“Fake it ‘til you make it.” The motto that’s most popular among young entrepreneurs trying to bootstrap their way to success is also, apparently, the strategy being deployed by the Alberta government in its ongoing attempt to get a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. As Minister of Indigenous Relations Rajan Sawhney let slip a few days ago, her government does not yet have a route or a private sector proponent for the pipeline it has pledged to submit to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office by July 1. 

Instead, Alberta is apparently going to propose a “general corridor” that would connect its oil with Prince Rupert’s tidewater. “There is not going to be any particular route that is going to be articulated because you can’t really do that without Indigenous voices at the table,” Sawhney said. “As of yet, there is no community that has come forward and said, ‘Yes, come to our community’.” Imagine that. 

Brian Jean, minister of energy and mines, didn’t sound much more confident in his own recent chat with the press. “We’ve had one particular discussion with a Fortune 500 company, in very general terms, about financing the entire project and building the entire project,” he told CTV. “We’re in very infant stages, but we want to make sure Canadians have the opportunity first.”

Ironically, the infant in question here — an energy corridor to the West Coast — is more than a decade old. Back in 2014, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was the leader of the Wildrose Alliance, she proposed an energy corridor between Alberta and the Pacific. It's worth remembering that........

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