Former Alberta MLA Drew Barnes says that Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party caucus is far from united behind her agreement with Ottawa for a new West Coast oil pipeline. Barnes, who served in the Alberta legislature from 2012 to 2023 and sat in the UCP caucus from 2017 to 2021, says he is aware of multiple UCP MLAs who disagree with the premier's memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Prime Minister Mark Carney on building a new pipeline.
Pipeline route and carbon tax spark dissent
Smith appeared alongside Prime Minister Mark Carney last Thursday in Calgary to announce a plan that would see a new pipeline built from Bruderheim, Alta., northeast of Edmonton, largely alongside the existing TMX pipeline, terminating at a port in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. Smith had previously expressed hopes for a route to the northwest coast, closer to Asian importers, but Carney announced earlier in the day with B.C.'s premier that he was leaving in place a tanker ban in that area imposed by the Liberal government in 2019.
Barnes said that Smith's capitulation on her hope for a northern pipeline route, acquiescing to a lengthier southwestern one, was the “icing on the cake.” The MOU also ties the new pipeline's construction to an increase in Alberta's industrial carbon tax and multi-billion-dollar subsidies for a massive carbon capture and storage hub in northeastern Alberta.
Barnes: 'Quarter to a third' of caucus agrees with criticism
“Here we are with this MOU where we're already taking the bigger tax hit and committing billions to this expensive luxury of carbon capture and storage, and now we find out that we're not even getting the best pipeline route to northern B.C.,” Barnes said.
One member of Smith's caucus, Red Deer MLA Jason Stephan, has publicly criticized the MOU, writing in an op-ed on the local conservative digital publication the Western Standard that the deal makes no business sense and does not get Alberta out from under Ottawa's thumb. Barnes said he thinks there could be more than a dozen people in the UCP's 47-member caucus who quietly agree with Stephan.
“I think there's a significant percentage, a quarter to a third that would agree with (Stephan),” Barnes said Monday. “Unfortunately, our system is designed that the leader sets the rules (and) direction, and it's almost impossible to change that.”
Barnes's history of dissent
First elected under the banner of the populist Wildrose Party, Barnes was one of five MLAs who stayed with the party when nine of their colleagues, led by then party leader Danielle Smith, crossed the floor in late 2014 to join the governing Progressive Conservatives. In May 2021, Barnes and fellow MLA Todd Loewen were expelled from the UCP caucus for criticizing then-premier Jason Kenney's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta.
