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Front Burner
Politics! Pipeline power move, renovating 24 Sussex
00:29:27
<p>Aaron Wherry, senior writer at CBC's parliamentary bureau and good friend of the show, is here to parse through last week’s big pipeline announcement with Alberta and the deal that Prime Minister Carney made with B.C. to get it all done.</p><p><br></p><p>Plus: The 24 Sussex national home reno nightmare turned crowdfunding campaign.</p><p><br></p><p>For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts</a></p>
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A
This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com
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B
this is a CBC podcast.
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C
I'm very pleased to join Premier Smith to announce new measures that will unlock Alberta's energy for the world.
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A
Foreign. Hey everybody, it's Jamie. I'm here with Erin Wary, senior writer at CBC's Parliamentary Bureau and very good friend of the show. As you all know, today we are going to talk about last week's big pipeline announcement with Alberta and the deal that Carney made with BC to get it all done. And we'll also do a bit of the 24 Sussex National Home Reno nightmare turned GoFundMe campaign of sorts of let's get straight to it, Aaron. Hey, hey. All right, let's do the pipeline stuff first. After much talk this year, we finally have a proposed route from Alberta. This one is southbound to the southwest coast of bc, not to the north, which was actually the Alberta government's preferred plan for a long time. It basically would follow the route of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and then divert at the end.
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C
The best route for a new pipeline is one that goes through one that already exists, out through the Trans Mountain corridor to our Pacific coast, the gateway to the world's fastest growing markets.
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A
We determined that this route offers the fastest, most cost effective path to expanding Canada's energy exports. And just what is the most important thing or things people might want to know about this route?
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B
The route was a big question going into this, particularly given the province's emphasis on a northern route and what we knew about how difficult that could be. We'd already seen it in the case of Northern Gateway some years ago. It is a shorter route or would have been a shorter route to the coast, but it would have run into significant indigenous objections. Significant, significant environmental concerns would have, you know, required the federal government to either amend or fully repeal the ban on tanker traffic along BC's northern coast. It was going to be much harder politically and perhaps legally. And this southern route, as you say, is likely going to mirror the Trans Mountain pipeline. So the governments kind of know already that they can build a pipeline there or have some assurances that they can build a pipeline there. It's a concession to some degree on the part of Alberta, but it's really a kind of a concession, I think, to political and practical reality and that this was maybe always going to be the easier way to do it and
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A
just elaborate for me on the purpose of it. If it mirrors Trans Mountain, like why have it then if we already have a pipeline that goes in that direction?
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B
I mean the ultimate argument for this pipeline is I guess twofold. One is to simply increase Canada's exports of oil to foreign markets that aren't the United States and in that sense kind of accomplish two things I guess. One is, you know, improve Canada's own economic security and economic growth. And, and also, you know, the other argument that's being made right now is that international partners are looking for trusted sources of Canadian energy. And so that's another benefit to being able to export more energy. Tim Hodgson, the federal natural Resources Minister was on power and politics earlier this week and kind of made a four part argument. One was national security in the economic sense. This is part of building for ourselves, building an autonomy for ourselves going forward. Two is economic prosperity. It is the largest generator of GDP of any project we're looking at. It's $16 billion a year. For the third was bringing Alberta into the larger discussion about sort of sustainable climate policy. We have agreement on world leading methane reduction, we have agreement on how we build carbon markets going forward. And the four was national unity. Albertans want to know there's a place for them in Canada going forward. Those are kind of the bigger picture arguments. But, but I think at the end of the day it's really about, you know, diversifying Canadian exports.
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A
And just fair for me to say that even though this is an easier route, it doesn't mean that there won't be opposition here. Like NDP federal leader Avi Lewis. I saw posting like he thinks this is still going to end up in court.
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B
Yeah, I'm sure there will be challenges. There always are. When you're building something this big and doing it across so much territory. There are going to be people who object to it. There already are people who object to it. But at least as compared to the northern route, it's much less of a non starter. I think.
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A
I want to talk to you specifically about B.C. here. The B.C. nDP government Premier David Eby said that he is not going to fight this route.
