Eby’s Pipeline Objection Just Hit a Real Deadline

B.C. voters deserve to know whether David Eby has a serious resource-economy plan — or only another list of projects he wants Ottawa to prioritize instead.

Alberta’s West Coast pipeline push has crossed an important line: it is now tied to a deadline, a federal office and a promised announcement. Global News reported June 30 that Alberta delayed its detailed announcement from Tuesday to Thursday, July 2, when it says it will share new details about the province’s submission for a new one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast. CityNews reported the same day that Alberta is acting as proponent for a pipeline that would move up to one million barrels per day from the oilsands to a still-undetermined West Coast port for tanker export to Asia.

That does not mean the pipeline is approved. It does not mean a route has been selected. Alberta’s own project page says no route has been decided and that the province is contributing to early planning work, not paying to build the pipeline. But it also says Alberta is preparing a submission for an Indigenous co-owned pipeline to the B.C. west coast, with Indigenous leadership and stewardship described as central to the project.

The timeline is concrete enough to demand a concrete answer from Victoria. Alberta’s page says the submission is intended for the Major Projects Office by July 1, 2026; the federal commitment is to facilitate prompt review so the project can be designated a project of national interest by October 1, 2026, with permissions targeted so design and construction may begin as early as September 1, 2027. CityNews reported that Alberta is aiming for national-interest designation by October and shovels in the ground as early as September 2027.

David Eby’s response so far has been opposition wrapped in process language. On May 15, CityNews reported Eby saying B.C. has 35 projects that should take precedence, that Ottawa should “stop rewarding bad behaviour,” and that B.C.’s opposition to repealing the North Coast tanker ban has not changed. Those are clear political positions. They are not, by themselves, an economic strategy.

The accountability problem is the contradiction. Eby wants Ottawa to accelerate B.C. priorities. He also objects when Ottawa and Alberta advance a project that would mostly cross B.C. and could reshape the province’s port, construction and Indigenous-equity economy. He is entitled to oppose the pipeline. What he is not entitled to do is treat a national-scale resource proposal as a nuisance while asking voters to believe the NDP is serious about major-project growth.

The hard questions are now unavoidable. What specific B.C. projects are shovel-ready, federally delayed and comparable in scale? Which Indigenous communities are being consulted on the pipeline proposal, and which oppose it? What revenue, jobs, marine-safety obligations and environmental risks would B.C. face under any route? And if Eby’s answer is still no, what is his alternative for resource exports, private investment and high-wage work outside government payrolls?

A million-barrel pipeline is a major national argument, not a press-conference backdrop. Alberta has put a date on the table. Ottawa has created the review track. Eby should now put B.C.’s full case on the record — with numbers, not slogans.