By Jerome Gessaroli, December 1, 2025
For decades, British Columbia has positioned itself as one of Western Canada’s most vocal critics of federal policies that favoured Ontario and Quebec at the expense of the Western provinces. BC governments, political leaders, and commentators have long participated in the Western Canadian narrative that Ottawa, directed by Central Canada’s electoral weight and economic interests, treated the West as a resource hinterland whose prosperity could be subordinated to national projects shaped around Central Canadian priorities.
Yet in recent years, BC’s own policies toward Alberta have produced substantial economic harm, political friction, and regulatory obstacles. Some of these actions arose from genuinely local worries, while others were driven by internal political incentives. Regardless of intent, the results for Alberta have been significantly harmful, similar to those imposed on the West by federal governments aligned with Central Canadian interests. This pattern continues today, as seen in BC’s early opposition to Alberta’s newly proposed pipeline project now under discussion with Ottawa.
This raises an uncomfortable question: Is British Columbia more morally justified in the regional effects of its policies than Ottawa was in its treatment of Western Canada during the National Policy era, the NEP, and similar episodes? The answer, when looked at objectively, is no. BC’s actions may differ in scale and jurisdiction, but their logic and consequences mirror the same cross-regional harms the province once condemned.
Western critiques of Central Canadian policy
Understanding the comparison requires recalling the roots of Western alienation. The National Policy tariffs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries protected Ontario and Quebec manufacturers, raising costs for Prairie farmers who had to buy tariff-inflated goods while selling their grain at unprotected world prices. Railway freight-rate policies entrenched eastward trade and limited diversification. For decades, Ottawa retained control of Prairie natural resources, limiting the provinces’ fiscal capacity. Later, post-war industrial policies, specifically the Auto Pact, cemented Ontario as the country’s industrial centre.
The 1970s and 1980s marked the height of regional tensions. The National Energy Program (NEP) redistributed resource profits away from Alberta to Canadians in general, and particularly to Central Canadians. Alberta bore the direct economic burden, while Ottawa and Central Canada received the benefits. Even if these policies were framed as national economic management, the regional effects were very uneven.
BC frequently criticized these policies, arguing that Ottawa’s actions were unfair or indifferent to Western interests. Yet this history shows uneasy similarities with BC’s more recent role in limiting Alberta’s economic opportunities.
BC’s “green” policies: From gateway to gatekeeper
British Columbia’s environmental and land-use policies are, on paper, to protect ecosystems, manage coastal risks, address climate change, and reflect local political preferences.
However, intent and impact are not the same, especially when one province controls the pipeline and export access that another needs to reach external markets.
BC’s regulatory and political position on energy infrastructure, especially pipelines, has repeatedly impeded Alberta’s ability to transport and capture full value from its resources. Whether through the province’s environmental assessment system, land-use restrictions, or high-profile political commitments to oppose heavy oil transport, BC has used its provincial powers in ways that directly affect Alberta’s economic interests.
Alberta has faced similar imbalances before in earlier disputes with Ottawa. When a government acts on its own political priorities, it can shift the burden on another, even unintentionally.
While BC lacks federal constitutional authority, it controls the geographic corridors Alberta relies on to reach Pacific tidewater. Because any pipeline to Canada’s West Coast must go through BC, the province can, intentionally or not, recreate how Central Canada, through Ottawa, once shaped Western economic outcomes.
Political incentives: The structural parallel to Central Canada
Just as Ontario and Quebec shaped federal policy because of their electoral weight, BC’s urban and coastal constituencies heavily influence its government’s energy and climate decisions.
From 2017 to 2022, BC’s government, initially supported by an NDP–Green “confidence and supply agreement” and later as a majority, relied on voters highly sensitive to environmental protection, climate action, and Indigenous rights. These governments reaped political rewards for taking positions that restricted fossil-fuel infrastructure, including Alberta’s.
But this is where the parallel becomes morally relevant. BC’s motives are not inherently more virtuous than Ottawa’s were in earlier periods of interregional strife. In both cases, governments acted on their own political incentives and shifted the resulting burdens onto Alberta. The difference is geographic, not moral.
Ottawa prioritizes consumers and manufacturers in Central Canada, while BC prioritizes environmentalist, urban, and coastal constituencies. Both approaches claim to serve the public interest, nation-building in the past and climate policy today, yet the regional burdens remain similarly unequal.
