“This is Canada working. This is co-operative federalism.”
That is how Prime Minister Mark Carney framed the recent memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta to build a pipeline to Canada’s west coast.
Credit where credit is due: it’s a sharp line.
But it didn’t take long for rhetoric to collide with reality.
Just hours after Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith were smiling for cameras in downtown Calgary, B.C. Premier David Eby denounced the deal, insisting his government could not support any arrangement that revives tanker traffic on the province’s coastline. He went further, labelling the pipeline project an “energy vampire” that would drain federal, Indigenous, and provincial resources.
What our optimistic prime minister calls “co-operative federalism” might, in practice, be better described as “waterbed federalism”: push down to accommodate one province and righteous anger rises up elsewhere. Sometimes in the form of a premier. Sometimes from within your own caucus.
Maddening as it is, this is the Canada we have.
And while critics may wish to pretend otherwise, no one in the Carney government is under any illusion about this reality and the risks it presents. They are simply choosing to engage with them anyway.
Because the bet Carney is making is straightforward: that he can outmuscle the opponents of this project with the administrative force of the new Major Projects Office, the regulatory and convening tools of the federal government, and the broad public support — across parties and regions — that wants this built.
But make no mistake: it is still a bet. A big one.
And his most important instrument in executing it isn’t some new legal tool — rather, it’s a new political language. Not the virtues-forward moralism of the Trudeau years, but a more pragmatic, materially focused economic nationalism.
Which brings us to the larger picture.
This pipeline is not just about soothing Alberta. It is about diversifying our export markets, loosening our dependence on the United States, and opening pathways to new partners.
That ambition requires a shift from “values-based” trade-offs to economically grounded ones — both at home and abroad.
Of all the globe-trotting Carney has done in his time as prime minister, nothing has been as concrete or consequential as the agreement he signed with the United Arab Emirates earlier this month. Under that deal, Canada and the UAE will jointly invest more than $1 billion to expand critical mineral processing here at home. More remarkably still, the UAE has pledged up to $70 billion in investment across Canada’s economy.
That is genuine economic statecraft. Not just foreign financing, but foreign partners sitting at the table, sharing risk, supply-chain exposure, and industrial ambition.
Of course, such deals come with complications. Carney was asked about reports the UAE is fuelling ethnic violence in Sudan, a grim and legitimate concern.
But if Canada wants the massive international capital required to build the infrastructure of our future, we must accept an uncomfortable truth: new partners do not come without new complexities.
This is part of a broader pivot, not only away from American dependence, but toward a more hard-headed, globally competitive posture.
For a man who literally wrote a book about values, this shift might seem jarring to some. Even politically hazardous.
They could not be more wrong.
In fact, any opportunity that allows Mark Carney to differentiate himself from Justin Trudeau is a political gift. Every Trudeau-era cabinet minister who steps aside, every change in message, tone, or emphasis, every move away from moralistic internationalism toward economic pragmatism — signals to voters: this is not the same Liberal party.
Carney is consolidating his power and reshaping the party in his own image.
That is not a vulnerability. Most parties struggle for years to rid themselves of the lingering scent of a former leader. Carney is doing it with purpose and speed.
And that matters.
Because the prime minister’s entire project — the pipeline, the global investment strategy, the shift away from the Trudeau brand — will depend on whether Canadians see not continuity, but reinvention, a government defined not by moral posture, but by a commitment to material progress.
