There is every indication that Carney is as anti-oil as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, despite all his talk of building an energy superpower

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The federal government will do nothing to get a pipeline built. That much is clear from the advanced reports about what is in the MOU (memorandum of understanding) that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are expected to sign Thursday in Calgary.

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Once Alberta has everything in place (constitutional, Indigenous, environmental, regulatory and financial), then the Carney government will consider giving the pipeline to their Major Projects Office (MPO).

But aren’t those preconditions the very things the MPO is to help with? Once the federal cabinet has designated a project to be in the national interest, it is supposed to be referred to the MPO, whose job it then is to smooth the regulatory burden, help negotiate with First Nations affected by the project and, if necessary, scour the world for investors.

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To be fair, it is not entirely clear what the MPO is doing, other than renting first-class office space and spending more than $230 million on staff, desks, computers and........

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