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B
As I've said before, we recognize our constitutional position and we do not have the authority to stop a new pipeline. We will not be going to court to fight a pipeline project. Instead we will ensure we fulfill our constitutional obligations in good faith. Pipelines are.
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A
And his kind of tacit approval came after Carney announced billions in investments in bc.
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C
This agreement is comprehensive, it's ambitious and it will help transform the entire Canadian economy.
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A
National resource projects, a port expansion, a tunnel replacement in metro Vancouver, millions for childcare. Carney also committed to keeping that oil tanker ban in place on the Northern coast. Both the Prime Minister and EB were asked whether this was some kind of quid pro quo to get everyone on the same page with the proposed pipeline, but they both kind of push back on that characterization. And just what did you make of their response and make of the deal between B.C. and the federal government?
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B
Yeah, I guess in fairness to them, it's hard to say in the counterfactual whether these are all investments that wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a pipeline on the table. And if David Eby didn't object to that pipeline. I mean, I think it's useful to point out, and David Eby has pointed this out himself, that when it comes right down to it, there's not a lot BC can do to actually block the pipeline. If the federal government wants that pipeline to happen, it'll happen. Pipelines are federal jurisdiction. That's why this agreement matters. It ensures that the northern tanker ban stays in place and it ensures that if a pipeline goes ahead that British Columbians are fairly compensated for the environmental risks we would take on any new pipeline project. All that said, I think David Eby was definitely in a position to ask for federal support for BC Priorities and BC projects. And as you say, he did get the northern coast B.C. tanker ban upheld, which I think is a big victory for him. I think he also gets federal support for all of these various infrastructure projects, including the George Massey Tunnel. And here I will tip my hat to our colleague Justin McElroy in Vancouver because up until last week I had not, I confess, given the George Massey Tunnel much thought. But it is, and as Justin wrote, a key piece of infrastructure in terms of diversifying trade and getting to ports. And it has been a bit of a political headache for several years now in British Columbia. And now the federal government has come to the table and said they'll put up $3 billion towards replacing the tunnel.
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A
The Massey Tunnel connects Richmond and Delta to the rest of Metro Vancouver. A replacement tunnel was proposed six years ago. The province quoted an estimated cost of just over $4 billion originally. Now it may be much higher and the province will need to foot the rest of the bill.
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B
It will be. And that may have solved a pretty big issue for David Eby. So I think he did. You know, David Eby definitely got things out of this. But as I say, it's Hard to know whether these are things that the federal government might have come to the table for regardless.
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A
Like also, let's talk about what Alberta got out of this, besides this route that everybody seems to agree on, all the politicians at least. This is going to be a public private partnership, $35 billion right now. It's priced at. And just walk us through how this is going to work exactly and how it is a bit of a departure, I think, from what the federal government has said in the past.
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B
Yeah, it's been touted as a public private partnership, as you say. I think at this point it's still largely going to be public at this point. We do know the Pembina Pipeline Corporation not to be confused, this is a bit confusing, not to be confused with the Pembina Institute, which is an environmental organization in Alberta. The pipeline corporation is going to take a 10% interest in the pipeline, but the Alberta and federal governments are going to fund the remainder at this point, as far as we can tell. And that the Trans Mountain Corporation, which is a crown corporation that was set up by the Trudeau government when they bought the Trans Mountain pipeline and agreed to build the expansion, that corporation is going to be responsible for the development, the construction and then the operation of the pipeline. And as you say, that's not what the Canada, the federal government Alberta memorandum of understanding back in November talked about. Back then the commitment was, quote, construction of one or more private sector constructed and financed pipelines, unquote. And so somehow between then and now, the decision apparently was made that for now it's going to be, at least for now it's going to be essentially a publicly driven project.
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A
And of course, as everyone will know, I'm sure the government has bought a pipeline before, the Trans Mountain Pipeline in 2018 from Kinder Morgan after the company suspended expansion work on it. Has that turned out to be be a good investment?
