Good morning,

Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in British Columbia this week as he continues to walk the tightrope between Alberta’s demands for a new pipeline to B.C.’s North Coast, staunch opposition within this province to such a plan and Ottawa’s determination to boost the Canadian economy by developing natural resources in the face of Canada’s crumbling trade relationship with the United States.

On Friday, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith finalized a deal on carbon pricing and emissions reductions. The pact ties Ottawa’s support for a potential one-million-barrel-a-day pipeline to Alberta’s commitment to increase the carbon price it imposes on oil producers and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capture and storage.

The agreement was an important part of a memorandum of understanding both parties signed last year. Premier David Eby wasn’t enthused Friday.

British Columbia has been adamant that the ban on tankers on the province’s North Coast should not be removed to enable a new pipeline to carry Alberta bitumen to a Pacific port for export to Asia.

Unlike the extended and furious opposition a decade earlier to the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, the B.C. government has instead suggested Alberta should consider a southern route through waters off Vancouver by increasing the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline.

Smith doesn’t think that’s good enough because that alternative doesn’t offer the chance for the volume of export that a new pipeline would confer. As she attempts to appease a loud separatist movement in her province, she has argued a new pipeline would be proof of Canada’s efforts to acknowledge past sins.

“I am not blind to the fact that the people of Alberta have had the rug pulled out from underneath them too many times to count over the past 10 years,” Smith said Friday.

“I also know that a new relationship and a new beginning need a starting point grounded in good faith, and today, I hope, is that new starting point.”

Eby, who was sharply critical of the continuing negotiations late last year that didn’t include him, issued a terse statement Friday in response to the latest news.

“As a country, it’s time to stop rewarding bad behaviour,” he said in a statement. “It cannot be the case that the projects that get prioritized in Canada are those where a Premier threatens to leave the country.”

A remaining obstacle to a pipeline off the northern coast is a restriction on tanker traffic through the waters off Kitimat, the proposed terminus of Northern Gateway.

Earlier this year, B.C. Legislature correspondent Justine Hunter reported that the tanker ban isn’t actually a tanker ban.

Canada’s Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, passed into law in 2019, simply prevents large oil tankers from loading or unloading at the two deep-water ports on B.C.’s North Coast – Kitimat and Prince Rupert. The occasional tanker continues to slip through the tight passages in the zone, usually to avoid more stormy conditions outside the perimeter.

But the act does establish a barrier to building a pipeline to either port for Alberta oil by prohibiting tankers with more than 12,500 tonnes of crude or other heavy oil as cargo from stopping, loading or unloading at ports or marine installations in the North Coast region.

It covers an area from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the southern tip of Alaska. The act would have to be amended or scrapped for a new pipeline from the North Coast.

Marine shipping accidents are rare, and pipeline proponents argue that exporting petroleum products via pipeline and tanker is safe and highly regulated.

But B.C. First Nations and environmental groups remain resolutely opposed to the removal of the moratorium because of concerns that an oil spill in the ecologically sensitive area upon which First Nations rely for food would be devastating.

So Justine travelled to those North Coast waters earlier this year to see for herself why the region should be considered special.

She learned the ocean topography and current and wave patterns make the waters of the Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon entrance are considered among the most treacherous in the world.

In an interactive piece thanks to the wizards in The Globe’s graphics department, Justine explains how the shallow shoals and reefs that extend for miles off-shore complicate navigation.

“Fog haunts these waters July through September, and strong, sometimes unpredictable, tidal streams make navigation in Dixon Entrance treacherous when visibility is poor. These waters also chart some of the shallowest depths, while shifting sand waves on the sea floor change the grounding risks,” she writes.

“The [Hecate] Strait has been described as malevolent, but there is science to explain why this is regarded as one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the world.”

This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.