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.
Comments (5)
Larry Kaumeyer
13 Oct 2025 @ 11:28 am
Kirk:
This is an excellent perspective and you have captured the very unfortunate reality the Premier of BC is taking which I hope all Canadians and especially B.Cers call out. A few other points for consideration to add to your perspective would be:
– recent polling across Canada and B.C. has Canadians realizing the importance of properly built pipelines with broad engagement and the highest environmental standards as being essential to our broader national security interests. B.C. results demonstrate a majority are in favour of a pipeline.
– B.C.’s government should also be smart enough to see that by coming together with Alberta, there could be not only the direct economic benefits from the construction of a pipeline but a longer term agreement in support of enhanced GDP and sustainable growth to offset what appears to be a growing deficit. B.C. needs new revenue and not from one-time tobacco claims that hid the real deficit number in B.C.’s recent budget announcement.
– There are close links to Asian allies and they are asking for global energy security from Canada; not just for LNG but for propane, oil and ammonia all of which Canada can be an essential partner on. Today Asian countries have to rely on oil from the Strait of Hormuz or through the Panama Canal. Both vital tributaries have had significant logistical and in the case of the Strait of Hormuz, ongoing military interruptions. Between 10-15 million barrels of oil a day goes to Asian markets just from the Strait. In this growing time of global energy security, post the Ukraine war, would it not make sense that the closest destination for energy come from Canada? Asian is asking for our help, for our reliable and secure energy. Let’s not hand this over to China and Russian oil influence.
– Lastly, I would add that your points on Indigenous engagement, ultimately consultation and direct benefit and equity ownership could be a shared opportunity for Alberta and B.C.. Alberta has created the Alberta Indigenous Opportunity Corporation (AIOC) which provides a vital backstop to investments (especially pipeline infrastructure) to allow direct participation for Indigenous groups. They are open to providing the same opportunity with B.C. nations and wouldn’t it be a fantastic opportunity for B.C.’s government to create the same mechanism to harmonize with Alberta’s AIOC for a nation-building project?
Let’s hope that Finnegan can whisper into Premier Eby’s ear and assist him in seeing the multitude of opportunity that could be a tremendous legacy for us all. Time is of the essence.
First, it substitutes symbolism for strategy. C-48’s blanket prohibition, tied to a decades-old voluntary exclusion zone, treats the entire North coast as ungovernable water rather than a place where modern risk management can operate. Canada already moves crude safely by tanker from the Lower Mainland, and international peers manage comparable coastlines with routeing, pilotage, tug escort, double-hulled standards, and rigorous spill-response regimes. A categorical “no” across Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound avoids the hard work of designing safe-throughput systems with Indigenous and local partners. It prioritizes performative purity over engineered prudence. The act’s text is unambiguous about the ban’s breadth and penalties, and Eby is using that blunt instrument as a shield rather than inviting innovation to make exports safer. Second, it ignores the constitutional lane markings and the country’s broader welfare. Interprovincial pipelines are under federal jurisdiction. B.C. tested the limits in the courts, and the courts said no: Provinces cannot impose measures that, in pith and substance, regulate the flow of interprovincial heavy oil. The principle wasn’t crafted to spite B.C. It exists so one province cannot veto the economic lifelines of another. In part, this is what Alberta’s Danielle Smith notes when she says the coastline is Canada’s, not B.C.’s. Eby’s insistence on guarding a federally controlled coastline with a federally enacted moratorium is less a constitutional argument than a political one that leaves Canada poorer and more fragile when capacity tightens again. Third, it undermines the very climate-and-competitiveness balance B.C. has been claiming to champion as it participates in a larger national initiative on economic sovereignty. The province’s story is that it can be both a climate leader and an energy-systems problem-solver. In practice, its CleanBC plan and Energy Action Framework have morphed into a posture that is permissive where it’s popular (streamlining the permitting of renewables, for example) and prohibitive where the trade-offs are hardest (crude export logistics). Meanwhile, LNG—another fossil export—has been advanced under frameworks that seek to square emissions with economics. The inconsistency is hard to miss: If B.C. can architect credible mitigation for LNG plants and upstream methane, why can’t it design a credible, safety-first pathway for a northern crude corridor with Indigenous partnership and world-class marine controls? Selective pragmatism is not a strategy. The national-interest case for revisiting Eby’s “red line” is not a nostalgia tour for the 2010s pipeline wars. It’s a forward-looking hedge. TMX, for all its gains, is already trending toward high utilization, and analysts warn capacity could pinch again before decade’s end. The Alberta–Ottawa talks contemplate tighter emissions performance alongside carbon capture infrastructure, exactly the sort of grand bargain Canada used to