Pipeline politics won’t save us from Trump’s threats

By Lethbridge Herald on September 25, 2025.

Jim Stanford
Troy Media

The federal and provincial governments are scrambling to shield Canada’s economy from U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest trade tantrum. But that effort is being hijacked by predictable—and predictably loud—demands from corporate Canada and its political mouthpieces.

They insist this so-called crisis is the perfect excuse to push their old wish list: tax breaks, deregulation, and—above all—pipelines, pipelines, pipelines.

The stakes have been raised by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who’s dangling the threat of a national unity crisis if another pipeline isn’t approved. Not to be outdone, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is storming back into the House wielding an arbitrary deadline like it’s Excalibur: approve a new pipeline by March 14—or else.

Of course, no company or investor has produced a viable plan for such a pipeline (which is why the federal government did not include a pipeline on its first shortlist of major ‘nation-building’ projects). But no matter. A new export pipeline is still being touted as a magic bullet to fend off Trump’s economic aggression.

But this political theatre distracts from the real economic dangers Trump has exposed. His threats have laid bare a wide range of vulnerabilities in Canada’s economic armour. Yes, we need to diversify where we sell our goods and services—into new global markets and, critically, right here at home.

Just as important, we need to diversify what we sell. Thirty-five years after the original free trade deal, Canada has regressed into a raw-resource exporter. Half of our merchandise exports now come from unprocessed primary goods—agriculture, energy, minerals and forestry—up from just one-fifth at the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, once-proud high-tech sectors like automotive, aerospace, telecom and pharmaceuticals have faded. And Trump’s sector-specific tariffs are hammering the final nails into those industrial coffins. From hewers of wood and drawers of water, we’re evolving—or perhaps devolving—into steamers of bitumen. A new pipeline would only tighten that trap.

And that’s not the only downside. Overreliance on resources sets off ripple effects across the economy, especially when it comes to innovation. Canada’s innovation performance has been sagging for decades. Funnelling capital into oil extraction—a field with limited need for research and development—won’t fix that.

A pipeline would swallow tens of billions in scarce capital, at a time when investment in both tradable and non-tradable sectors is already dangerously low. And let’s not forget: boosting oil production is the whole point of these pipelines. That puts Canada’s already-wobbly emissions targets even further out of reach.

Meanwhile, while we undercut our climate credibility at home, we’re getting steamrolled abroad. Despite recent concessions to Trump—from new border controls to scrapping the Digital Services Tax to unilaterally cancelling our counter-tariffs—we’ve gained exactly nothing. Trump continues to pressure Canada’s tech sectors while reducing our role to a cheap energy supplier and an easy market for U.S. products.

It’s time to get our elbows up and hit back.

That means a whole-of-economy strategy to unlock the full potential of our people, our capital and our natural resources—not just the fossilized ones.

Trump’s challenge demands ambition and bold investment across Canada’s economic spectrum. Fixating on pipelines—short-sighted, self-serving and spectacularly off the mark—takes us further from the resilient, value-added economy we desperately need.

Jim Stanford is director of the Centre for Future Work and a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. © Troy Media