FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, JULY 7, 2026, VANCOUVER, B.C. — This week, Ottawa and British Columbia signed a pipeline agreement that looks a lot closer to the one CentreBC proposed eight months ago. That’s not a coincidence worth celebrating quietly. It’s a reminder that British Columbians never needed to choose between the NDP’s reflexive resistance and the Conservatives’ build-at-any-cost bravado. There was a smarter option all along, and this week the government finally found its way to some of it.
On July 2, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier David Eby signed the Canada-B.C. Cooperative Prosperity Agreement in Vancouver. Hours later, Alberta advanced its proposal for a new bitumen pipeline south through B.C., largely following the existing Trans Mountain corridor to a terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta. The North Coast tanker ban stays in place. B.C. is seeking a direct economic return, including an annual royalty-style payment or revenue framework from the pipeline operator, along with an environmental liability and emergency response fund, and federal money for spill response. Premier Eby was clear that the province isn’t seeking this project, but recognizes Ottawa’s jurisdiction and will engage in the routing and permitting process if B.C.’s conditions are met.
Last October, CentreBC set out five conditions that any northern or southern pipeline proposal would need to meet before we could call it a responsible deal: an Indigenous participation framework, a dedicated B.C. Energy Future Fund, real safety and climate guardrails, guaranteed local jobs and procurement, and a clear legal pathway with full transparency. At the time, both major parties treated the idea of attaching conditions to a pipeline as either naive or heretical. This week, the federal and provincial governments quietly built parts of at least three of those conditions into the new framework.
There’s an additional win buried in the routing details that hasn’t gotten much attention. The new pipeline’s proposed terminus is Roberts Bank in Delta, not an expansion of the existing Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby. That matters because Westridge ships oil out through Burrard Inlet, which means every tanker has to thread First and Second Narrows under the Lions Gate and Iron Workers Memorial bridges before reaching open water, in the busiest, most congested stretch of the entire port. Routing the new capacity to Roberts Bank would instead keep that additional tanker traffic out of Burrard Inlet and the inner harbour altogether. It’s a small marine safety win but it does not erase the South Coast spill or marine-traffic concerns.
But let’s not get carried away. Partial progress is not a finished deal, and the remaining gaps will determine whether this deal ages well or becomes another long-running fight over cost, consent and public trust.
An annual payment is real money, but it isn’t a sovereign wealth fund. Without a dedicated, ring-fenced structure, that revenue is one budget cycle away from being absorbed into general spending instead of building the kind of long-term energy transition fund CentreBC has called
for. Early and meaningful consultation is necessary, and federal loan guarantees for equity may be useful. But ownership should not be treated as a stand-in for consent, environmental authority, procurement, jobs, and emergency response.
Predictably, both major parties have reverted to type in their reaction. Conservative MLA Kiel Giddens said, “This is a government that is focused more on politics than on the workers of this province,” as though the environmental fund and consultation commitments this deal actually contains don’t exist. Meanwhile, critics on the other side have dismissed the whole agreement as choreography for foreign fossil fuel companies, as though a tanker ban, a royalty framework and a spill response fund count for nothing. Neither reaction engages with what’s actually in the document.
CentreBC’s position is simpler and more honest: credit the government for the parts of this deal that got it right, and hold them to finishing the parts that didn’t. That means legislating the royalty payment into an actual B.C. Energy Future Fund, not a line item. It means turning consultation into a transparent participation framework before a shovel hits the ground. And it means local jobs and procurement commitments that are as specific and enforceable as the environmental provisions already are.
British Columbians don’t need a government that says yes to everything, and they don’t need one that says no to everything either. They need one that knows how to negotiate. This week showed that when someone insists on conditions, better deals get built. CentreBC intends to keep insisting.
By Karin Kirkpatrick, CentreBC
