’t think so, as he indicated in a recent Leaders on the Frontier

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