There's a chance that construction of the Trans Mountain expansion will now be cleared to continue later this spring or summer, sometime shortly after Jason Kenney is sworn in as Alberta's 18th premier. (It's a little like how the Iran hostage crisis came to an end just as Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the American president in 1981.) But Kenney is also promising to make it harder for Trudeau to justify that pipeline — by promising to repeal the carbon tax and cancel plans for a cap on emissions from the oilsands.
Trudeau can use the federal backstop to fill the carbon pricing gap. The cap is trickier to replace. Might Trudeau use the pipeline (a pipeline Ottawa now owns, mind you) as leverage to negotiate a commitment to the cap? Could he? Could Trudeau rally the senior oil executives and companies who stood behind Notley in 2015 to call on Kenney to follow through now?
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