Prime Minister Mark Carney has signed a major energy agreement with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, laying the conditions for a new oil pipeline to be approved under the federal major projects law.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was in Calgary Thursday for the event, joined by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at the McDougall Centre — the centre of the provincial government in the city’s downtown core. “This is a really great day for Albertans,” Smith told the PM before the signing ceremony took place.

Carney reiterated that as the U.S. transforms all of its trading relationships, many of Canada’s strengths – based on those close ties to America – have become its vulnerabilities. “Over 95% of all our energy exports went to the States. This tight interdependence – once a strength – is now a weakness,” Carney said.

Our colleague David Cochrane, host of CBC’s Power & Politics, has confirmed Steven Guilbeault is resigning from Carney’s cabinet over his disagreement with the MOU, but will stay on as an MP. Guilbeault, a longtime environmentalist, was the country’s minister of environment and climate change for four years.

On being asked if she was skeptical about the federal government being able to build an oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said, over time, she’s “changed her mind” on carbon capture technology and “perhaps” Prime Minister Mark Carney is “re-calibrating his own thinking” on previous stances he’s taken in the past.