He is the Un-Friendly Giant.
B.C. Premier David Eby’s six-foot-seven frame looms over the Pacific Gateway, arms crossed, fingers wagging, at the very moment Canada seeks and needs a builder, not a bouncer.
Consider the timing. After 12 years and $34 billion, the Trans Mountain Expansion finally entered service a year ago May, nearly tripling capacity to the coast and, for the first time in a generation, giving producers meaningful access to global (that is, Brent-linked) markets. Throughput ramped rapidly, while the WCS–WTI discount tightened this year versus 2024. In short, it was precisely what advocates predicted when tidewater access arrived.
Yet as Alberta and Ottawa explore the contours of a next pipeline to avoid renewed bottlenecks by the late 2020s, Eby has chosen a familiar role: keeper of the gate. The pipeline debate, framed as a fight between Alberta and Ottawa, is yesterday’s script. If the goal is a new line to tidewater, the veto player is in Victoria, and the B.C. premier has assembled a policy architecture that, under these circumstances, makes an oil pipeline to the B.C. coast a political long shot and a commercial non-starter.
He has doubled down on support for the federal Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (Bill C-48), which bans large crude carriers along B.C.’s north coast, effectively foreclosing the most sensible export corridor for a line that would diversify routes, enhance resilience, and reduce pressure on the Salish Sea. His message is categorical: tankers in those northern waters remain a “red line.” That stance has already been flagged by industry leaders as a deal-breaker. As Enbridge’s CEO has put it, no firm builds a “pipeline to nowhere.”
For anyone who cares about institutional competence, constitutional clarity, and the national interest, three problems with Eby’s posture stand out.
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