‘This guy is standing in the way’: Jason Kenney on why David Eby is a bigger threat to Canada’s unity than Alberta separatists

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Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney argues that both B.C. Premier David Eby and federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson appear to have forgotten which jurisdiction interprovincial pipelines fall under. He says the Constitution is clear that such projects are a matter of federal authority—a principle reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Kenney adds that Mark Carney’s “build, baby, build” promise will be tested by how his government handles Alberta’s latest push to get a new pipeline built.

This podcast is generously supported by Don Archibald. The Hub thanks him for his ongoing support.

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Program Transcript

This is an automated transcript. Please check against delivery.

RYAN HASTMAN: Jobs, economy, pipelines. If you pay attention to Alberta politics, these themes are very familiar to you. Today we have Alberta’s 18th premier, Jason Kenney, joining us to talk about these issues and to see what’s changed in the debate. Mr. Kenney, thanks for being here today.

JASON KENNEY: Great to be here. Ryan, congratulations on your new show.

RYAN HASTMAN: Thank you. It’s really great to have you. So tell me, what kind of flashbacks are you getting from all this pipeline talk these days?

JASON KENNEY: Yeah, jobs, economy, pipelines. It sounds kind of familiar to me. That was our 2019 election slogan for the entire Alberta campaign. Of course. Perennial issues, to be sure, for good reason. The single biggest industry in Canada, the largest job and revenue creator, the largest source of government revenues are the Canadian oil and gas sector, Alberta oil sands in particular. And given the threat and pressure from Donald Trump’s protectionism, if we want to achieve the political consensus demonstrated in the last federal election around becoming an energy superpower, building, becoming less dependent on the United States, then the single biggest and fastest way we can do so is through the construction of additional major coastal pipelines. So I think that’s why we are back into this debate. And quite frankly, Prime Minister Carney has raised expectations. Build, baby, build. Speeding up approvals, getting government out of the way, one Canadian economy knocking down into provincial trade barriers. All of that is what he was elected to do. So I think Albertans are expecting him to stay true to his word and deal seriously with the prospect of additional major oil egress to weather.

RYAN HASTMAN: And there’s so many topics, we’re going to pull them apart one at a time. So before we get to the west coast pipeline, I wanted to bring up Keystone. Things don’t excel. It’s back in the news. Of course, you’re very familiar with it. It came up when you were premier and Alberta put quite a lot of force behind it. What do you think about that project? Do you think it’s likely to now move ahead again?

JASON KENNEY: I think that Mark Carney putting this on the table with President Trump in his White House visit was really a strategically smart move. And I’ve been saying this for some time. Let me be blunt, Ryan. I think the chances of getting, I’ll call IT Keystone XL 2.0, the chance of getting something like that done, and another major pipeline carrying Alberta oil to the US Gulf coast is much greater than the chance of a West coast pipeline. Because why? Because it would be a hell of a lot cheaper, simpler and faster. The topography is a lot simpler. First of all, between basically avoiding having to go through the mountains and secondly, assets are already in the ground as a result of the work that we did with TC Energy and my government of Alberta. When I was premier, we strung the pipe between Hardesty and the Montana Saskatchewan border. That’s about 400km of pipe that’s already in the ground. President Trump, who says sometimes he doesn’t want or need Canadian energy, also says he wants Keystone xl. He seems to be committed to that project.

I think this is a judo move where we could get him to buy into more Canadian exports and make him realize that the United States benefits from its privileged trading relationship with Canada. I think if we got behind this project, it would be tremendous leverage to get Trump to reduce tariffs in other areas and hopefully protect our market access through NAFTA when that comes up for renegotiation next summer. So, plus he would hermit it quickly. He could designated a urgent project under the Defense Procurement act, put it under the aegis of the Army Corps of Engineers for accelerated approvals. I think the way we could do it, it would require some level of government de risking because of the political uncertainty of a new administration. But if governments got behind it to de risk it, they could project finance this, put it out for tenders to midstream companies, let the best bid build bid or build the project, and then you would be selling like 25, $30 billion of oil through a million barrel per day pipeline, easily creating the revenue stream to sell the project. And it would be a very profitable project. It would also be a green light for new upstream, billions of dollars of new upstream production. So I think it’s the simplest, fastest, easiest, most economical project. I think we should do all of the above. I’m not arguing against pushing for a West coast pip, but I think this one is a judo move to get Trump closer to Canada, making him realize how he benefits from this relationship.

RYAN HASTMAN: Yeah, well, you’ve covered some of the things I was going to ask you. Would you be in support of the Alberta government once again being part of the de risk or would you require that the federal government do it?