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B
I suppose that's a bit debatable. The federal government did have to spend a lot of money to build that pipeline, a little over $30 billion. I believe it is making a profit now because, you know, you can charge obviously companies to, to transport their oil through it, you know, in terms of just more than dollars and cents. You can talk about the fact that it's allowed Canada to get access to, to other markets and charge a higher price for oil. And, and there's been all sorts of other benefits to it. And I think the Trudeau government and the ministers who signed off on that would probably say they made the right decision, both economically and politically. But, you know, I'm sure people will still debate whether that was the right thing to do. And I think there probably will still be a debate now about whether it's, it's worth the federal government and the Alberta government going in on another pipeline. The argument that has come back, particularly from Danielle Smith, is, well, the reason the private sector didn't want to step in and build another pipeline is because they had seen the private sector that is had seen projects like Northern Gateway and Keystone XL fail because of ultimately political or legal reasons. I don't know that there's as much uncertainty about the political support for this project, but I think that's the next question that's going to be debated and then in the coming months is whether this is, is really worth the investment.
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A
Yeah. And whether there are any private companies that even would want to step forward here because we haven't seen any of them really raise their hands.
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C
Foreign.
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A
This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday dot com. Okay, so there are millions of podcasts and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like, but if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must hear show from CBC Podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to CBC CA Soundsgood to subscribe. Worth noting here. Like all of these spending announcements, the backing of the pipeline, the money for the infrastructure projects in bc, they are already coming under criticism for kind of a lack of transparency around how the government is going to pay for them.
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B
Yeah, people have started to look at these big numbers and ask questions about where, you know, where is this money going to come from? Exactly what kind of funding is it going to be? Are we talking about loans? Are we talking about direct grants? These are all sort of perfectly reasonable questions to ask. There's also the larger question of defense spending and that that's supposed to ramp up, you know, economists and Michael Chong, the conservative finance critic, raising questions about what this is all going to look like. There is a budget in the fall now we've changed the fiscal calendar here in Ottawa, so I suspect that's where you'll start to see some of these questions answered.
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A
Yeah, and If I could just throw in a plug here because I know it was a bit of a holiday week last week. Our colleague Imogen has this two part doc that we ran on Thursday and Friday of kind of outlining the ramp up in military spending. And it was excellent and I really hope people will take a listen if they missed it last week. So before this big announcement on the pipeline last week, Carney, I think, was kind of laying the groundwork for what was coming and he released one of his kind of so called forward. Forward guidance videos. I mean, they're called forward guidance videos that he's been doing where he talks about various issues and he spoke about energy this time around.
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C
I said a few weeks ago that I'd talk with you regularly and directly about the big issues we're facing together as Canadians. My goal, as always, is to explain as plainly as I can what we're doing as your government, why we're doing it, and what we're working to achieve for our great country.
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A
I know that you thought that this was a pretty interesting forward guidance video, as. As interesting as. As they can, they can be. And just why.
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B
Yeah, I thought the second episode was more interesting than the first. I guess the pilot left a lot of unanswered questions. He talked about energy projects and oil and gas projects in terms of economic security and in terms of helping our allies. He got into his. His push for electrific.
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C
We're recognizing that while we have no control over the price of oil, we have a lot of control over the price of our electricity. And this makes the issue for me a simple one. We can't allow the ability to power our lives and put food on our table to be forever at the mercy of outside forces. We need affordable homegrown energy and a lot of it.
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B
And using federal funding to expand the clean electricity grid in Canada as sort of the linchpin of his own climate strategy. And then he had some pretty pointed and I thought, interesting comments about the climate plan that he inherited, essentially the Trudeau climate plan, which he said was
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C
well intentioned and well suited for the times in which it was designed. The climate crisis is still with us and our commitment to fighting it is absolute. The certainties of the world of 2015 are long gone. Our neighborhood hasn't been this hostile since when Canada was founded.
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B
He, for the first time, I think, sort of categorically acknowledged that the changes he has made in climate policy at the federal level are going to result in higher emissions in the short term. But he said that the Trudeau plan was not sustainable. It would have been too expensive for Canadians, would have let down partners who are looking for Canadian energy and would have and was too divisive amongst Canadians. I thought it was interesting insofar as you heard a bit more from Mark Carney in terms of what he's thinking and how he's pitching things and what he thought about the Trudeau plan and that concession that emissions are going to be higher in the short term. This government talks a lot still about net zero by 2050. I think that's a concession to a certain degree that they're not going to meet the 2030 target that they inherited. But I think the missing piece of that is, you know, what does the path to net zero look like now? And I think that is sort of the missing piece that perhaps in the next episode of Forward Guidance he'll get into.
