Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith were all smiles as they signed a new energy agreement late last month.

The deal involves a new bitumen pipeline to the BC coast, but not everyone is happy.

The plan is facing questions and criticism from British Columbia, First Nations, environmentalists and more.

I asked Stephanie Levitz, senior reporter for the Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau, about who stands to gain, who stands to lose, and what it will actually take to get this thing built.

My pleasure. I'm glad to be here.

I want you to help us break down this memorandum of understanding for us. What was actually agreed to?

So the memorandum of understanding, you can almost take it in two parts. You can look at it and say, you know, the biggest part, the headline narrative was this idea a commitment by both sides that there will be a new bitumen pipeline that runs from Alberta to somewhere on British Columbia's north coast.

And in concert with that, the billing was, you know, this pipeline and the potential economic, sorry, the deal in providing for a pipeline also sought to address the obvious environmental concerns around a pipeline and the production of more oil, the the sending and shipping of more oil.

And so in tandem, the province of Alberta also agreed to a more stringent industrial carbon pricing program.

And both sides said they're going to find a way to build what they're building. Is the largest carbon capture and storage program in the world, which would be in northern Alberta.

So that's the headline. There's a secondary piece of this MOU, which isn't getting as much attention, and probably because it's less politically complicated or, you know, dynamic.

And it's about computing centres for AI. It's about more electricity. They're called interties between various provinces and sort of other things that both Ottawa and Alberta have agreed to work on together.

But really, the big headline grabber, the thing that's causing all sorts of political consternation, is this notion of a pipeline. And what goes into that?

Well, obviously get to the pipeline. But I want to you to help our viewers understand this deal. Can you put it in context of the sort of larger relationship between the province of Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa?

Sure. I mean, you know, when Justin Trudeau became prime minister, Liberal prime minister in 2015, and he came in to office with a very direct commitment that he was going to do more to combat climate change.

And one of the ways the Trudeau Liberal government chose to do that over the years was enacting a series of laws to do everything, for example, to legislate a restriction on oil tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia, putting in place measures like a consumer carbon price, which we all recall, an industrial carbon pricing program, regulations on electricity, regulations on oil and gas emissions.

And these were all measures really designed to drive down Canada's emissions, protect its environment in other ways. In the case of the oil tanker ban, with a long term goal of getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050,

enter Alberta. Enter the election of Danielle Smith, who you know, not unlike her predecessor Rachel Notley.

But Alberta Premier Danielle Smith really believed and argued and won government on the idea that everything the Trudeau Liberal government was doing was strangling the Alberta economy to death, that it was irresponsible, in some cases flat out unconstitutional for the government to step in like it was stepping in,

because, you know, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in this country is the Alberta oil and gas industry. And when you're regulating it, when you're increasing the pricing, when you're doing all of these things, the industry recoils, the industry contracts.

It may be it doesn't want to invest as much, it doesn't want to do other things. And so that has a choking effect on the Alberta economy.

So that's sort of the stage where things were it was a lot of combat, like, you know, arm to arm combat between Alberta and Ottawa for years.

Then enter Mark Carney. And Mr. Carney took over from Justin Trudeau, you know, in January. Sorry, Mr. Carney took over from Justin Trudeau earlier this year.

He promised a new approach to all sorts of things. And one of them was, you know, rebuilding relationships with Alberta by trying to find a way to support more development in the oil and gas industry, while at the same time meeting Canada's climate goals.

And, I mean, never have we probably seen in recent history such a 180 in political tone between two leaders,

I mean, every every provincial leader in this country, frankly, was was just smitten with Mr. Carney and his new approach to doing things, but none more so than Daniel Smith,

who if we take, you know, from their first meeting all the way until when this memorandum of understanding was signed a week ago, you know, they're basically besties at this point,

a role that, you know, Ontario Premier Doug Ford always used to say that Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister, deputy prime minister, was his best friend, was his therapist.

And now it feels like there's some kind of romance going on between Alberta Premier Daniel Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney because he has agreed. Bottom line, to get rid of, lift, suspend, temporarily adjust many of the regulations that she said were poisonous to her province's economy and therefore the national economy.

I want to actually talk about another relationship, the Assembly of First Nations Chiefs. They had adopted a resolution on Wednesday to withdraw the MOU. What is required of this government in terms of Indigenous consultation going forward?

You know, it's tricky. You know, in the justice system and other places, you know, we often use the expression three strikes and you're out. Right.