JASON KENNEY: Well, I think we need to be creative about this. I’ll tell you, I’ve had discussions with people in Washington for years now, going back to Joe Manchin when he was the master of the United States Senate, to Trump’s first energy secretary. People since then about there’s a lot of ways of doing this now. You know, Ryan, when we, the government of Alberta, made the joint venture with TC Energy to complete Keystone XL 1.0, I think at that point their Estimate of the total cost for completion was in the range of six or seven billion dollars. And we stepped, stood behind it with loan guarantees, a billion dollars of equity investment. So it was partial de risking on the part of the government, not a complete government buyout like the feds did with the Trans Mountain expansion. Buying that from Kinder Morgan. So I think the market would bear some of the risk. But as I say, you could do a Canada Alberta U.S. tripartite joint venture. There’s a lot of different ways of doing this, but I will tell you this, if it gets done, the implications for future Alberta royalties and taxes is tens of billions of dollars.

And so it is easily worthwhile for the government of Alberta to look at standing behind a project like that. So look, my preference is never for government to risk tax dollars. But if there’s no alternative, I think we need to look at it and the precedent on this. We would not have an oil sands industry were it not for Peter Lougheed’s visionary decision in the early 1970s to create a crown corporation, the Alberta Energy Corporation AEC, to capitalize a lot of the early oil sands developments at a time when they were not yet economic. So he primed the pump through the AEC that was funded partly through the oil remnants from the conventional basin in the 1970s. And theologically rigid about this. We should be smart and pragmatic, limit government involvement, but where necessary, governments can help to step in to solve for the problem of regulatory uncertainty.

RYAN HASTMAN: Okay, I want to talk to you about the West Coast. Now, I’m going to give you the dealer’s choice. Do you want to talk about Mark Carney, Daniel Smith or David Eby?

JASON KENNEY: First, you’re the boss.

RYAN HASTMAN: You’ve had some comments about the B.C. premier that I think are worth bringing up personally. I retweeted your tweet because I agree, I think that his my personal opinion is his comments are very disruptive to the Canadian project, to the idea of confederation and of supporting each other’s resources. I know opinions will vary. What made you speak out now and what made you kind of take a fairly aggressive or assertive approach to your criticism of the premier B.C.

JASON KENNEY: Well, I think you know my style. I’m not like I try not to be personal in criticizing my political adversaries, but we’re critical moment for our country and this guy is standing in the way of the Canadian economy and wants to violate the Constitution. I think he is a much bigger threat to Canada’s economy and national unity than Donald Trump is or for that matter, than Alberta separatists are. This is a guy who’s in office who wants to use his political authority to block a prospective interprovincial pipeline which is, according to the clear letter of the Constitution, a matter of exclusive federal jurisdiction. This is not my opinion. This is not an arguable point. It was recently reaffirmed unanimously by the B.C. court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada in striking down an effort of the B.C. nDP government several years ago to block the Trans Mountain expansion. And they lost unanimously at both of those top courts because section 9210 of the Constitution act says very clearly that interprovincial infrastructure is a exclusive federal responsibility. Of course it has to be. The whole premise of confederation is an economic union and coastal provinces do not have the authority to block the export of products produced in the landlocked provinces. So he’s trying to undermine, he’s trying to flip confederation on its head, violate the Constitution, violate recent decisions of the highest courts in the land. Why not just because he’s represented the majority of British Columbians.

Every poll in the last two or three years indicates a super majority of British Columbians and Canadians in every region support a northwest B.C. coast oil pipeline. It’s not because of Indigenous communities. We know from TMX that 90% of the interested indigenous communities supported or were neutral about TMX and increase. And by the way, Indigenous communities would be the biggest winners in a West coast oil pipeline through equity participation, which is the new model for resource development projects for First Nations. And they would be the biggest winners in terms of employment. So what’s this all about? John Horgan, the late great NDP premier, he was a good friend of mine. He was a common sense, pro jobs, blue collar, old school new Democrat. He told me that when B.C. lost the Supreme Court on the TMX issue, he said, Jason, we’re downing tools. We are going to make sure this is built legally now. But he said, you need to be aware that I’ve got a mud hut wing in the B.C. new Democratic Party who opposes any kind of major resources source project. David Eby is the leader of the mud hut wing and he’s trying to block Canadian prosperity, undermine our Constitution, make us more dependent on the United States and further impoverish First Nations. I think he needs to be called out for this.

RYAN HASTMAN: I think you and I could probably nerd out on the NDP’s coalition and talk about Avi Lewis and things like that, but I actually want to go to the feds now.

JASON KENNEY: So.

RYAN HASTMAN: Just recently the federal Minister of Energy Said if Alberta wants to build. That’s something between Alberta and bc. We’ve said we will be a constructive participant in the three way discussion. The Province of Alberta has work to do. You just said it. That is not my understanding of the Constitution. On one hand Mark Carney is making promises on the build side. On the other side maybe the mud hut. So what’s going on there?