strike when it still believed in nation-building. Blocking the corridor forecloses the bargain. It preserves emissions on trains and trucks, concentrates marine traffic in the south, and keeps producers vulnerable to a single route’s operational or political risk. That’s not environmental stewardship, but supply-chain fragility with greener branding. What about Indigenous consent? The north coast is not a blank slate. Coastal First Nations have reaffirmed opposition to crude tankers in their territories. That deserves full and serious engagement, not Ottawa-down edicts. But engagement isn’t synonymous with permanent embargo. TMX was first met with opposition, but over time, dozens of Nations negotiated agreements to the point that some are exploring equity stakes. A 21st-century corridor would require a different starting point: Nation-led governance, shared ownership, revenue certainty, local supply-chain participation, and ironclad environmental performance guarantees designed by coastal communities themselves. If the answer remains “no,” at least it would be an informed, thoroughly negotiated “no”—not one pre-empted by a statutory wall that prevents even the exploration of a better model. Eby’s role matters because premiers can either expand or shrink the space for federal-provincial compromise. Right now, he is shrinking it while misreading the policy mood. Canada’s energy transition is a decades-long re-plumbing job that requires redundancy, resilience, and revenue. Without optionality, we default to scarcity—and scarcity is a terrible climate policy, a terrible industrial policy, and a terrible social policy. A friendlier giant would set different terms. He would acknowledge the constitutional frame and the national interest, invite Ottawa and Alberta to co-design a corridor that meets world-leading standards, and empower coastal First Nations to choose—with real power, real equity, and real veto-points—whether and how it proceeds. In other words, convert a red line into a blueprint. Eby’s blockade politics plays well in certain precincts in the province, but for a country trying to act like a serious energy nation in a volatile world, it’s an expensive pose to guard the gate instead of building the door. He needs to, as the venerable CBC show once encouraged us, to “look up, way, way, up.”
Kirk LaPointe is The Hub‘s B.C. Correspondent. He is a transplanted Ontarian to British Columbia. Before he left, he ran CTV News, Southam News and the Hamilton Spectator. He also helped launch the National Post as its first executive editor, was a day-one host on CBC Newsworld, and ran the Ottawa bureau of The Canadian Press. His B.C. experiences include being managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, the English-language ombudsman of the CBC, and most recently the publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president editorial of its parent company, Glacier Media. He ran and finished second for the Vancouver mayoralty in 2014. He has taught for two decades at the UBC School of Journalism and now writes columns for Glacier Media.
Comments (5)
Kirk:
This is an excellent perspective and you have captured the very unfortunate reality the Premier of BC is taking which I hope all Canadians and especially B.Cers call out. A few other points for consideration to add to your perspective would be:
– recent polling across Canada and B.C. has Canadians realizing the importance of properly built pipelines with broad engagement and the highest environmental standards as being essential to our broader national security interests. B.C. results demonstrate a majority are in favour of a pipeline.
– B.C.’s government should also be smart enough to see that by coming together with Alberta, there could be not only the direct economic benefits from the construction of a pipeline but a longer term agreement in support of enhanced GDP and sustainable growth to offset what appears to be a growing deficit. B.C. needs new revenue and not from one-time tobacco claims that hid the real deficit number in B.C.’s recent budget announcement.
– There are close links to Asian allies and they are asking for global energy security from Canada; not just for LNG but for propane, oil and ammonia all of which Canada can be an essential partner on. Today Asian countries have to rely on oil from the Strait of Hormuz or through the Panama Canal. Both vital tributaries have had significant logistical and in the case of the Strait of Hormuz, ongoing military interruptions. Between 10-15 million barrels of oil a day goes to Asian markets just from the Strait. In this growing time of global energy security, post the Ukraine war, would it not make sense that the closest destination for energy come from Canada? Asian is asking for our help, for our reliable and secure energy. Let’s not hand this over to China and Russian oil influence.
– Lastly, I would add that your points on Indigenous engagement, ultimately consultation and direct benefit and equity ownership could be a shared opportunity for Alberta and B.C.. Alberta has created the Alberta Indigenous Opportunity Corporation (AIOC) which provides a vital backstop to investments (especially pipeline infrastructure) to allow direct participation for Indigenous groups. They are open to providing the same opportunity with B.C. nations and wouldn’t it be a fantastic opportunity for B.C.’s government to create the same mechanism to harmonize with Alberta’s AIOC for a nation-building project?
Let’s hope that Finnegan can whisper into Premier Eby’s ear and assist him in seeing the multitude of opportunity that could be a tremendous legacy for us all. Time is of the essence.