After weeks of leaks and teasing about an imminent deal between the Canadian federal government and Alberta premier Danielle Smith, we were given a solid result. “Go time! Danielle Smith and Mark Carney agree to a pipeline deal”. Yay! Oh wait. We promptly got fog not steel tubing: “Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have agreed to the broad outlines of a memorandum of understanding”. Then even the fog blew away, with the Prime Minister announcing patronizingly in Question Period that this achievement he touted should not be mistaken for an achievement because it “creates necessary but not sufficient conditions” for a pipeline. Meaning we not only have to entice back all the investors scared off by 10 years of activist and government obstacles, but also try to get consent through some undefined process from some undefined set of people who hate pipelines, jack up Alberta’s industrial carbon price and load on costly new carbon capture requirements, then somehow expand production while remaining committed we know not how to Net Zero. Before the energy sector had limped along even a single victory lap the green left had begun chortling that for them this deal is more lifeline than pipeline.

Thus Max Fawcett in the National Observer notes that:

“To some outside of Calgary, it might have looked like an undignified surrender to Danielle Smith and her government’s relentless campaign for more oil and gas production. That’s certainly how the Toronto Star, among others, framed the announcement with a headline suggesting that ‘Carney drops Trudeau-era climate measures in deal with Alberta.’”

But he says that instead it saves industrial carbon pricing, and guarantees “large transmission interties” that will “significantly improve the economics of wind and solar projects in Alberta” in return for scrapping an emissions cap and Clean Electricity Standard that didn’t really matter because industrial carbon pricing will do the heavy lifting of emissions reductions in the most efficient way. Which is, be it noted, the William Nordhaus argument that carbon taxes are the best method provided they replace clumsier regulations instead of adding to them.

And what of the hated pipeline? Well:

“For many Canadians… the cost of Carney’s commitment with Smith overrides any potential payout it might deliver. A new oil pipeline, and especially one through northern British Columbia, is simply a non-starter, a non-negotiable, particularly when an existing pipeline – Trans Mountain – could be upgraded further instead. But one of the surprising strengths that Carney has shown as a politician is his ability to deploy strategic ambiguity in moments like this…. This MOU strikes me as one giant wink to the climate community – one that commits Ottawa to supporting an oil pipeline Carney knows will never get built.”

Opposition from the government of British Columbia and aboriginal groups, and the skittishness of the oil industry about investing in a major project in Canada, will kill it dead. And thus:

“The MOU, then, is textbook Carney. By telling a political adversary what they wanted to hear, he’s gotten them to agree to something he needs. He’s effectively daring Danielle Smith to do the work required to get her coveted pipeline built, knowing full well she can’t actually do it. But Smith’s concessions help advance his government’s climate agenda far more than anything the previous federal government managed to achieve in, and with, Alberta. For a guy who wasn’t supposed to be a natural politician, he’s turning out to be pretty good at it – better, even, than the one he replaced.”

And cannier, it would seem, than most Canadian pundits and commentators, who produced news stories like:

“With a few strokes of a pen, Prime Minister Mark Carney ushered in a new era of relations with Alberta on Thursday, with a deal that promises to pave the way for a new bitumen pipeline to British Columbia’s coast.”

And there was much theatrical outrage among climate alarmists, including a Green Party press release with the snappy headline “Green Party condemns federal Alberta pipeline deal as a serious betrayal of climate commitments, Indigenous rights, and the people of British Columbia” and past-sell-date former Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault quitting his new and obscure cabinet posts of “Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture” and “Minister responsible for Official Languages”, as well as his political job of “Carney’s Québec lieutenant”, in a huff to which Carney responded with more polysyllabic vacuity.

Not everyone was fooled, of course. Jamie Sarkonak in the National Post, for instance, warned “don’t count the chickens just yet, as no eggs have actually hatched, and for all we know, they could be duds.” In her view, it was a short-term political win for both politicians and very possibly nothing more. But it’s remarkable how, like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football (Google it, kids, a term here probably meaning anyone under 45) so many Canadian media are repeatedly gulled by politicians substituting words for deeds and even the words are phoney. (Even if they aren’t, say, married to a lobbyist.) So we also saw headlines like “Ottawa and Alberta agree to new pipeline deal: report”. And even “Canada’s oilpatch ‘thrilled’ as Ottawa, Alberta pave the way for new pipeline”.

Oooh. Pave. Sounds like big strange machines somehow making long ribbons of asphalt appear in the wilderness faster than we’ve seen in generations like, say, the Alaska Highway. But there’s no smell of tar. Instead, as one news story about the supposed memorandum of understanding in principle about certain conditions that might if others are also met cause approval of a pipeline from landlocked Alberta to Canada’s west coast that nobody is proposing to build explained:

“Getting new pipelines built has been notoriously difficult in Canada in recent years. They’re capital-intensive undertakings that take a long time to build and need to be underpinned by commitments from producers to actually fill them up. Indigenous and environmental opposition to some projects has been fierce and one environmental campaigner has said opposition to a new West Coast pipeline would make Northern Gateway look like a ‘kids’ birthday party.’”

Only in Canada would the by-now-mostly-subsidized media praise such a nothing as a huge deal for our glorious leaders.