JASON KENNEY: You know this is really bizarre because based on those comments we’re basically Prime Minister Carney and Energy Minister Hodgson seem to have given a veto to Quebec and British Columbia now on blocking into provincial energy pipelines which was not the position of Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau bought tmx. He built it against the objections of the BC NDP government. He took them to court and won. And I can’t believe I’m saying this but Justin Trudeau was more in favor of coastal pipelines and one Canadian economy and federal paramount. See when it comes to national infrastructure like this, that apparently Mr. Carney is. How could that be? I want him to succeed. I wanted to achieve the expectations that he set for himself and his government in the last election he ran on Build baby build. Get things done faster than ever before. One Canadian economy that knocks down interprovincial barriers making Canada a global energy superpower. He also explicitly has referred to a coastal pipeline and his interest in that in principle several times. So it’s time that he meets the rhetoric and the expectations with action. Justin Trudeau’s dad, Pierre Trudeau at the time of the patriotion of the Constitution once said that it is not Ottawa’s job to be the head waiter to the provinces. The provinces have their authorities in which they are sovereign. The federal government has its authorities and one of them is regulating crojacks that unite the country. So I’m wondering whether Minister Hodgson and Prime Minister Carney are actually aware of the constitutional law on this. It perplexes me but I think what Premier Smith is doing is to sort of force the question, flesh out the viability of a project like that and to test the federal government to see if they are really going to be true to the commitments they made Canadians in the last election about this.

RYAN HASTMAN: Do you think it’s likely to work? Alberta is the proponent for the major projects office submission. Seems like a pretty. A pretty intense gambit. Do you think that it’s going to play out the way that we think? The Major Project office seems to be unsure that this is going to proceed and I don’t know what happens next.

JASON KENNEY: Well, I think that what the critics of this Idea, say, is there’s no private sector proponent. We all know why no proponent is going to step in with the current policy setting of Autobahn TC. Energy lost something like $800 million on the energy east project. That got bogged down as the federal liberals kept changing the regulatory parameters. And of course Enbridge lost something upwards of a billion dollars on their proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. So no company is going to go and risk hundreds of millions of shareholders dollars on a project where we have C69, what I coined as the no more pipelines law, still in place despite Alberta winning at the Supreme Court of Canada on its unconstitutionality. Or with the emissions cap in place because the oil sands companies cannot invest billions in new additional incremental upstream production in the face of the emissions cap. So you can’t fill the pipeline with these emissions cap in place. And thirdly, nobody’s going to invest in that when there’s the C49 Northwest BC Tanker bank coastal tanker ban in place. So this is a way, I think, of working through those issues and identifying how this could be commercially viable, how it could be project financed, how it could be built conditionally with indigenous support, but only if Ottawa fixes those big policy problems.

RYAN HASTMAN: Part of this show’s mandate is for Albertans to have a conversation with ourselves, with each other. And I think the two of us are convinced the other mandate of the show is for central Canadians to hear the Alberta perspective on some of these issues. You spent a lot of time in your career making the case for the energy sector, for development of our research. What is the benefit to the rest of the country if this gets worked out on the West Coast?

JASON KENNEY: Well, I’m speaking to you right now from one of the bank towers on Bay Street. Just earlier this week I was participating in a conference together with the Prime Minister, the BMO North America Summit. And I’ll tell you that the number one issue, that’s the constant recurring issue in panel after panel and talk after talk from the not. You know, with oil pipelines, with major resource projects, with mining, critical minerals, all of it like there was just this pent up frustration that there’s trillions of dollars of capital around the world looking for good returns. The world desperately needs critical minerals, energy. We need data centers to deal with the AI fueled future. We’ve got all of those resources that we like, that we’ve got super cheap natural gas, we’ve got the energy, we’ve got the critical minerals. What we don’t have is a functional regulatory process. So I’m telling You right here on Bay Street, Ryan. People get it.

In fact, I remember, I think it was my fourth day as Premier in May of 2019. I came to speak here to a business crowd on Bay Street. The event sold out in like half an hour. Full room filled at the Royal York. And I made a passionate plea for the country to say yes to Alberta Energy. I’ve got multiple standing ovations. So you’re not getting an argument from people down here in Toronto. They get it. You can see this in the poll. And by the way, something I would say to Albertans who are frustrated and looking at separation. Look at the polls. We have gone from opposition to super majority support, like 70, 75% support for additional oil pipelines right across the country. And Ontario has one of the highest levels of support. So we’ve been winning the argument. We just need Ottawa to listen to Canadians and get this stuff done.

