Support for Oil & Gas Is Growing in Canada | Billions Lost on EV Dreams? | Brian Lilley

An Angus Reid poll just came out reporting that 61 % of Canadians say economic growth should be the biggest priority in Canada's energy policy.Will this sentiment help make a new pipeline project dream a reality?Joining us to chat about this and other national news stories is political commentator with the Toronto Sun and BCN contributor, Brian Lilly.Brian, great to talk with you again.

Good to see you.

Okay, so Brian, lots of talk about deals from Mark Kearney's office, including two involving Alberta assets.So before I ask you about the Kearney government potentially selling an Alberta airport, it looks like Ottawa and Alberta have a deal on a carbon price and there is hope for a Pacific pipeline going forward.What can you tell us about this?

So this is from an interview that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gave to my colleagues at the Calgary Herald saying, She feels confident they're going to arrive at a deal on $130 a ton on the Alberta carbon tax by 2040, I believe it is.And so higher price than I think the Premier would want, later date.So perhaps a compromise between both sides.And that she feels confident that Prime Minister Mark Carney is feeling good about a Pacific pipeline.He has gone back and forth on this.At one point he said it's more probable than possible and things like that.

He has given mixed messages on this.So we do have to be concerned.Prime Premier Daniel Smith at one point even said, well, perhaps we have to go down to Washington state.go down south through Albe through Washington and ge that way.So it's not cu clear.Obviously B. C. Pre still opposed to it, but w All right, we'll wait and

Like you said, Brian, late last week, the current government said they're looking at legislation to speed up projects and have approvals within a year.So isn't that what they were supposed to do a year ago?

Yeah, we had Bill C -5, which had the support of the conservatives, and that was supposed to speed up major projects.And well, so far, it's led to the creation of the major projects office based out of Calgary.That's great.But what has the major projects office approved that wasn't already almost done?Nothing.And so now we're being told, OK, we're going to have legislation introduced soon that should give us a project acceptance or rejection within one year.

So let me explain this.They announced this last week that they're going to go to 30 days of consultation on this.So we're hopefully going to get this legislation introduced before Parliament rises for the summer in June, in early to mid June.That will not mean that it's passionate.That means that it's introduced into the House of Commons.Maybe it goes to committee before they rise for the summer.

Then maybe the committee, and there's a bunch of maybes, and the old French saying in Quebec is, if my grandmother had will, she'd be a boss.There's a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes in this.Maybe they get to study it over the summer.And then maybe it gets to be passed through the House of Commons in the fall.Then it goes to the Senate.Then it gets to the royal assent.

Then you've got to get the regulations in place.And so we end up a year and a half after Mark Carney becomes prime minister after the election, more than a year and a half after he actually became prime minister after becoming liberal leader, we end up at a place where the legislation says you can accept or reject a proposalwithin a year.So we've now got to wait another year for these projects to be assessed.So, I mean, this is not moving at speeds not seen in generations.This is still moving at Ottawa speed.

After the legislation's passed, you've got to get the regulations in place, all of this.It's just delay after delay after delay.This is not what Mark Carney promised and this is not what's going to unleash our economy while we're facing headwinds from the U .S.

and elsewhere.The PM has mused about the possibility of selling off airports.And Brian, you reported on Monday that you have the preliminary list and one of the Alberta airports, there is one Alberta airport it looks like that's on that list.So which one is it and what is the plan for this?

We don't know the plan, and that's why I'm going to say that the devil will be in the details.Is this a good idea?Is it a bad idea?We don't know.What I can tell you is that the big four are on the list.So that would be Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary.

Edmonton, which is the fifth biggest airport in the country, not on the list.Neither is Ottawa, which is the sixth biggest airport and closest to government.But a potential fifth is on the list and that's Billy Bishop Airport, which is the small.It's about the 10th largest by passenger volume in the country.It's down on Toronto's waterfront and it's kind of a mixed public private hybrid already has been for decades.That might be on the list, but definitely the big four Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary.

How will they do it?We don't know.There's talk that within the coming days, the Kearney government could go out and issue an RFI.That's a request for information.So that would say to banks, pension funds, companies like Brookfield, and I know everyone's going to jump on and say, of course, it's going to Brookfield and they own all kinds of airports.They don't.

own any airports right now.This is not one of their areas of specialty, specialization.They own ports, they own railways, they don't own airports.But companies like that could look and say, all right, we want to invest.Well, is that a complete sell -off?Is it a 49 % purchase while the government keeps 51 %?

