FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sierra Club BC Associate Director and Campaigns Director Shelley Luce offers the following statement: 

“Canada cannot claim to be defending its sovereignty while weakening its own laws to benefit a foreign-owned oil industry.

“Today’s MOU announcement between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith marks another step in a reckless pattern: abandoning Canada’s environmental laws and climate commitments to advance the wishes of Alberta and US-owned oil companies.

“Ottawa is now backing a carbon pricing agreement that falls below the federal benchmark for industrial emissions, just days after proposing to fast-track so-called “nation-building” projects by bypassing parts of Canada’s environmental assessment process. At the center of this controversy is the possibility of a new oil pipeline to British Columbia’s north coast negotiated between Ottawa and Alberta. The rollback of environmental safeguards stands to hurt B.C. the most as an oil spill would decimate salmon stocks and thousands of livelihoods, yet B.C. is being pushed to the sidelines.

“Canadians are being told this is about energy independence and economic security. It is not. The largest owners of Canadian oil companies are overwhelmingly foreign investors, including major U.S.-based firms like Exxon Mobil, BlackRock, and Vanguard. Expanding pipeline capacity does not free Canada from dependence on the United States. It deepens our economic reliance on a globally traded oil industry largely controlled by international capital. Meanwhile, British Columbians would shoulder the risks to coastal fisheries, tourism, marine ecosystems, and Indigenous coastal communities.

“Canada’s future economic strength will come from industries that create jobs faster, keep more wealth in local communities, and reduce our exposure to volatile global oil markets —like our thriving fisheries and tourism, and our growing clean energy economy—not from weakening the very policies designed to protect people and the environment from polluting industries like Alberta’s oil and gas.”

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