With Alberta moving closer toward a referendum vote to potentially leave Canada, experts say there could be a “chill” among private investors in some nation-building projects like new pipelines.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plans to launch multiple projects of national interest, including energy and resources like oil and gas, could see capital funding from the private sector dry up until there is a clearer outlook for Alberta.
“The one thing industry always does want is certainty,” says Grace Skogstad, a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Toronto.
“There is the risk here of a chill of investment in the province. A chill of these pipelines going ahead.”
Carney spoke in Ottawa on Friday about the importance of Alberta in these national ambitions.
“Canada is working. We’re working in a spirit of co-operative federalism to make the country better,” he said, speaking from the Library of Parliament in the Centre Block reconstruction site on Parliament Hill.
“We’re renovating the country as we go, and Alberta being at the center of that is essential.”
In a separate appearance in March, Carney spoke to reporters in Nova Scotia and was asked if he thought an Alberta referendum could impact investor confidence.
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“It can, yeah. It can have an effect,” Carney said.
Carney’s national building projects include billions of dollars in federal spending combined with investments from the private sector, including international stakeholders.
The newly launched Major Projects Office is expected to attract $33 billion in private-sector capital funding specifically for boosting the production of liquified natural gas (LNG) for shipment to international markets like Asia and Europe.
Another project announced last week is an agreement between Ottawa and Alberta to begin building a new pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast as early as next year. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) included a carbon pricing deal specific to Alberta.
Carney has also moved to establish the One Canadian Economy initiative, which aims to remove internal trade barriers between provinces to speed up the development of these projects.
But if Alberta were to separate from Canada, that could jeopardize some of those plans which rely on regulatory, financial and legal co-ordination within Canadian jurisdictions.
“It makes negotiations between the federal government and the Alberta government even more fraught. Right? They’re not seeing eye to eye on this. I don’t think there’s a lot of trust between the parties there,” says political economy and global affairs professor Mark Manger at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
“I don’t think that the Alberta government is really convinced that the federal government has Alberta’s best interests in mind when it talks about these nation-building projects.”
Manger continued: “That could give investors probably some pause, and I think it could simply make the implementation of whatever the federal government needs to do a bit more difficult because negotiations are going to drag on.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced on Thursday that the province will add a question to a referendum vote on Oct. 19. It will ask Albertans whether or not the province should commence the legal process required to hold an official referendum vote in the future.
That means potential investors in these nation-building projects may take a wait-and-see approach until there is certainty about what Alberta will do.
Skogstad says in that amount of time, those investors may take their business elsewhere.
“Alberta’s got this resource that’s not going anywhere else, but there are all kinds of other places where people can invest their money, right? And in projects that are, you know, more secure in terms of the political situation,” she says.
“Investors are going to make their own calculations … but all I can say is that it doesn’t help.”
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