When Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed their memorandum of understanding last November, they built in a self-imposed test: April 1 was the deadline to finalize four key agreements that would clear the path for a new bitumen pipeline to tidewater. The date was their own choice. No one forced it. It was a signal to the industry, to investors, and to the world that this time Ottawa and Edmonton meant business.
Today is April 1. Two of the four agreements have been missed.
Both Carney and Smith confirmed Tuesday that the industrial carbon pricing agreement and the Oilsands Alliance MOU will not be finalized by the deadline. Carney told reporters in Wakefield, Quebec that he felt "very good about the progress" and didn't expect an announcement on Wednesday. Smith said she hoped to land the carbon price deal "in the next few days" and the Alliance agreement before end of April. Both are saying the right things. Neither has delivered.
The sticking point is carbon pricing. The MOU calls for Alberta's industrial carbon price to eventually reach $130 per tonne. Smith said Tuesday that she and Carney have different numbers. "I've got a different number than the prime minister at the moment, but we're hoping to land on the same number," she said — a line that would have been unremarkable six months ago but lands differently when a deadline has just passed and global energy buyers are watching Canada's every move.
Poirier's Timing Was Either Perfect or Pointed
While Smith and Carney were acknowledging the miss, TC Energy CEO François Poirier — named 2026 Canadian Business Leader of the Year — was delivering a keynote at the Canadian Club of Ottawa, in the room where Confederation itself was debated, calling for what he called a "cultural reset" and a renewed ambition. His argument was pointed: Canada's net foreign investment gap has widened from $100 billion in 2014 to $1 trillion in 2024. "Capital goes where it is welcome. And for too long, it hasn't felt welcome here," he said.
He is not wrong. TC Energy permitted its Southeast Gateway Pipeline in Mexico — a full subsea natural gas line — in under three years, from approval to in-service. Poirier noted that TC Energy spent $4.5 billion of its $6 billion annual capital budget in the US, not Canada, because that is where the regulatory environment rewards conviction. He wants to invest more in Canada. The current environment makes it difficult to justify.
Poirier has been saying versions of this for months — at CERAWeek in Houston, in an open letter last year alongside other energy CEOs, and in interview after interview. His ask is specific: six-month permitting timelines for pipeline applications. Ottawa's Major Projects Office promises two years, which Poirier has called a step in the right direction that does not go far enough. He is right about that too.
The Bigger Problem Is What This Signals
To be fair to both governments, the MOU is genuinely complicated. Carbon pricing, Indigenous co-ownership, the Pathways carbon capture project, and federal environmental assessment processes are not simple files to negotiate simultaneously. Evan Bahry of Energy Connections Canada noted that the MOU represents "four years of policy churn, acrimony and confusion" being compressed into a matter of months — and that progress by any reasonable standard is being made.
That context is real. But context is not what global capital markets respond to. Enbridge CEO Gregory Ebel earlier this year said his company would not take on the risk of developing a new West Coast pipeline given "the long timelines and shifting political landscape." Private investors are still nowhere in sight on the project the MOU was designed to unlock. A missed self-imposed deadline — however understandable the reasons — does not help that situation.
The Iran war has given Canada an extraordinary moment. Asian and European buyers are desperate for stable, non-Hormuz supply. US gas prices hit $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 this week. The window is real. The interest is real. And Ottawa and Edmonton are still negotiating carbon credit prices between themselves while the clock runs.
Poirier's framing from Confederation Hall today was apt: Canada has done this before. TC Energy's predecessor built the longest pipeline in the world in four years, from concept to in-service, in the 1950s. The ambition existed. The question is whether it still does — or whether, as he put it, Canada continues to be a country that "mulls things over" while competitors take the market share.
Missing a self-imposed deadline is not a catastrophe. But it is a data point. And right now, Canada cannot afford to keep adding to that particular dataset.