So far, everything is going according to plan — at least, the plan I think Prime Minister Mark Carney has in his head. Some time next week, his government will announce that the proposed West Coast oil pipeline has been designated as a project of “national interest,” a decision that means far less than anyone in his government (or Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s, for that matter) would care to admit. His government’s omnibus bill, which includes new measures aimed at making it easier to propose and build major projects, will make its way through Parliament. And at the recent investment summit in Toronto, Carney announced an expansion to his government’s “productivity super-deduction” — one that will lower the marginal effective tax rate on new business investment from 13 per cent to 6.4 per cent. 

Environmentalists will surely rend what remains of their garments over these gifts being given to the oil and gas industry by a prime minister who was supposed to care about climate change. Fair enough. What they may miss in said rending is that Carney will have placed the ball entirely in that industry’s court — and that they will be wholly responsible for the failure to actually proceed with the projects that would be needed to fill, and justify, the West Coast Oil Pipeline. 

Yes, Smith has said she intends to announce a new fiscal framework — presumably one with lower royalty rates — that would get Canada’s oil companies off their ever-fattening wallet and investing heavily in the sort of new oilsands projects we haven’t seen in over a decade. Oilsands companies already pay astonishingly low royalty rates, of course — between one........

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