RYAN HASTMAN: Well, one of. But there’s lobbying efforts around Bill C5. It appears like the EV government resistance might just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to opposition to any future pipeline through the BC Environmental Defense Fund, the David Suzuki foundation, ecojustice, so on and so forth. Perhaps we repeal the nine bad laws or perhaps we expect the feds to ramp through some of the core challenges. Is there a way that Alberta can get past these special interests? You talk about how Bay street supports it, how Main Street Canada supports it, what’s left? It seems like eco environmentalists and perhaps something else. I’m just not sure. It seems like such a slam dunk. I’m not sure what the problem here is.

JASON KENNEY: Well, I will say this. I want to look at the glass being half full. Those groups I think carry much less influence than they did in the past. And you can see that they’ve lost the fight for public opinion. They lost the fight on the retail carbon tax. Governments around the world are reverting away from the kind of pro energy poverty policies driven by those environmental green left organizations. And so I think they’ve been losing the political fight, they’ve been losing the public opinion fight. I think the problem is the government in Ottawa feels conflicted because they have people like Steven Guibo and Gregor Robertson in the cabinet. They believe that they won the last election partly with voters shifting in their direction from the ndp. And I think that they imagine they need to find some kind of quotes, carefully balanced, calibrated middle ground between resource development and the emissions, reducing emissions.

But the truth is this. If US shale oil development has become uneconomic and they are now on the path of secular decline in terms of their oil production. Same with Russia for a lot of reasons. So you’re going to see the two largest producers reducing their two largest oil producers in the world reducing their output. Either Canada steps in to fill that supply gap in the future, or OPEC dictatorships will. The same energy will be consumed as a moral obligation, as a responsible liberal democracy to be part of that future supply. And so I just think we just need to keep making the arguments, keep taking this to court. The feds have not fully complied with the federal court. The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on Bill C69. Governor of Albert is taking them back to court on that. We just keep up the fight. We’re making progress.

RYAN HASTMAN: So one final question, and then I want to talk to you about the life of a retired premier. So there’s the idea, and the Hub has been talking about it for a long time, of a grand bargain involving things like the Pathways alliance, carbon capture storage. Is that an opportunity or is that a trap?

JASON KENNEY: It is an opportunity as long as we don’t end up with an energy industry that’s completely uneconomic. If we tell the industry that they’ve got to spend tens of billions of dollars, backed up by billions more in tax stones, to have, as Prime Minister Carney says, net zero oil production, no one else in the world is going to be doing that. So I think, yes, I’m all for investments in carbon capture, utilization and storage. Alberta was an early leader in that. I have all four. A manageable level of an industrial carbon tax levy. Industrial carbon levy. We’ve done that in Alberta since Ralph Klein’s day in 2005. We’ve done it intelligently as long as it does not make us fundamentally uncompetitive. But if we get pushed by Ottawa into absurdly high costs. 100. And basically they’re telling us they just want us to shut down the industry.

RYAN HASTMAN: Yeah. And one of the constant themes of the Hub has been around the idea of the Laurentian capitalist. Really, it’s a dangerous thing because you. It might help. It also might permanently hobble the industry from being able to. So ways of doing this.

JASON KENNEY: Like under the first Trump administration, Congress passed, with his encouragement, an enhanced tax credit, investment tax credit for carbon sequestration, which has massively expanded that in the United States. So you can move the dial in the right direction towards reducing emissions with the right kind of incentives without being punitive.

RYAN HASTMAN: Okay, well, that’s been great. I also wanted to take the opportunity to check in with you. What exactly have you been up to? Does the life of a retired premier involve binging Netflix or have you taken up gardening or tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing.

JASON KENNEY: Those sounds like great ideas, but no. After leaving government after 25 years in elected life and several years before that with the Taxpayers Federation, I took a few weeks of private time and I got really sick with all sorts of minor ailments and my doctor said it’s because I was addicted to adrenaline. So I got busy right away and I really enjoyed life in the private sector. I’ve got lots of challenging, fun, interesting roles on boards, business advisory positions, strategic advisory roles, some consulting. I do a lot of public presentations to conferences across the country. I’m a senior fellow at the C.D. howe Institute. I chair co chair their U.S. canada trade group. Before that I co chaired their Supply Chains Working Group and I’m very involved in their Immigration Policy Council. So I’m involved and I do occasionally I’m not a pundit, I don’t want to be one but when there are issues that I’m really passionate about, I’m not afraid to add my voice to the public debate as a private citizen. Issues like this responsible resource development, indigenous economic opportunities. Very proud of the work we did as a government and I like to put my shoulder behind that wheel. But also my strong support for Israel, my strong support for Ukraine against Putin, national security, the defense buildup. These are some of the issues that I’ve immigration policy that I’m interested in because of my background on which I think I have a couple of, you know, well, I wish I had well informed views. I’d like to think so. I, I still like to dabble as a commentator on some of those issues, but very grateful for the time I had in elected life and all at the same time.

RYAN HASTMAN: Well, it sounds like you’re not very good at retirement. Appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on the show and I’m looking forward to continuing to hear what you’re adding to the national debate.