And I wonder with the Liberal government right now whether they've not hit two strikes, which is to say the Building Canada Act, which was the thing that the legislatively lays the groundwork for something like this major Alberta pipeline was rushed through over the objections of many indigenous communities who felt there was an adequate consultation, that it came, it was sprung on them out of nowhere.

Fast forward to this memorandum of understanding, which, although in the text, requires consultation and a degree of buy in from the Province of British Columbia, from the Coastal First Nations or any other First Nations or indigenous communities whose territories might be affected by this project, it is baked into the MOU, but they weren't brought along in a in a substantive way when this MOU was being negotiated.

And so I guess it's by happenstance that the Assembly of First Nations is having, you know, a big meeting this week. This is very much on their agenda.

And, you know, whereas the MOU does not-- I'm trying to to come up with the language. The MOU doesn't lay out a okay in order to get, you know, the consent and approval of coastal First Nations or other First Nations. We are going to do X, Y, Z and we're going to do it over this amount of time.

It just says, yes, this will be done in respect of Indigenous rights. Yes, there will be consultation and collaboration with First Nations.

It's worth noting that this new pipeline is also allegedly going to be co-owned by indigenous communities. I don't know who or when or how that's going to work.

So there's elements of it built in. The problem is, is, you know, the horse had already left the barn, to borrow yet another metaphor.

And many First Nations are saying, you can't tell us how you're going to consult us later, like we should have been at the table to draw this up in the first place.

Another headline, of course, is that Prime Minister Mark Carney lost a cabinet minister over this. Help us understand what else do we know is happening behind closed doors in the caucus right now with with the Liberal Party?

It's interesting, you know, when Mr. Carney came in and his reputation and that of some of the folks he brought with him, namely and relevant in this instance is Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, was that they were pragmatic businessmen who just wanted to get deals done, juice the economy, get things moving faster.

There was a lot of support from that, from the business sector, from even from within the Liberal owned the liberals own caucus and begrudgingly, I think, even from amongst certain opposition parties.

Fast forward to now, and we see a situation where there is a tension and a clash brewing within the Liberal caucus between the get it done, get it done fast attitude at the top. Mr. Carney, Mr. Hodgson to two different parts of the Liberal caucus, one wondering why they're not being brought along for the ride.

And you have a bunch of Liberal members of Parliament, you know, elected in British Columbia as a, for example, in the last election, who are read into this MOU quite late and in a matter in a manner rather that many of them say was dismissive, rude, arrogant, that they weren't being treated very nicely by the centre or by Mr. Hodgson.

Then you have the environmentalists within this caucus, a significant enough portion of them who've now banded together to create their own environmental caucus, something they started at the outset of this Parliament over concerns that Mr. Kearney's commitment to previous Liberal ambition on climate change wasn't there.

And, you know, as witnessed by the fact on on day one, he signs away and removes the consumer price on carbon, which many people say, you know, was going to be a very effective means of bringing down emissions.

Unfortunately, it ran headlong into an inflationary crisis and cost of living pressures.

But the point is, is that within the Liberal caucus right now, I do think there are a significant number of people for whom Steve Steven Guilbeault is is now the the personification of that, looking at their record, looking at what's been done so far and wondering, are we really committed to climate change, combating climate change, and what are we going to do about that? Because it doesn't feel like we're doing very much.

We have about 30 seconds left. I have one last question for you. So far we have just the framework. And Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that the private sector will need to be involved for this project and pipeline to go forward. That's one of the things that he says. But help us understand what would it actually take to get this built?

I guess the very first and important.

Thing is that someone's got to be willing to build it. And right now, while the Alberta government is absolutely a champion of this pipeline, there is no formal what is known now. The word everyone is using is proponent.

There is not a company coming forward and saying, I propose a pipeline. Here's how it's going to be built. Here is where it is going to go. Here is where it is going to, you know, the bitumen in it. It will exit here. It can be shipped there.

That does not exist. This is a theoretical concept at the moment.

And so really the next major step for this major project will be the Smith government moving ahead and actually submitting a proposal for this pipeline.

And that proposal has to check a number of boxes, including and again, collaboration and a degree of consent from the government of British Columbia, and absolutely, some degree of support and consent from the First Nations whose territories are affected by this.

Stephanie, we are definitely going to continue following this. Thank you so much and thank you for your insights.

My pleasure. Anytime.