Progress doesn’t happen in isolation.
But British Columbia Premier David Eby seems determined to isolate the province and its people from progress and prosperity with his resistance to new petroleum development, including an oil pipeline to the coast.
Arguably, nowhere is the impact of that resistance felt more than in northeastern B.C., where new exploration and development is strangled by red tape: CleanBC emissions targets, policies that prioritize climate goals over economic growth, uncertainty over protected land, and prolonged permitting processes.
Resource extraction has been B.C.’s economic backbone for decades. From 2019 to present, public sector job creation has far outpaced private. The Fraser Institute estimates since assuming government in 2017, NDP policies have cost the industry 30,000 direct and indirect jobs. The same source reports upstream development is down 33 per cent and B.C. has the greatest barriers to investment in Canada.
In December 2017, B.C.’s Crown Sale of Petroleum and Natural Gas sales registered 24 drilling licenses offered for sale. Of those, 10 were purchased, with a tender bonus—average price per hectare multiplied by the number of hectares sold—of $882,835.72. That same year, land sales for the oil and gas sector reportedly hit $173 million in B.C.
In the December 2025 Crown sale of petroleum and natural gas rights, just one lease was offered for sale. That 260-hectare parcel was purchased with a tender bonus of $54,860.00. This sale took place one year after the three-year sales hiatus that followed the Yahey v. British Columbia decision in June 2021.
In the Yahey decision, the judge ruled Blueberry River First Nations’ rights were infringed and its treaty breached by the Crown from the cumulative impacts of resource, agricultural, industrial and infrastructure development “resulting in “significant adverse impacts to the lands, water, fish and wildlife, and to the exercise of Blueberry’s treaty rights.”
Blueberry sought a permanent injunction on further development and the judge issued a declaration restraining the province from approving any further permits that breached B.C.’s treaty obligations to Blueberry.
For some reason, which even perplexed the judge and the legal team for Blueberry, the province, under direction of then-Attorney General David Eby, decided not to argue the infringements on treaty rights were justified. In the absence of this argument, the judge ruled they weren’t justified.
“The Province had an opportunity to justify any potential infringement, and it made a strategic choice not to do so,” wrote the judge. How that altered the outcome of the trial is impossible to know. Certainly, one former B.C. attorney general was adamant the province should have at least appealed the decision. Which Eby did not.
Eby dismisses pipeline revival
Now, with Canada looking to diversify its markets and find new trading partners, the spectre of a long-cancelled pipeline project from Alberta to the northwest coast of B.C. is being revisited, getting Eby’s back up in the process.
That project has been given an opportunity for revival via the memorandum of understanding signed between the federal and Alberta governments in November. The MOU essentially commits the two governments to work together to “unlock and grow natural resource production and transportation in Western Canada.”
Eby maintains that the project, sometimes referred to as Northern Gateway 2.0, has no proponent, no route, no money, and no First Nations support, and as a result his government objects to the very premise of the MOU.
“The bottom line for us, is that we need to make sure that this project doesn’t become an energy vampire,” Eby said at a press conference in Victoria following the announcement of the MOU in November.
“That it cannot draw limited federal resources, limited Indigenous governance resources, limited provincial resources away from the real projects that will employ people, provide the country with money that we desperately need and provide investment and access to global markets to deepen our trade relationships overseas.”
‘It’s Canada’s coast,’ says Saskatchewan premier
The pipeline project proposed in the MOU is much like the Northern Gateway, with a similar prospect of providing jobs, revenue and attracting private industry investment.
The MOU states that the project will involve the construction of one or more private sector-constructed and financed pipelines, with Indigenous co-ownership and economic benefits. Alberta commits to “collaborate with B.C. to ensure British Columbians share substantial economic and financial benefits of the proposed pipeline.”
But Eby says without a private investor attached to the pipeline, the project isn’t viable, never mind there is Indigenous opposition, and “limited bandwidth” in the province for another oil pipeline to B.C.’s coast.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe spoke for many Canadians and British Columbians when he retorted, “There is no B.C. coast. It’s Canada’s coast. There are no B.C. ports. There are Canada’s ports.”
