GUNTER: Doug Ford's federal ambitions may hurt Alberta down the road

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Uh, huh. Sure. Doug Ford says he never wants to be anything more than premier of Ontario.

During and after the recent federal election, Ford (or surrogates on his behalf), insisted the Ontario Conservative has no ambitions to become prime minister.

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Yeah, right. That’s why he cozied up to Liberal Mark Carney during the federal campaign — to help push Pierre Poilievre out of his job as federal Conservative leader. And that’s why he was in Calgary during Stampede to sign an agreement with the Alberta government to push Ottawa for more pipelines and ports, and to get rid of most of the Trudeau-era (soon to be Carney-era) environmental mandates.

Of course, Poilievre isn’t out of a job permanently, yet. He’s just on the sidelines until he can get elected in Battle River-Crowfoot, often considered the safest Conservative riding in Canada with an average margin of victory by the Conservatives of roughly 74 percentage points in the last half-dozen federal elections.

But to the extent Poilievre may never recover fully to challenge the Liberals for power again, and to the extent that Ford’s footsie act with Carney during the federal campaign contributed to Poilievre’s weakness, then Ford has helped achieve the first part of his plan, namely getting his predecessor out of the way.

The second part — to become the kind of Ontario premier western Conservatives could get behind should he decide to run for party leader and prime minister — Ford put in motion in Calgary on Monday. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding committing their two provinces to a sweeping agenda to get Alberta energy flowing east and west, but especially east.

Carney had been in Calgary on the weekend, too, flipping pancakes and uttering reassuring (yet vague) promises about Ottawa supporting new pipelines and funding massive carbon-capture projects.

But it was Ford’s pledges (along with Smith’s) that had real bite.

The premiers of Canada’s two largest Conservative provinces agreed to do what they can on their own to build new pipelines, rail lines, ports and other infrastructure to get Canada’s energy, mining and manufacturing sectors rolling. And to the extent those actions are under federal control (which they mostly are), Smith and Ford agreed to push the Carney Liberals to develop Canada’s resources and manufacturing aggressively.

Frankly, I’m not sure I trust Ford to live up to his end of these agreements given his federal ambitions. If he becomes convinced the only way he can take over the Conservatives is to woo moderate, Quebec and Ontario voters, he could easily ditch the West. Ditto if, in a general election, he thought doing in Alberta was his path to victory, he’d abandon us in a second.

But for right now, Smith really means it and Ford is talking a good talk.

The two premiers called on Carney to “significantly amend or repeal” the Impact Assessment Act (also known as the No More Pipelines Act), as well as repeal the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, the net-zero power grid regulations, the punitive cap on the oil and gas emissions and “all other federal initiatives that discriminately impact the energy sector, as well as sectors such as mining and manufacturing.”

Nothing is going to make up for the nearly $400 billion in investment lost under the Trudeau Liberals with their anti-growth agenda, endless environmental regulations and “woke” policies, but increasing oil, gas and oilsands production, expanding manufacturing (including in the West and Atlantic Canada) and knitting the country together with modern highways, railways, powerlines and pipelines would go a long way to lifting Canada out of the bottom of the OECD rankings on productivity, income growth and economic innovation.

While in Calgary, Carney said he was pretty sure a pipeline or two might be on his list of national-priority projects for speedy approval.

Don’t hold your breath.

But for right now Ontario and Ottawa seem to be leaning in Alberta’s direction.

lgunter@postmedia.com

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