Who won this week's parliamentary pipeline game? Maybe no one

When the Conservatives tabled a motion asking the House of Commons to "take note" of the memorandum of understanding signed between the federal and Alberta governments and express its support for the construction of a pipeline, the Official Opposition presumably hoped, one way or another, to make trouble for the Liberal government.

According to the logic of these things, the Liberals only had two bad options.

If Mark Carney and his cabinet decided to vote in support of the motion, they no doubt risked highlighting dissent about a pipeline among Liberal backbenchers. At the very least, it is hard to imagine how Steven Guilbeault could have supported the Conservative motion.

But if Carney and the Liberals decided to vote against the motion, the Conservatives would surely hold that out as proof that the Carney government doesn't actually want to see a pipeline built.

While dismissing the Conservative motion as a stunt, the Liberals chose the latter option. The Conservatives promptly declared their disappointment. Before the vote had even been taken, the Conservatives were touting a radio ad that will target Corey Hogan, the Liberal MP for Calgary Confederation, for his alleged "betrayal."

If the Conservatives retake Calgary Confederation at the next election — Hogan won it by just 1,248 votes this past spring — then perhaps Pierre Poilievre and his team will consider the motion a great success.

But for now it is unclear how much anyone's interests were actually advanced by this week's game of pipeline chicken.

For the Liberals, the questions surrounding their share of the MOU remain basically the same as they were before the Conservatives drafted their motion. 

First, there is the pressure to shore up and defend the Carney government's approach to climate policy. On the same day that motion came before the House, the Toronto Star and La Presse published an op-ed by Guilbeault, in which the former environment minister expanded on his misgivings about the MOU and set down some expectations about what must ultimately come out of the negotiations between Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. 

Second, there is the question of what Carney will do if talks with Alberta, British Columbia and First Nations leaders ultimately come to some kind of an impasse over a pipeline. But that answer might not be known for some time.

In the meantime, Poilievre's Conservatives will continue to insist that Carney secretly has no intention of seeing a new pipeline built. Mind you, the Conservatives used to say the same thing about Justin Trudeau and the Trans Mountain expansion.

At the very least, it might be said that if Carney somehow actually intends to stand in the way of significantly expanding export capacity for Canadian oil, he will have chosen a very convoluted — and risky — way of going about that. 

The Conservatives will now point to Tuesday's vote as some kind of telling indicator. But the Liberals will presumably respond by pointing to the complete MOU — indeed, during question period on Tuesday, Carney suggested that perhaps the Conservative motion could be expanded to include the entire text.

Had the Conservatives gone that far, they probably would have succeeded in exposing any cracks in the Liberal caucus. But then the Conservatives themselves might have joined Guilbeault in voting against the MOU.