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A
Yeah. And of course, you heard pretty quickly from, you know, former cabinet Minister Stephen Gilbeau, who was part, like a very important part of that Trudeau era climate regime, and he recently resigned from the Liberal government over what he sees as a real rollback on climate policy. And, you know, he said, you know, that essentially he sees this pipeline deal as taking aim at these clean electricity regulations that he says will be, if not abolished, seriously weakened to make room for fossil fuels. And just we've heard, we've heard from lots of environmental groups already, the leader of the federal mdp, Avi Lewis, who says that this is not nation building, it's nation burning, stuff like that. I just want to be very clear here before we move on because, you know, I know over the last year there has been so much talk about whether or not the federal government really wanted another pipeline. And were they just kind of, you know, allowing Alberta to do its thing, knowing that like a private proponent probably wasn't going to come forward and there wasn't really going to be a pipeline like this is this is moving forward from their perspective. Right. I know obviously things can happen in the courts, et cetera, but this is happening.
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B
I mean, it's never a done deal until there's shovels in the ground. And maybe even then it's not necessarily a done deal. But I think it would be fair to say the federal government is doing everything possible to make it possible for this pipeline to go ahead. I think, at least politically, others have written, I think I wrote it at some point. It's hard at this point to say the federal government is standing in the way of this pipeline, which has, you know, long been an Argument that the. The real barrier to pipeline development in Canada was the federal government. And I think in this case, I mean, it's. It's almost impossible to make that argument at this point.
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C
Foreign.
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A
Let's move on to 24 Sussex, which is the Prime Minister's official residence. It has housed every prime Minister From Louis St. Laurent in 1951 to Stephen Harper, who was the last prime minister to live there. JFK and the Queen have visited it. And in recent years, this house has fallen into very serious disrepair. And Carney is now saying it's in critical condition. We need to fix it. And just before we get to that part, Aaron, like, what kind of level of disrepair are we talking about here?
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B
Well, at this point, it's been basically stripped to the studs, at least in certain parts. It's been kind of more or less gutted, I think it's fair to say, because it had to be, you know, this. The. The story of 24 Sussex is. And its state of disrepair is quite long. You know, you have to back to 1984 at least to find people saying that 24 Sussex was in a state quota, a quote, state of advanced disrepair, unquote. There was an auditor General's report in 2008 that raised myriad concerns. Said that it had to be. The property probably had to be vacated for a. At least a year to fix everything that was wrong with it. There were the. The somewhat infamous reports in recent years of there being dead rodent carcasses in the walls. There was asbestos. It was in rough shape. Possibly the only thing, the only infrastructure project harder to build than a pipeline in Canada is to repair 24 Sussex. So it has been. This is a long, long time coming.
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A
Yeah. As you wrote about, you kind of jog my memory. There's that Rick Mercer bit with Prime Minister Paul Martin. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin, where they go to, like, Canadian Tire to get supplies to do some repairs.
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B
Now, I noticed we can't seem to
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C
get out through the back here. Why is that?
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B
Well, it gets a little drafty here in the wintertime.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay. We have to fix this right now.
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A
And they just put, like, plastic sheeting onto the back doors to make it less drafty. Look at this.
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B
Tight as a trump. Oh, my God. Whoever ends up living here just kind
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A
of speaks to the reluctance to do anything about this. And I know that, like, you found that there's been concern about spending on 2476 dating all the way back to, like, the 1950s, right?
