OTTAWA — One day after a pipeline plan for Alberta sparked backlash and a Cabinet defection, Canada’s energy minister emphasized the project is far from a done deal.
“We’re baking the cake,” Tim Hodgson told POLITICO on Friday from British Columbia. “We’re just buying the ingredients right now. Let’s not opine on how the cake tastes till it’s a little bit further baked.”
The Ottawa-Alberta deal marks a major reset of federal energy and climate policy, opening the door to a privately financed oil sands pipeline while scrapping pillars of the Trudeau-era framework — a shift that’s already triggered political blowback inside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s own government.
Hodgson is pushing back against critics who question Carney’s commitment to climate change — a group that now includes Steven Guilbeault, who quit Cabinet on Thursday hours after the landmark Ottawa-Alberta energy agreement was signed.
