Pipeline Deal Is Not A ‘baked Cake,’ Canada's Energy Minister Says

OTTAWA — One day after a pipeline plan for Alberta sparked backlash and a Cabinet defection, Canada's energy minister emphasized the project is far from a done deal.

“We're baking the cake,” Tim Hodgson told POLITICO on Friday from British Columbia. “We're just buying the ingredients right now. Let's not opine on how the cake tastes till it's a little bit further baked.”

The Ottawa–Alberta deal marks a major reset of federal energy and climate policy, opening the door to a privately financed oilsands pipeline while scrapping pillars of the Trudeau-era framework — a shift that’s already triggered political blowback inside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s own government.

Hodgson is pushing back against critics who question Carney’s commitment to climate change — a group that now includes Steven Guilbeault, who quit Cabinet on Thursday hours after the landmark Ottawa-Alberta energy agreement was signed.

Those “ingredients” are in the memorandum of understanding that Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed in Calgary to great fanfare, including two standing ovations for the prime minister from a business crowd. Nothing is certain without a private sector investor because neither Ottawa nor Alberta say they are interested in underwriting a pipeline with tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.

Hodgson said the deal includes a July 1 deadline for any private sector investor pitches that must meet several requirements, including buy-in from the B.C. government and the province’s First Nations groups.

“The proponent has not come forward with a route. They have not come forward with a proposal at this point in time,” said Hodgson.

“They got some work to do,” he added, saying it is “premature” for critics to worry about a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast.

Carney has spend months rolling back energy and environment policies championed by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, starting with Canada’s work on the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

The MOU did away with an emissions cap on oil and gas, clean energy regulations, rules that punished companies for “greenwashing” and could potential lift a ban on oil tankers off the B.C. coast — policies Guilbeault helped create.

Hodgson said critics should not be in a rush to judge Carney’s commitment to fighting climate change. “I have known him for 25 years,” said Hodgson. “When he has a vision for what needs to happen, he creates KPIs [key performance indicators] — and we better damn deliver them.”

Carney was the U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance before entering politics this year, winning the Liberal leadership and then a federal election on the pledge that he was best suited to protect Canada’s economy against President Donald Trump’s economic attacks on Canada.

“The prime minister is at the center of some pretty complex geopolitics right now, and is maybe charging a slightly different path based on the realities we find in the world today,” Hodgson said.

“There was a path to get to net zero under the previous government. That path was running into real challenges with a number of provinces. This MOU sets out another way to do it.”

Hodgson pointed out that the MOU affirms Canada’s commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The deal includes a new target to cut methane emissions, a requirement that Alberta and Ottawa reach an agreement on industrial carbon pricing by April 1 that could raise Alberta’s current carbon price from C$95 per ton to $130 per ton, and a focus on developing clean nuclear energy and sharing electricity better across the western Canadian provinces.

Hodgson was optimistic heading into a Friday meeting with British Columbia Premier David Eby, a day after the premier called the pipeline proposal an “energy vampire,” touting instead the billions of dollars worth of fully funded and shovel-ready LNG export projects in his province.

“We have a very constructive and productive relationship with the British Columbia government," Hodgson said. "It's not an accident that there are more projects on the major projects list in British Columbia than any other province.”

Carney's minister said that said that when Eby called to ask for help to ease the effect of Trump’s softwood lumber tariffs on B.C. forestry workers, the government reacted.

“We got on a plane, we came out, we sat down and we talked about the challenges. We said we will come back with solutions,” Hodgson said, citing this week’s announcement by Ottawa of an aid package for steel and lumber.

“We have a very respectful and constructive conversation between our two levels of government,” Hodgson said.