Do they change the regulation?Right now, one former airline executive I was speaking to said, we've got the worst of both worlds.The government owns the airports.They're managed by these not -for -profit corporations that act as if they're private corporations, but that don't have the discipline to shrink in costs and keep costs down.And so we've got public ownership, quasi -private delivery, high costs, Toronto Pearson has some of the highest costs in the world, and other Canadian airports are not far behind it.That's part of what makes flying within this country so expensive.

I don't know if you've ever looked, you know, hey, you know, I want to go to Toronto.And then you look at the price of coming to Toronto.And you say, I can go to Chicago, I can go to New York, I can go to LA, far cheaper.This is part of the reason why.So there's going to be a lot of questions about the regulatory environment.Will the you know if they sell it off completely do they put in controls on how much you can increase fees by things like that.

There's going to be a lot of questions about the detail and the governance of this.

Yeah that's true.And it's true when you do buy a ticket when you go through it the price of the The flight is actually this much.The rest of it is all fees and taxes.

The one airline executive that I spoke to is former chief operating officer at Air Canada, and for the last year was part of the executive team that tried to turn around Spirit Airlines in the States.And they would offer flights in the U .S.from $49.And what he said to me is, the airport improvement fee leaving Pearson in Toronto is $49.The security charge is $9.

You haven't even put gas in the plane yet, and it's more expensive than what we were charging for a flight for an ultra low cost carrier.So we want these things in Canada.They can't exist in part because of how we do it.A strange thing, Jeanette.In the United States, most airlines are publicly, or most airports, sorry, are publicly owned.They're owned most often by the local municipality and run as a public good.

In Europe, they're privatized.And Canadian pension funds, by the way, own an awful lot of European and other airports.So, you know, we treat this as if it's very controversial, but the Canada pension plan, they own airports in Europe.The public service pension plan, which represents some of the workers that will protest Mark Carney's move, their pension plan owns a bunch of airports in Europe.

Very, very interesting.The Feds are looking to do this to unload a lot of cost.Basically, it's a cost saving measure for the Feds.

They want to take some of the equity out of this and then spend it elsewhere on infrastructure.How that will work?Again, we're going to have to wait and see, but there's billions of dollars in value there.Can they unlock that and then spend it on other things, highways, bridges, AI data centers, improving the grid, building pipelines?Who knows?That's part of what they're looking at, though.

Yeah, hopefully it will make it cheaper for the consumer.I think that's what most of us care about is going to bring down the cost of airfare.

This could either be fantastic for us or an utter disaster.

Right.

And we can't say right now because we don't know the details.

Yeah.Moving on here, PM Kearney spoke at a conference filled with Americans over the weekend and after spending a year warning us about the dangers of being too close to the United States, he actually called for deeper integration.So is he putting out conflicting messages?What's happening here?

I'm completely confused by this.So this is a conference that is put on by Canada 2020, which is a liberal think tank based in Ottawa, and the Center for American Progress, and it's being noted in Washington, D .C., the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which is the political arm of this left -wing think tank out of Washington, tight with the Democrats, that raises money and spends money to defeat Republicans and people like Donald Trump.And so the Americans are looking and saying, wait a minute, you're trying to do a deal with us and you're hanging out with the people trying to defeat us.It's not like he just spoke to a bunch of Democrats or a bunch of American politicians.

Very partisan event with people that are actively trying to defeat Donald Trump.the guy you're trying to negotiate with.So that may not have been the best optics.But Mark Carney has said many times, the days of deepening integration with the United States are over.And then when he's at this speech on Saturday, In downtown Toronto, with all these Americans around him, you had Barack Obama had been there Friday night.You had John Podesta, who's been a top organizer for Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, was there.You know, big donor to Democrat causes.Pete Buttigieg, Biden's former transportation secretary.All these people are there.And Carney is saying, we're open to deeper integration.Wait a minute, you've been telling us that that that's over.

And he said within certain sectors.So was he talking about oil and gas?Is he talking about auto?Is he talking about lumber, steel, aluminum, the areas that are tariffed?He did talk about the tariff just just before saying that.So he could be talking about that.

And I know specifically within the auto sector, I mean, oil and gas is incredibly integrated already, so is the auto sector.But the auto sector has said to me, look, you want to raise the country of origin requirements on parts that go into a car from 70 % or whatever it is up to 90%, go ahead.We'll make it so that 90 % of the parts are made within North America.We'll do that.So maybe he's talking about that sort of thing.But he was very unclear, and it definitely was a conflicting message.

Right.Brian Lilly, political commentator with the Toronto Sun, thanks so much for joining us today.Appreciate it, as always.

Thanks for having me.