Premier Danielle Smith says she’s supportive of the updated list of nation-building projects announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney, even though a West Coast pipeline isn’t on it.
Speaking from B.C. on Thursday, Carney announced three critical mineral extraction projects, a nickel mine in Ontario and a transmission line on the northern B.C. coast have been added to the queue of projects for the Major Projects Office.
“Each of these projects that we are referring to the MPO today, in and of itself, is transformational, but the bigger point is that their impacts will be amplified by being part of bigger national strategies to boost Canada’s competitiveness,” Carney said Thursday.
The projects on the list include:
- North Coast Transmission Line (NCTL) in Northwestern British Columbia that will power new mines and export expansion.
- Ksi Lisims LNG on Pearse Island, B.C. aims to become Canada’s second-largest LNG facility
- Canada Nickel’s Crawford Project in Timmins, Ont. that will produce nickel for batteries and green steel.
- Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Matawinie Mine in Saint-Michel-des-Saints, Que. is an open-pit graphite mine that aims to provide inputs for battery supply chains and defence applications.
- Northcliff Resources’ Sisson Mine in Sisson Brook, N.B. will produce tungsten used in steel production, as well as the defence and industrial sectors
- Iqaluit Nukkiksautiit Hydro Project in Iqaluit, Nunavut seeks to become Nunavut’s first 100 per cent Inuit-owned hydro energy project, delivering cleaner energy to the city of Iqaluit.
Absent from the update is a pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast, a project that Smith has been pushing for since early October.
The premier isn’t feeling sore about being left out - instead she said she’s “supportive” of Carney’s second list.
“Currently, we are working on an agreement with the federal government that includes the removal, carve out or overhaul of several damaging laws chasing away private investment in our energy sector, and an agreement to work towards ultimate approval of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets,” Smith said in a statement Thursday.
But Smith said she hopes a pipeline promise will come sooner rather than later.
“As we are currently in the final stages of this negotiation, we will know one way or the other in the coming days whether or not Prime Minister Mark Carney and the federal government intends to support Alberta’s economic future or if they will continue with the failed policies of the last 10 years that have cost Albertans and Canadians hundreds of billions of lost investment and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.”
In October, Smith said Alberta invested $14 million to fund early regulatory work for the pipeline proposal.
Alberta taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook to pay for the pipeline, she said. Smith hoped that investor confidence in the progress would convince the private sector to eventually take over.
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With files from the Canadian Press and CTV News’ Annie Bergeron-Oliver