JASON KENNEY: Awesome. Thanks very much Ryan.

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Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney argues that both B.C. Premier David Eby and federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson appear to have forgotten which jurisdiction interprovincial pipelines fall under. He says the Constitution is clear that such projects are a matter of federal authority—a principle reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Kenney adds that Mark Carney’s “build, baby, build” promise will be tested by how his government handles Alberta’s latest push to get a new pipeline built. This podcast is generously supported by Don Archibald. The Hub thanks him for his ongoing support. You can listen to the episode on Amazon, Apple, and Spotify. Program Transcript This is an automated transcript. Please check against delivery. RYAN HASTMAN: Jobs, economy, pipelines. If you pay attention to Alberta politics, these themes are very familiar to you. Today we have Alberta’s 18th premier, Jason Kenney, joining us to talk about these issues and to see what’s changed in the debate. Mr. Kenney, thanks for being here today. JASON KENNEY: Great to be here. Ryan, congratulations on your new show. RYAN HASTMAN: Thank you. It’s really great to have you. So tell me, what kind of flashbacks are you getting from all this pipeline talk these days? JASON KENNEY: Yeah, jobs, economy, pipelines. It sounds kind of familiar to me. That was our 2019 election slogan for the entire Alberta campaign. Of course. Perennial issues, to be sure, for good reason. The single biggest industry in Canada, the largest job and revenue creator, the largest source of government revenues are the Canadian oil and gas sector, Alberta oil sands in particular. And given the threat and pressure from Donald Trump’s protectionism, if we want to achieve the political consensus demonstrated in the last federal election around becoming an energy superpower, building, becoming less dependent on the United States, then the single biggest and fastest way we can do so is through the construction of additional major coastal pipelines. So I think that’s why we are back into this debate. And quite frankly, Prime Minister Carney has raised expectations. Build, baby, build. Speeding up approvals, getting government out of the way, one Canadian economy knocking down into provincial trade barriers. All of that is what he was elected to do. So I think Albertans are expecting him to stay true to his word and deal seriously with the prospect of additional major oil egress to weather. RYAN HASTMAN: And there’s so many topics, we’re going to pull them apart one at a time. So before we get to the west coast pipeline, I wanted to bring up Keystone. Things don’t excel. It’s back in the news. Of course, you’re very familiar with it. It came up when you were premier and Alberta put quite a lot of force behind it. What do you think about that project? Do you think it’s likely to now move ahead again? JASON KENNEY: I think that Mark Carney putting this on the table with President Trump in his White House visit was really a strategically smart move. And I’ve been saying this for some time. Let me be blunt, Ryan. I think the chances of getting, I’ll call IT Keystone XL 2.0, the chance of getting something like that done, and another major pipeline carrying Alberta oil to the US Gulf coast is much greater than the chance of a West coast pipeline. Because why? Because it would be a hell of a lot cheaper, simpler and faster. The topography is a lot simpler. First of all, between basically avoiding having to go through the mountains and secondly, assets are already in the ground as a result of the work that we did with TC Energy and my government of Alberta. When I was premier, we strung the pipe between Hardesty and the Montana Saskatchewan border. That’s about 400km of pipe that’s already in the ground. President Trump, who says sometimes he doesn’t want or need Canadian energy, also says he wants Keystone xl. He seems to be committed to that project. I think this is a judo move where we could get him to buy into more Canadian exports and make him realize that the United States benefits from its privileged trading relationship with Canada. I think if we got behind this project, it would be tremendous leverage to get Trump to reduce tariffs in other areas and hopefully protect our market access through NAFTA when that comes up for renegotiation next summer. So, plus he would hermit it quickly. He could designated a urgent project under the Defense Procurement act, put it under the aegis of the Army Corps of Engineers for accelerated approvals. I think the way we could do it, it would require some level of government de risking because of the political uncertainty of a new administration. But if governments got behind it to de risk it, they could project finance this, put it out for tenders to midstream companies, let the best bid build bid or build the project, and then you would be selling like 25, $30 billion of oil through a million barrel per day pipeline, easily creating the revenue stream to sell the project. And it would be a very profitable project. It would also be a green light for new upstream, billions of dollars of new upstream production. So I think it’s the simplest, fastest, easiest, most economical project. I think we should do all of the above. I’m not arguing against pushing for a West coast pip, but I think this one is a judo move to get Trump closer to Canada, making him realize how he benefits from this relationship. RYAN HASTMAN: Yeah, well, you’ve covered some of the things I was going to ask you. Would you be in support of the Alberta government once again being part of the de risk or would you require that the federal government do it? JASON KENNEY: Well, I think we need to be creative about this. I’ll tell you, I’ve had discussions with people in Washington for years now, going back to Joe Manchin when he was the master of the United States Senate, to Trump’s first energy secretary. People since then about there’s a lot of ways