In early July, while the country struggled with heat waves and wildfires, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans to build a new oil pipeline.
The West Coast Pipeline is similar in size to the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline, and follows a similar route from Alberta to the Vancouver area. Both projects have been pitched by the Liberals as short-term steps backwards on the climate, and paired with promises to take action at a later but undefined date.
The Government of Canada bought the TMX project at an early stage from Kinder Morgan in 2018 for $4.5 billion and finished construction in 2024, spending a total of $34 billion on the pipeline. That project was fiercely opposed by Indigenous Peoples and many residents in the Vancouver area. The West Coast Pipeline is expected to cost between $35 billion to $44 billion. Consultations with First Nations are set to begin this summer.
Days before the announcement, Carney told Canadians his government was making changes in order to grow the oil and gas industry, and noted that these changes will lead to higher emissions “in the next few years” compared to the goals set by his Liberal predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
Canada is mandated by its own Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act of 2021 to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2030, as compared to 2005 levels.
However, Carney has scrapped several major climate policies since coming into office in early 2025.
In June, a group of young people, who are represented by lawyers at Ecojustice, announced they are taking the Canadian government to court to force the government to meet its legally-binding climate targets.
Just after the West Coast Pipeline announcement in July, Ontario and Alberta announced their intentions to build yet another pipeline. The project would travel from Alberta to Sarnia, Ont., going through Northern Ontario instead of south through the U.S. like most existing pipeline infrastructure.
In a statement, Emilia Belliveau of Environmental Defence said that these efforts doubling down on pipelines reveal “a lack of vision and leadership,” and noted that “real energy security and sovereignty are best achieved through domestic renewable energy production and a modern [electricity] grid.”
This article appeared in the 2026 Summer issue.
