“I think it’s right for Premier Smith to push back and say … ‘We don’t want to have just a policy that is at the expense of Alberta for the benefit of everybody else,’” he added.
That said, it’s highly unlikely she’ll be able to refuse or fight a federal order, as the majority of oil ceases to be owned by the province once it’s out of the ground.
Even if it was, Leach said the courts are clear that international trade is entirely within federal jurisdiction.
“What the federal government would be doing in this case would be an export tariff or an export quota of some sort, and that wouldn’t exempt provincial-owned resources, whether they were in a pipeline, on a truck, on a train,” Leach explained.