BC has become a barrier to Alberta
BC’s recent attempts to restrict the flow of Alberta’s heavy oil through the province are a case in point. In 2018, BC invoked its constitutional “reference” power to ask the British Columbia Court of Appeal to rule on whether it could amend its environmental laws so as to require a permit for any “heavy oil” shipped through pipelines into BC.
The legal maneuver came in response to a proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMX) that carries oil from the Prairies to terminals in Burnaby, BC, for eventual shipment to international markets.
BC argued it had the right to apply a permitting system in federally regulated pipelines. Losing at the appeals level, BC took the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, where it lost again. The reasoning was the same at both levels: that BC’s position impacted federal jurisdiction over interprovincial infrastructure. Economically, however, the attempt had significant consequences:
- Delays increased the cost and timeline of the TMX project.
- Pipeline capacity shortages widened price differentials for Alberta crude.
- Investment uncertainty grew.
For Alberta, this felt like déjà vu: outside political priorities were once again limiting its ability to obtain fair value for its resources, much like the NEP.
BC’s intentions are beside the point. Alberta faced real economic costs because BC used its political and institutional leverage. Intent does not erase impact.
The new pipeline dispute
Current discussions between Alberta and the federal government about a new pipeline to the Pacific coast have revived tensions between BC and Alberta. Alberta views additional tidewater access as essential for improving market reach, narrowing price differentials, and attracting long-term investment. Ottawa and Alberta have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to formally advance the pipeline concept by declaring it in the national interest.
BC has already expressed clear opposition. Premier David Eby argues that another oil pipeline is inconsistent with BC’s climate commitments and coastal protection priorities. This stance emerged before any proposal or regulatory review, suggesting that BC’s position is driven largely by political priorities rather than by specific project details.
Early BC resistance significantly limits Alberta’s options. Even without invoking regulatory tools, BC’s opposition discourages early stage investment and expression of commercial interest. This reflects the same political posture BC adopted during the TMX dispute – geographic position combined with political incentives that complicate the project’s prospects.
This dispute highlights how regional political incentives continue to impose costs and constraints on Alberta’s economic opportunities.
Climate policy and provincial tension
BC’s climate policies are politically attractive within the province, helped by its clean electricity profile, urban population, and environmentally active political culture. These conditions mean that climate leadership carries lower political risk in BC than in Alberta.
Alberta, with a hydrocarbon-based economy and a more emissions-intensive energy system, faces much higher adjustment costs. National climate policy shifts, tightening or easing, affect Alberta’s economy more deeply than BC’s.
Again, this resembles the Central Canadian pattern of the past. Policies shaped by the political and economic structure of one region impose unintended costs and consequences on another.
BC does not collect Alberta’s resource revenues, but its climate policies constrain the investment environment around Alberta’s largest industry.
Outcomes, not intentions, determine fairness
BC frames its opposition in the language of climate action and coastal protection. Those goals may be sincere, and climate policy can serve broader interests than past industrial or electoral projects. But the key issue is whether BC holds itself to the same standard it once applied to Ottawa: whether local political benefits are being pursued through choices that place concentrated costs and constraints on a neighbour.
In interprovincial policy, fairness is judged by outcomes and by the political pressures that shape decisions, not by stated intentions. What matters is whether a province benefits politically from choices that place concentrated costs on its neighbour.
Under that measure, BC is not different from Ottawa:
- Both act in accordance with their own political incentives.
- Both impose asymmetric burdens on Alberta.
- Both claim to act in the public interest, even when regional costs fall unevenly.
The complaints Western Canada once directed at Ottawa, such as ignoring Western interests, overlooking regional economic realities, and creating policies that placed heavier costs on the West, apply in a similar form to BC’s treatment of Alberta.
BC’s climate intentions do not give it a special exemption. Regional externalities are shifted and the costs still fall unevenly.
Conclusion
British Columbia is not acting out of malice, and many of its policies reflect legitimate environmental and social concerns. But when assessing whether BC is applying a consistent standard, what matters are the structure and consequences of policy, not the language used to justify it.
By that standard, BC is acting toward Alberta much like the federal governments from Central Canada that it used to criticize:
- Regional political incentives shape decisions.
- Burdens fall unevenly across provinces.
- Economic opportunities in one region are limited so another can meet its own priorities.
- Interregional resentment follows.
BC may see its position as more principled than Central Canada’s past approach, but it is now acting toward Alberta in ways it previously condemned. The ongoing dispute over Alberta’s newly proposed pipeline shows these pressures continue to shape regional relations today.
Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and leads the Sound Economic Policy Project at the BC Institute of Technology.