But Eby said the focus should be on his province’s chosen priorities — real projects that governments can deliver quickly. The proposed pipeline could “actively compromise projects here in British Columbia that are real and meaningful and will actually make a difference in British Columbia for people who live here, for our government’s finances, for federal government finances and so on,” Eby said.
“[Our] priority is delivering for families in terms of real economic development that will continue.”
It appears that in the premier’s mind, British Columbia has a finite capacity for projects, jobs, collaboration and revenue. All the while, unemployment increases, the cost of food and housing rises, and the province’s debt skyrockets.
Every great project began with an idea
Every new business, every new project that has provided jobs, revenue for the government, put food on the table of British Columbians started out as an idea. As a proposal.
Nowhere does the MOU say that an oil pipeline through B.C. will be pushed through at the expense of all other projects.
It says the opposite.
The MOU commits Canada and Alberta to engaging with the Eby government during the development and construction of the pipeline project. The project will “further the economic interests of B.C. related to their own projects of interest that involve the Province of Alberta including interties,” states the MOU. It also says that “Canada will work with B.C. on other projects of national interest in their jurisdiction.”
The agreement talks of constructing transmission lines with B.C. and Saskatchewan “to strengthen the ability of western power markets to supply low carbon power to oil, LNG, critical minerals, agricultural, data centres and CCUS industries in support of their sustainable development goals.”
This would help B.C. reach its electrification and emissions reduction objectives as outlined in CleanBC policy.
Hardly an energy vampire.
Government could welcome investment instead of repelling it
The government is supposed to be in the business of creating an environment where the private sector wants to invest and get things built, not crushing the economy under its own red tape.
As Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel said during the company’s Q2 conference call earlier this year, “The issue is not one of there being a proponent, the issue is one of government policy setting the conditions for that investment to occur.”
“Let’s be honest, the government has not done that yet, it’s not clear that they intend to, at least from our perspective,” Ebel said.
“The issue is one of government policy setting the conditions for that [pipeline] investment to occur… the government has not done that yet.”
Greg Ebel
Now the federal government said its major projects office can waive development hinderances for projects in the national interest. Good news, since the federal government will have to lift the tanker ban—among other regulatory obstacles—imposed by his predecessor Justin Trudeau after Enbridge spent several hundred million dollars developing a similar pipeline project, only to have it cancelled, a decade ago.
Blocking pipeline helps US, stunts BC prosperity
Progress and prosperity don’t happen in isolation.
Pipelines aren’t fictional or vampires.
They’re infrastructure. Infrastructure which gets a sought-after product to market.
If there’s a demand for oil in Asian markets, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith believes there is, refusing to “allow” a pipeline through British Columbia to Canada’s west coast isn’t going to stop the demand for oil.
It’s simply going to hand that opportunity to the United States, giving them more jobs, more revenue and more of Canada’s abundant resources at a discount, as they make use of the product already flowing south from the oilsands in Alberta.
By and large, the petroleum companies operating in Canada are American. That doesn’t mean the jobs have to go to south too. Neither do the tax revenues.
The jobs could stay in British Columbia. We could show the world we’re open for business in the province and country, and that we encourage and welcome new investment, along with new ideas to grow the economy. We could grow our economy, rather than cutting our own economic throats and isolating British Columbia from the opportunity to capitalize on its abundant resources.
While the pipeline project outlined in the MOU wouldn’t necessarily follow the same route of the cancelled Northern Gateway pipeline through northeastern B.C., the region has companies with the experience, the technology and the know-how to build that pipeline.
And it is within Eby’s power to create the conditions to help make the project a reality.
But the BC NDP must end the economy-sabotaging policies that have ballooned the debt, shrunk revenue, and scared away investment. Because our communities are hurting and our young people are leaving to find employment, prosperity and hope across the border in Alberta.
For more news from Tania Finch on B.C.’s North Peace region, read The Broken Typewriter.