If one were to take the pundits on CBC or CTV to heart, one would have to seriously believe that the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney is either a capitulation by the federal government to the demands of a premier brandishing the separatist sword, or is a signal being sent to the people of British Columbia that whatever their opinion might be with respect to building yet another pipeline over the Rockies to carry Alberta’s bitumen oil product to foreign markets, they won’t have any other choice but to accede to Alberta’s wishes.
Both contentions lack substance. Not only did BC Premier David not participate in discussions leading to the drafting of the MOU, but the agreement requires Alberta to overcome any challenge to its terms to the diplomatic skills of Danielle Smith. For instance, the federal government has made it clear that it won’t be contributing federal monies to any pipeline construction, thereby requiring either Big Oil American firms or Canadian and foreign interests to front pipeline construction costs – a result that is being challenged by an Alberta Federation of Labour report citing American investor greed uncontrolled by provincial governmental legislation leaving Alberta to bear costs associated by the need to convince companies to reinvest in resource extraction, all while watching manpower involvement in the industry plunge by 30,000 workers over the last four years, with thousands more layoffs to occur in 2026.
Add to this the reality that Smith is going to have to actually be diplomatic in dealing with Indigenous leaders in BC whose reserves will be in the pathway of pipeline construction and coastal communities worried about the potential for environmental disaster should the current oil tanker ban on the northern BC coast be lifted. In short, all that the MOU is providing is that the federal government is prepared to concede certain points of jurisdictional authority over the pipeline’s management should Smith succeed in her negotiations with BC and its 9 reserve nations so affected.
Despite such limitations, however, Carney appears to have bought himself some serious credit with Alberta’s business leaders in signing this exchange. Still, the question prevails as to what the federal government must further address in its quest to diversify its trading practices while beating off President Trump’s constant tariff rainfall on Canada in particular. Steel and aluminum issues notwithstanding, these issues include addressing Quebec’s environmental concerns, cost of living, food shortages and a lack of planning within the agricultural sectors, not to mention the reforestation of the Prairie provinces’ northern Boreal lands due to the destruction of these resources by annual forest fires.
Principal among these is the need to strengthen our Armed Forces both in manpower and hardware upgrade. By reaching out internationally, Carney has found many partners willing to contribute to its resolution following President Trump’s petulant withdrawal from trade negotiations with Canada. His call for discussion on these matters has resulted in a lot of proposals coming forward. A German-Norwegian consortium and South Korea have both offered to rebuild our submarine fleet, with a substantive amount of such work to be done in Canada. South Korea has also offered to build K9 Thunder howitzer for deployment in Latvia, an area where Russian expansionist ambitions are threatening redirection should Ukraine fall. As well, Vietnam is anxiously awaiting word on its proposal to build merchant vessels, tankers, container ships, and specialized vessels such as offshore and high-speed patrol boats, again in Canada.
Topping this list of potential acquisitions, however, is that of replacing our aging fleet of CF-18 Hornet fighter jets. Initially Canada had committed to acquiring 88 Lockheed Martin F-35’s built in the U.S.A.; however, that offer has been dropped to 16 units, with the remaining 72 planes being delayed by a recent offer by the Swedish aerospace company Saab reoffering its Gripen E high performance aircraft as an option, with some serious “upside” to Canada’s current employment conditions, including the establishment of manufacturing, repair and parts plants in Canada, transferring technology enhancements to Canada as they are created, thereby creating over 10,000 manufacturing and research jobs in Quebec and Nova Scotia.
Sweden has its altruistic concerns, including a desire to enhance its aeronautical engineering shortages with well trained Canadians in the field. However, Sweden’s offer has not gone down well with U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, who recently has threatened Canada with disruptions to the Canada-U.S. NORAD arrangement should Carney goes with the Swedish offer, a threat that the Scandinavian nation not only views as bullying, but suggesting that the U.S. can no longer be trusted to maintain its contractual obligations in any past or future agreements, a point underlined more than once by Trump and V.P. J.D. Vance, his possible successor in 2028.
As it stands, Lockheed Martin’s obligations to Canada’s involvement in the production of these units is minimalist at best. Not only do the majority of jobs go to American firms, but the firm has total control of any future software updates remain the exclusive property of the provider, so access to such upgrading is further threatened by a “behave yourself – or else” mentality undertaken by American interests. Equally ironic in the implication of this threat is that Lockheed Martin’s software developers have already drawn complaints of both incompetence and unreliability, as it was their lackadaisical attention to standards that created the control management issues in Boeing’s 737 MAX flight controller system’s design that saw two planes nose dive to the ground, killing over 340 persons in 2018.
Canada further benefits by taking the Swedish offer in that not only would its aeronautical engineering prowess be restored to that of the AVRO Arrow era, but it would also enable Bombardier, one of Sweden’s proposed developmental partners to later expand its knowledge in the development of high speed rail transit technology, thus lessening federal budgetary overkill in its constant need to expand airport capacity.
In effect, this is an offer with a “Made in Canada” feel that Carney has been looking for since becoming Prime Minister, lessens the handicap of U.S. domination of our trading partnerships, and is literally a “no brainer” by comparison with the existing terms binding it to a subservient trading role.
The question is, does the Prime Minister actually have the courage to take this deal on its obvious merits?
