Contributed by Robert Lyman ©2025. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

According to news reports, during his recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested to President Donald Trump that Canada could “support” the renewal of a project to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Canadian sections of the Keystone XL project were approved by the National Energy Board in 2007, but approvals for the US portion were long delayed because of environmentalist opposition that played out both in the political arena and in the courts. A permit to build it was rejected by the Obama Administration in 2015, approved by Donald Trump in 2017, then approved by Donald Trump in a revised form in 2019, and finally revoked by Joe Biden in January 2021.

After initially agreeing that the project should proceed, the Justin Trudeau government took no actions to support approvals in the United States and did not object to the decisions of either the Obama or Biden Administrations.

For ten years, the policy of the Liberal Party of Canada has been that the construction of new oil production and pipeline facilities in Canada should not proceed if they would compromise the attainment to the “Net-Zero by 2050” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goal. Further, successive Liberal governments have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to environmental and indigenous groups that oppose new pipeline infrastructure. They have implemented over 140 measures to reduce GHG emissions and spent over $150 billion of taxpayers’ funds in pursuit of “net-zero”.

Now, Canadians are to believe that, presumably as a way to get an agreement on trade with the United States, Mark Carney will turn his back on almost 16 years of actions that his party has taken.

I may be forgiven for thinking that there is something fishy about this.

It seems highly doubtful that TransCanada Pipeline, the initial sponsor of the Keystone XL pipeline, would again place billions of dollars at risk by resuming a project with such a history of political and legal pitfalls. It probably would not agree to do this in any case, even in the extremely unlikely one that the Canadian federal government should agree to guarantee it against losses.

If Carney does not know this, he is very badly misinformed about the history of the project. If, as is more likely, he knows this and is simply offering a “concession” that is unlikely to ever become reality. In other words, he is playing Donald Trump, the province of Alberta and the Canadian oil industry for suckers.

Carney has proven adept at leading the Canadian public to believe that he favours important economic development while continuing to leave in place the vast array of Liberal Party policies that impede that development. If he gets away with this, he will have proven to be the great deceiver.