Carney is quietly pushing ahead with plans to fast track a pipeline as Canada burns

On the Saturday of what was, for many Canadians, a long weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government quietly took a major step forward in its push to build a new oil pipeline to West Coast.

It gave the official notice that it intends to designate this pipeline a project of national interest under Bill C-5 — you know, the law that had one then-Liberal MP saying it would “make Harper blush.”

If the pipeline is deemed to be in the national interest, it’ll be fast-tracked. It’ll be permitted to bulldoze past certain laws and regulations that are intended to protect the environment, Indigenous rights and impacted communities. That includes if a project, say, threatens endangered species or at risk-ecosystems.

More on that in a second.

Based on the timeline currently laid out in the notice, the public has until just September 18 to make their voices heard when it comes to whether this project should be allowed to cast aside essential environmental and other protections.

After that, “there are around 12 days between the end of the notice period and the targeted deadline for listing and project approval,” according to Isabel McMurray, a National Policy Analyst at Climate Action Network Canada.

“This means that the government will take less than three months to decide whether to approve the pipeline when we know next to nothing about the project,” she said.

“The two paragraphs and five bullet points in the Notice is all the information we have.”

This push to speedrun approvals and bypass important environmental protection processes comes as communities have had to flee wildfires, tornadoes, flooding and other extreme weather exacerbated by the climate crisis.

For Julia Levin, the associate director of national climate for Environmental Defence, it makes sense Carney may not have wanted too much attention paid to his pursuit of an oil pipeline right now.

“Over the weekend, while Canadians across the country are dealing with raging wildfires and the aftermath of severe flooding and heatwaves, PM Carney quietly moved forward with his oil pipeline plans,” she said.

“It’s no wonder he didn’t want to draw attention to this environmentally and economically risky project, and the breakneck speed at which he wants to get it approved without due oversight.”

There’s a reason a project like this oil pipeline needs to bend some rules if it’s going to be built quickly (or at all).

As one example, there are serious concerns that this pipeline project could ultimately drive the already endangered Souther Resident Killer Whales to extinction. Unfortunately for the government and the oil and gas companies, there are laws that exist to protect species from being driven to extinction — but now Carney’s Build Canada Act gives them a way to avoid those pesky rules.

See, this law allows cabinet to override critical environmental protections, including the Species at Risk Act, if a project is deemed in the national interest. That’s especially concerning given a potential impact of this oil pipeline.

To ship the increased barrels of crude the pipeline will be sending to B.C.’s south coast, the government has to seriously expand the Roberts Bank Export terminal.

As Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, told me for a previous story about this, that port expansion “can’t go ahead under the existing SARA rules because it would jeopardize the survival and recovery of Southern Resident Killer Whales.”

But if this oil pipeline project is deemed in the national interest, we’d have to assume the port expansion that is needed to actually get the crude oil to market will be similarly prioritized — which would mean it doesn’t have to worry about the species at risk act anymore.

All that to say: should this go ahead, there’s a serious risk we’ll have to say goodbye to those orcas.

It’s not just the orcas, either. There are all kinds of questions about the impacts this oil pipeline could have on the environment, Indigenous communities, and other people who live along its route. If the pipeline is deemed in the national interest, very few of those essential asks will need to be answered before government moves full steam ahead.

“The public has no data about the potential project’s environmental impacts. We don’t know the project’s route, or the potential impacts of construction, operation, and maintenance on migratory birds, endangered species, salmon runs, human health, or the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” McMurray told me.

“We don’t know anything about the social impacts of the project on local communities during the project’s lifespan. We don’t have data quantifying the project’s impacts on the Southern Resident Killer Whale, whose lives are endangered by introducing additional, enormous tanker traffic into their habitats. We don’t even know how long they plan to operate the pipeline for. This project will meaningfully increase Canada’s GHG emissions, and we don’t even know by how much.”

Despite all those lingering questions, cabinet will be asked to decide — in fewer than three months — whether this project will get the green light to sprint towards construction (and towards the potential litigation this kind of rushed decision based on inadequate consultation will result in).

Carney has described this proposed new oil pipeline as “nation-changing infrastructure that unlocks our resources and delivers them to global markets.”

“This moment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – and Canada is moving quickly to seize it,” the announcement from Carney’s office reads.

But what, in reality, does this pipeline deliver? The only private partner in the proposal, Pembina, is only tentatively covering 10 per cent of the construction cost — with the option to up that to 20 per cent once the pipeline is operational. That means crown corporations, and therefore taxpayers, are currently left holding the bag for 90 per cent of the cost of this project.

It’s a heavy bag, too. According to Alberta’s submission to the Major Projects Office, the project is estimated to cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, including contingencies.

We still haven’t recouped the costs of the last pipeline the government forced the Canadian people to buy. That means, if we’re to actually ever see the economic benefit of both of these projects, we’ll have to sell (and the world will have to burn) a hell of a lot more oil.

While the new proposed pipeline project is set to complete by 2032 at the earliest, global oil demand was projected to peak two years before that, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 report, after which demand will decline. (The IEA changed its tune in its 2025 report, but only after the United States — the IEA’s largest funder — pressured the agency to change its methodology).

So, basically, unless we see horrific levels of continued fossil fuel consumption — the kinds that would see us plunged into an even more serious climate dystopia — we’re unlikely to profit from this pipeline.

Meanwhile, the impacts of failing to adapt to the climate crisis, “slow Canada’s economic growth in 2025 by $25 billion annually,” according to the Canadian Climate Institute — and that’s just one of the many incurred costs.

So this project doesn’t make economic sense. In fact, the costs of the climate crisis are economically devastating (and no, Carney’s snake oil promises of carbon capture do next to nothing to mitigate that). That is on top of the real, human cost of the warming world.

I spoke with my mother on the phone while I was working on this article. She was visiting family in and around Vernon, a B.C. city where my grandparents lived while I grew up.

But that area is burning, just like so many communities across Canada. Homes, land, structures where we all made memories are going up in flames.

It leads me to wonder: what the hell is Carney doing?

I’d argue he owes us an answer. Luckily, you can give him your thoughts about his pipeline fantasies here.