As Canada pushes to loosen its economic dependence on the United States, the real battle is unfolding not on foreign markets but within its own borders. At YourDailyAnalysis, we see a country trying to become an energy power while two of its most influential provinces pull in opposite directions. Alberta wants a new pipeline to the Pacific coast to finally break into Asian markets. British Columbia refuses to even consider it. And at the center of this tension is Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is trying to recast Canada’s economic future while navigating one of the nation’s oldest political fractures.
Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith has presented an early-stage plan for a pipeline running from the province’s oil sands to the northern coast of British Columbia. Her government argues that if Alberta does not diversify its export routes now, the country will remain trapped in a single-customer relationship with the United States. The message to Ottawa is blunt: help us build it, and help us fast.
British Columbia, however, is not only unconvinced, it is openly hostile. Premier David Eby has dismissed the idea as “fictional” and “political theater,” insisting that no private firm would take on such a legally and socially radioactive project. He argues that Alberta’s pipeline push threatens B.C.’s own ambitions to scale its LNG export industry. Smith, in turn, has called Eby’s stance “un-Canadian.”
The clash comes at a moment when Carney is trying to launch a broader national strategy to double Canadian exports beyond the U.S. over the next decade. His newly announced nation-building program highlights critical minerals, LNG expansion and strategic industrial development. A new pipeline, notably, was not on his list – a silence that has not gone unnoticed in Alberta.
From our perspective at YourDailyAnalysis, the conflict is sharpened by a decade of failed megaprojects. Three major pipelines have collapsed under environmental resistance, Indigenous legal challenges and regulatory paralysis. Even the TransMountain expansion was completed only after the federal government bought the project for 4.5 billion Canadian dollars to guarantee its construction – a project whose final cost ballooned to 35 billion. Though TMX has since generated over 12.6 billion in additional oil export revenue for Canada, few believe a repeat would be politically survivable.
Critics of a new Alberta-to-B.C. pipeline point to two immovable barriers: climate commitments and Indigenous sovereignty. British Columbia emphasizes Canada’s pledge to cut emissions in half by 2035 and warns that new oil infrastructure contradicts this trajectory. Indigenous nations along the proposed corridor have already signaled they would fight the project in court and through direct action. Their message is unambiguous: their lands are not bargaining chips.
And yet, public sentiment appears to be shifting. A recent national poll shows that 59 percent of Canadians now support the idea of a second pipeline from Alberta to B.C., including a majority of British Columbians. Economic anxiety is becoming a powerful counterweight to environmental caution, as Canada faces one of the slowest growth rates among major advanced economies.
At YourDailyAnalysis, we see Canada facing a strategic decision it has long avoided. The country cannot simultaneously pursue ambitious national export goals and maintain a political framework where any single province can freeze projects of national scale. Nor can it abandon climate targets or Indigenous rights. The only viable path forward is a new federal compact: co-decision structures with Indigenous nations, a streamlined regulatory model, a long-term decarbonization plan for Alberta and a new interprovincial framework for shared infrastructure development.
Without such architecture, Canada risks remaining gravitationally tied to the U.S. market. Without access to Asia, its aspiration to become a global “energy superpower” will remain rhetorical. Carney, for now, has refused to take sides between Alberta and B.C., but the longer he waits, the narrower Canada’s geopolitical window becomes. The U.S. is deepening protectionism, Asia is accelerating competition for suppliers, and Canada cannot afford to stand still.
As we emphasize in Your Daily Analysis, this moment demands political leadership that can transform a provincial battle into a strategic realignment. Until Alberta and British Columbia recognize a shared long-term interest, Canada’s economic trajectory will remain uncertain – and its energy ambitions constrained not by global rivals, but by its own internal borders.