of doing this now. You know, Ryan, when we, the government of Alberta, made the joint venture with TC Energy to complete Keystone XL 1.0, I think at that point their Estimate of the total cost for completion was in the range of six or seven billion dollars. And we stepped, stood behind it with loan guarantees, a billion dollars of equity investment. So it was partial de risking on the part of the government, not a complete government buyout like the feds did with the Trans Mountain expansion. Buying that from Kinder Morgan. So I think the market would bear some of the risk. But as I say, you could do a Canada Alberta U.S. tripartite joint venture. There’s a lot of different ways of doing this, but I will tell you this, if it gets done, the implications for future Alberta royalties and taxes is tens of billions of dollars. And so it is easily worthwhile for the government of Alberta to look at standing behind a project like that. So look, my preference is never for government to risk tax dollars. But if there’s no alternative, I think we need to look at it and the precedent on this. We would not have an oil sands industry were it not for Peter Lougheed’s visionary decision in the early 1970s to create a crown corporation, the Alberta Energy Corporation AEC, to capitalize a lot of the early oil sands developments at a time when they were not yet economic. So he primed the pump through the AEC that was funded partly through the oil remnants from the conventional basin in the 1970s. And theologically rigid about this. We should be smart and pragmatic, limit government involvement, but where necessary, governments can help to step in to solve for the problem of regulatory uncertainty. RYAN HASTMAN: Okay, I want to talk to you about the West Coast. Now, I’m going to give you the dealer’s choice. Do you want to talk about Mark Carney, Daniel Smith or David Eby? JASON KENNEY: First, you’re the boss. RYAN HASTMAN: You’ve had some comments about the B.C. premier that I think are worth bringing up personally. I retweeted your tweet because I agree, I think that his my personal opinion is his comments are very disruptive to the Canadian project, to the idea of confederation and of supporting each other’s resources. I know opinions will vary. What made you speak out now and what made you kind of take a fairly aggressive or assertive approach to your criticism of the premier B.C. JASON KENNEY: Well, I think you know my style. I’m not like I try not to be personal in criticizing my political adversaries, but we’re critical moment for our country and this guy is standing in the way of the Canadian economy and wants to violate the Constitution. I think he is a much bigger threat to Canada’s economy and national unity than Donald Trump is or for that matter, than Alberta separatists are. This is a guy who’s in office who wants to use his political authority to block a prospective interprovincial pipeline which is, according to the clear letter of the Constitution, a matter of exclusive federal jurisdiction. This is not my opinion. This is not an arguable point. It was recently reaffirmed unanimously by the B.C. court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada in striking down an effort of the B.C. nDP government several years ago to block the Trans Mountain expansion. And they lost unanimously at both of those top courts because section 9210 of the Constitution act says very clearly that interprovincial infrastructure is a exclusive federal responsibility. Of course it has to be. The whole premise of confederation is an economic union and coastal provinces do not have the authority to block the export of products produced in the landlocked provinces. So he’s trying to undermine, he’s trying to flip confederation on its head, violate the Constitution, violate recent decisions of the highest courts in the land. Why not just because he’s represented the majority of British Columbians. Every poll in the last two or three years indicates a super majority of British Columbians and Canadians in every region support a northwest B.C. coast oil pipeline. It’s not because of Indigenous communities. We know from TMX that 90% of the interested indigenous communities supported or were neutral about TMX and increase. And by the way, Indigenous communities would be the biggest winners in a West coast oil pipeline through equity participation, which is the new model for resource development projects for First Nations. And they would be the biggest winners in terms of employment. So what’s this all about? John Horgan, the late great NDP premier, he was a good friend of mine. He was a common sense, pro jobs, blue collar, old school new Democrat. He told me that when B.C. lost the Supreme Court on the TMX issue, he said, Jason, we’re downing tools. We are going to make sure this is built legally now. But he said, you need to be aware that I’ve got a mud hut wing in the B.C. new Democratic Party who opposes any kind of major resources source project. David Eby is the leader of the mud hut wing and he’s trying to block Canadian prosperity, undermine our Constitution, make us more dependent on the United States and further impoverish First Nations. I think he needs to be called out for this. RYAN HASTMAN: I think you and I could probably nerd out on the NDP’s coalition and talk about Avi Lewis and things like that, but I actually want to go to the feds now. JASON KENNEY: So. RYAN HASTMAN: Just recently the federal Minister of Energy Said if Alberta wants to build. That’s something between Alberta and bc. We’ve said we will be a constructive participant in the three way discussion. The Province of Alberta has work to do. You just said it. That is not my understanding of the Constitution. On one hand Mark Carney is making promises on the build side. On the other side maybe the mud hut. So what’s going on there? JASON KENNEY: You know this is really bizarre because based on those comments we’re basically Prime Minister Carney and Energy Minister Hodgson seem to have given a veto to Quebec and British Columbia now on blocking into provincial energy pipelines