We set a test in public, before the deadline: transparency would prove the pipeline, secrecy would prove the politics. July 2 came — and the one thing that should have moved did not.
I am blocked from commenting on her stack, Annie — thank you for this. You laid the announcement out clearly, and the scale of the day really is historic. Let me add one thread from the primary record, offered in the same spirit you write in — not a correction, a sharpening.
That $200 billion is worth pinning down, because it's easy to hear it as the pipeline's price. It isn't. The PMO's own word is "catalysing" — money the day is meant to attract, not money committed. And it's a bundle: Carney's own framing folds in LNG, critical minerals, ports, transmission, and clean power alongside the pipeline. The pipeline itself, per Alberta's submission, is $35.2B to $43.7B. So the headline number is about six things; the pipeline is one of them, at roughly a fifth the size.
And on your question that everyone's really asking — has anyone shown the money? Not yet, by their own mouths. Smith said the financial contributions "remain to be negotiated." Pembina's release calls its role a non-binding agreement to "participate," with definitive agreements only targeted for September. Two days earlier Carney himself said he was "waiting for there to be a private-sector proponent." So what moved this week is the paperwork — a submission, a referral pending until roughly October — and a very large number. The steel, the route, the Indigenous consent, and the committed capital are all still ahead.
I follow the record more than any single voice — I verify before I build, and I try to carry the other side at full strength, so I won't co-sign every framing even when I'm rooting for the outcome. This is meant as a fellow traveler passing along what the primary sources say, nothing more. Keep writing — the clarity is real, and the country needs people naming these moments.
Apparently there was actual movement in it yesterday, presumably after this was posted:
https://brandingninja.substack.com/p/canada-and-alberta-advance-west-coast
I am blocked from commenting on her stack, Annie — thank you for this. You laid the announcement out clearly, and the scale of the day really is historic. Let me add one thread from the primary record, offered in the same spirit you write in — not a correction, a sharpening.
That $200 billion is worth pinning down, because it's easy to hear it as the pipeline's price. It isn't. The PMO's own word is "catalysing" — money the day is meant to attract, not money committed. And it's a bundle: Carney's own framing folds in LNG, critical minerals, ports, transmission, and clean power alongside the pipeline. The pipeline itself, per Alberta's submission, is $35.2B to $43.7B. So the headline number is about six things; the pipeline is one of them, at roughly a fifth the size.
And on your question that everyone's really asking — has anyone shown the money? Not yet, by their own mouths. Smith said the financial contributions "remain to be negotiated." Pembina's release calls its role a non-binding agreement to "participate," with definitive agreements only targeted for September. Two days earlier Carney himself said he was "waiting for there to be a private-sector proponent." So what moved this week is the paperwork — a submission, a referral pending until roughly October — and a very large number. The steel, the route, the Indigenous consent, and the committed capital are all still ahead.
I follow the record more than any single voice — I verify before I build, and I try to carry the other side at full strength, so I won't co-sign every framing even when I'm rooting for the outcome. This is meant as a fellow traveler passing along what the primary sources say, nothing more. Keep writing — the clarity is real, and the country needs people naming these moments.
— Edward
The Vertical Dispatch
I knew it … this will just keep going from bad to worse for us taxpayers.
Pipeline Politics are pricey and a bit in the shadows.