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B
Yeah. The. Within two years of the it becoming the official residence, because it was a private property before, and then it was converted to the official residence in 1951. Two years later, in the House of Commons, there are concerns about the repair bill, which at that point apparently was about $10,000 a year. The long history of people worrying about anything being spent on 24 Sussex is fairly infamous at this point. It sort of peaks with something called Gucci gate in the 1980s, in which Brian Mulroney came into office as prime minister and proceeded with a series of renovations to the building. Somehow or another, it gets reported as the. The. The closets. The expanded closets that were installed would be able to fit numerous pairs of Gucci loafers, which I guess were Brian Marie's preference at the time. And this becomes a massive scandal, sort of from that point forward, no one wants to touch the house. Jean Chris Chan moves in, doesn't do anything. Paul Martin moves in, as he says, installing plastic sheeting on the windows. Stephen Harper moves in, gets that out of General's report that says, this place is in serious trouble. You need to do something. He doesn't want to touch it. And then Justin Trudeau doesn't even move in and doesn't want to touch it. You know, it just speaks to this sort of strain in Canadian politics to be very fussy about personal expenses. You know, in that piece I wrote, I mentioned the. The infamous case of Bevoda, who was a cabinet minister in the Harper government, having billed the government for a hotel stay that included a $16 glass of orange juice. And these scandals in Canadian politics are just sort of, for whatever reason, are kind of this red line that you cross that and you're in big trouble. And it's, you know, it's not necessarily the worst tendency to have you look at sort of the extravagance that's occurring in Washington these days. And maybe it's not the worst tendency to be fussy about these things, but it has essentially ensured that 24 Sussex landed in a place where it was uninhabitable.
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A
Yeah, man, people hated that orange juice thing. I mean, I get it. I just sometimes I think it's a little odd that here we are ramping up to spend $150 billion on our defense industry, and there's kind of like, very little criticism of that or discussion about it. And we're very kind of seized with these issues. It is estimated that the renovations to, I don't know, get 24 Sussex up to standard would cost $50 million. Right. Carney has decided that instead of Paying for it. He's gonna fundraise. And just. Why. I think I know why you're gonna say why. And just talk to me about some of the critiques of this approach as well.
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B
So Carney has pitched this as Canadians wanting to contribute. Canadians and charitable foundations wanting to contribute to a. An important piece of Canadian history, an important institution, albeit an important institution that we've left to rot. I think there was probably still some reluctance for the federal government to just foot the full bill for this project and to have a cost attached to it, because we don't know. The Rideau hall foundation has set its fundraising goal at $50 million. We don't yet know what the actual price tag is going to be. The federal government is sort of leading, leaving that up to the design teams that will submit proposals for what to do and what the New 24 Sussex will look like, to kind of come up with their own price tags and see what can be accomplished. So there's. There's sort of a question of maybe the federal government should just be footing the bill for this. I think there are, you know, sort of other questions about, well, how is this going to be handled? Who's going to be able to donate? How much are they going to give? You know, I think it's fair to ask sort of, how can you do it? Can this be done in an ethical fashion? Because as much as they're not, you know, contributing to the government in power, they are contributing to something that will essentially be property of the federal government. They have. They've at least said, you know, donors are going to. All the names of donors will be public, and there's no corporate donations. So this isn't going to be. You know, people have already raised comparisons to Donald Trump's Ballroom. I don't think it's going to be quite like that, but I do think they are going to have to navigate some ethical questions here about how it gets done, and then I think there will still be questions about the final price tag.
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A
I don't want to belabor at this point. We got to wrap up. But, like, I know that neither of us are renovation specialists, but I like this. $50 million seems like a lot of money to renovate a house. Does it? I don't.
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B
I mean, it's beyond my budget for Renault's. I mean, I think it sort of depends on what they end up doing, because, you know, is it going to be a just a house? Is it going to be a house plus working space? Is it going to be sort of set up to house, you know, receptions. And then you've also got to add on security concerns. Right. The average mansion doesn't need the level of security that the prime minister needs. So I think it's hard to compare it to a normal house. It will be interesting. As much as people want this settled, as much as it's ridiculous that it's been allowed to get to this state, it will be interesting when the final price tag comes in. If there's some gap between the fundraising and the actual price, are we going to start humming and hawing again about building this thing? I think Mark Carney's attitude is sort of to say, well, this is ridiculous. We're just going to do this. But he hasn't yet had to make the big decision of saying yes to something. And I think that's. We'll see how that lands.
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A
Okay, Aaron, thank you. Appreciate it.
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B
Anytime.
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A
All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.
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B
For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.