which was not the position of Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau bought tmx. He built it against the objections of the BC NDP government. He took them to court and won. And I can’t believe I’m saying this but Justin Trudeau was more in favor of coastal pipelines and one Canadian economy and federal paramount. See when it comes to national infrastructure like this, that apparently Mr. Carney is. How could that be? I want him to succeed. I wanted to achieve the expectations that he set for himself and his government in the last election he ran on Build baby build. Get things done faster than ever before. One Canadian economy that knocks down interprovincial barriers making Canada a global energy superpower. He also explicitly has referred to a coastal pipeline and his interest in that in principle several times. So it’s time that he meets the rhetoric and the expectations with action. Justin Trudeau’s dad, Pierre Trudeau at the time of the patriotion of the Constitution once said that it is not Ottawa’s job to be the head waiter to the provinces. The provinces have their authorities in which they are sovereign. The federal government has its authorities and one of them is regulating crojacks that unite the country. So I’m wondering whether Minister Hodgson and Prime Minister Carney are actually aware of the constitutional law on this. It perplexes me but I think what Premier Smith is doing is to sort of force the question, flesh out the viability of a project like that and to test the federal government to see if they are really going to be true to the commitments they made Canadians in the last election about this. RYAN HASTMAN: Do you think it’s likely to work? Alberta is the proponent for the major projects office submission. Seems like a pretty. A pretty intense gambit. Do you think that it’s going to play out the way that we think? The Major Project office seems to be unsure that this is going to proceed and I don’t know what happens next. JASON KENNEY: Well, I think that what the critics of this Idea, say, is there’s no private sector proponent. We all know why no proponent is going to step in with the current policy setting of Autobahn TC. Energy lost something like $800 million on the energy east project. That got bogged down as the federal liberals kept changing the regulatory parameters. And of course Enbridge lost something upwards of a billion dollars on their proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. So no company is going to go and risk hundreds of millions of shareholders dollars on a project where we have C69, what I coined as the no more pipelines law, still in place despite Alberta winning at the Supreme Court of Canada on its unconstitutionality. Or with the emissions cap in place because the oil sands companies cannot invest billions in new additional incremental upstream production in the face of the emissions cap. So you can’t fill the pipeline with these emissions cap in place. And thirdly, nobody’s going to invest in that when there’s the C49 Northwest BC Tanker bank coastal tanker ban in place. So this is a way, I think, of working through those issues and identifying how this could be commercially viable, how it could be project financed, how it could be built conditionally with indigenous support, but only if Ottawa fixes those big policy problems. RYAN HASTMAN: Part of this show’s mandate is for Albertans to have a conversation with ourselves, with each other. And I think the two of us are convinced the other mandate of the show is for central Canadians to hear the Alberta perspective on some of these issues. You spent a lot of time in your career making the case for the energy sector, for development of our research. What is the benefit to the rest of the country if this gets worked out on the West Coast? JASON KENNEY: Well, I’m speaking to you right now from one of the bank towers on Bay Street. Just earlier this week I was participating in a conference together with the Prime Minister, the BMO North America Summit. And I’ll tell you that the number one issue, that’s the constant recurring issue in panel after panel and talk after talk from the not. You know, with oil pipelines, with major resource projects, with mining, critical minerals, all of it like there was just this pent up frustration that there’s trillions of dollars of capital around the world looking for good returns. The world desperately needs critical minerals, energy. We need data centers to deal with the AI fueled future. We’ve got all of those resources that we like, that we’ve got super cheap natural gas, we’ve got the energy, we’ve got the critical minerals. What we don’t have is a functional regulatory process. So I’m telling You right here on Bay Street, Ryan. People get it. In fact, I remember, I think it was my fourth day as Premier in May of 2019. I came to speak here to a business crowd on Bay Street. The event sold out in like half an hour. Full room filled at the Royal York. And I made a passionate plea for the country to say yes to Alberta Energy. I’ve got multiple standing ovations. So you’re not getting an argument from people down here in Toronto. They get it. You can see this in the poll. And by the way, something I would say to Albertans who are frustrated and looking at separation. Look at the polls. We have gone from opposition to super majority support, like 70, 75% support for additional oil pipelines right across the country. And Ontario has one of the highest levels of support. So we’ve been winning the argument. We just need Ottawa to listen to Canadians and get this stuff done. RYAN HASTMAN: Well, one of. But there’s lobbying efforts around Bill C5. It appears like the EV government resistance might just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to opposition to any future pipeline through the BC Environmental Defense Fund, the David Suzuki foundation, ecojustice, so on and so forth. Perhaps we repeal the nine bad laws or perhaps we expect the feds to ramp through some of the core challenges. Is there a way that Alberta can get past these special interests? You talk about how Bay street supports it, how Main Street Canada supports it, what’s left? It seems like eco environmentalists and perhaps something else. I’m just not sure. It seems like such a slam dunk. I’m not sure what the problem here is. JASON KENNEY: Well, I will say this. I want to look at the glass being half full. Those groups I think carry much less influence than they did in the past. And you can see that they’ve lost the fight for public opinion. They lost the fight on the retail carbon tax. Governments around the world are reverting away from the kind of pro energy poverty policies driven by those environmental green left organizations. And so I think they’ve been losing the political fight, they’ve been losing the public opinion fight. I think the problem is the government in Ottawa feels conflicted because they have people like Steven Guibo and Gregor Robertson in the cabinet. They believe that they won the last election partly with voters shifting in their direction from the ndp. And I think that they imagine they need to find some kind of quotes, carefully balanced, calibrated middle ground between resource development and the emissions, reducing emissions. But the truth is this. If US shale oil development has become uneconomic and they are now on the path of secular decline in terms of their oil production. Same with Russia for a lot of reasons. So you’re going to see the two largest producers reducing their two largest oil producers in the world reducing their output. Either Canada steps in to fill that supply gap in the future, or OPEC dictatorships will. The same energy will be consumed as a moral obligation, as a responsible liberal democracy to be part of that future supply. And so I just think we just need to keep making the arguments, keep taking this to court. The feds have not fully complied with the federal court. The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on Bill C69. Governor of Albert is taking them back to court on that. We just keep up the fight. We’re making progress. RYAN HASTMAN: So one final question, and then I want to talk to you about the life of a retired premier. So there’s the idea, and the Hub has been talking about it for a long time, of a grand bargain involving things like the Pathways alliance, carbon capture storage. Is that an opportunity or is that a trap? JASON KENNEY: It is an opportunity as long as we don’t end up with an energy industry that’s completely uneconomic. If we tell the industry that they’ve got to spend tens of billions of dollars, backed up by billions more in tax stones, to have, as Prime Minister Carney says, net zero oil production, no one else in the world is going to be doing that. So I think, yes, I’m all for investments in carbon capture, utilization and storage. Alberta was an early leader in that. I have all four. A manageable level of an industrial carbon tax levy. Industrial carbon levy. We’ve done that in Alberta since Ralph Klein’s day in 2005. We’ve done it intelligently as long as it does not make us fundamentally uncompetitive. But if we get pushed by Ottawa into absurdly high costs. 100. And basically they’re telling us they just want us to shut down the industry. RYAN HASTMAN: Yeah. And one of the constant themes of the Hub has been around the idea of the Laurentian capitalist. Really, it’s a dangerous thing because you. It might help. It also might permanently hobble the industry from being able to. So ways of doing this. JASON KENNEY: Like under the first Trump administration, Congress passed, with his encouragement, an enhanced tax credit, investment tax credit for carbon sequestration, which has massively expanded that in the United States. So you can move the dial in the right direction towards reducing emissions with the right kind of incentives without being punitive. RYAN HASTMAN: Okay, well, that’s been great. I also wanted to take the opportunity to check in with you. What exactly have you been up to? Does the life of a retired premier involve binging Netflix or have you taken up gardening or tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing. JASON KENNEY: Those sounds like great ideas, but no. After leaving government after 25 years in elected life and several years before that with the Taxpayers Federation, I took a few weeks of private time and I got really sick with all sorts of minor ailments and my doctor said it’s because I was addicted to adrenaline. So I got busy right away and I really enjoyed life in the private sector. I’ve got lots of challenging, fun, interesting roles on boards, business advisory positions, strategic advisory roles, some consulting. I do a lot of public presentations to conferences across the country. I’m a senior fellow at the C.D. howe Institute. I chair co chair their U.S. canada trade group. Before that I co chaired their Supply Chains Working Group and I’m very involved in their Immigration Policy Council. So I’m involved and I do occasionally I’m not a pundit, I don’t want to be one but when there are issues that I’m really passionate about, I’m not afraid to add my voice to the public debate as a private citizen. Issues like this responsible resource development, indigenous economic opportunities. Very proud of the work we did as a government and I like to put my shoulder behind that wheel. But also my strong support for Israel, my strong support for Ukraine against Putin, national security, the defense buildup. These are some of the issues that I’ve immigration policy that I’m interested in because of my background on which I think I have a couple of, you know, well, I wish I had well informed views. I’d like to think so. I, I still like to dabble as a commentator on some of those issues, but very grateful for the time I had in elected life and all at the same time. RYAN HASTMAN: Well, it sounds like you’re not very good at retirement. Appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on the show and I’m looking forward to continuing to hear what you’re adding to the national debate. JASON KENNEY: Awesome. Thanks very much Ryan.

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