Just before lunch on April 17, Québec solidaire MNA Manon Massé introduced a motion in the National Assembly that at once congratulated Alberta’s freshly elected government and threw significant shade at the oily bounty flowing from that province. It noted Quebec’s commitment to fight climate change and its rejection of the Energy East pipeline, which as part of an oil conduit from landlocked Alberta to the east coast would have sunk roughly 650 km of pipe into Quebec soil. (Energy East was abandoned in October 2017, much to Massé’s delight.)

Then came the meat of Massé’s motion. “Quebec has the full legitimacy to refuse pipeline projects passing through its territory, including a potential relaunch of the Energy East project, regardless of pressure from the rest of Canada.” The motion passed unanimously without amendment or debate, in less than five minutes.

Motions often used be trifling, vanity-driven things, delivered to mark a sporting event or a significant anniversary. Massé’s 88-word declaration was anything but. Yet after a recent court decision in British Columbia allowing the flow of Alberta bitumen across provincial borders, the self-declared legitimacy of a National Assembly decision to block Alberta-sourced oil from traversing its territory may amount little more than words on a page. In short, Alberta’s oil-fuelled will and Quebec’s green-shaded obstinacy are on a collision course — and Alberta suddenly has the legal upper hand.

The current British Columbia government also has a snarling disdain for Alberta bitumen. Last year, the province attempted to block the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, for near-identical reasons: the expanded pipeline would carry carbon-heavy Alberta oil through populated areas, posing an immediate threat to British Columbians and a larger existential threat to the environment. Last week, the province’s court of appeals ruled unanimously that the province cannot regulate or restrict the contents of an oil pipeline — even if this pipeline passes through its own territory.

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To say this is a victory for Alberta’s struggling oil patch is an understatement, and it comes at the expense of Quebec’s self-declared autonomy. The B.C. ruling essentially says that pipelines, like railways before them, are of national interest, and therefore transcend the wills, rules and motions of any single province, no matter how righteous or well-intentioned. And even if Trans Mountain goes through as expected, it won’t come close to sating Alberta’s appetite for pipeline capacity. Production on the 900 square kilometres of oil-soaked Alberta real estate is expected to increase by 1.5 million barrels a day by 2035, or nearly double Trans Mountain’s eventual capacity. Alberta needs more pipelines in the ground, preferably to the east coast; this court ruling puts those conduits in the national interest.

To be sure, a grand faceoff between Quebec, Alberta and the federal government won’t happen tomorrow afternoon. Pipeline projects are slow, capital-intensive affairs. And as Energy East’s demise showed, they are (rightfully) susceptible to public revolt, regardless of the law of the land. There is also a chance, albeit a slim one, that the Supreme Court of Canada will overturn the B.C. Court of Appeals ruling. Or perhaps Canada will do what is environmentally necessary and institute a meaningful and comprehensive carbon tax in order to slacken this country’s oil addiction and the ensuing need for pipelines. (Ha! Just kidding.)

There is abiding hypocrisy in Quebec’s pan-partisan anti-Alberta oil stance. In fact, despite suggestions to the contrary, Quebec avails itself of what Premier François Legault once described as “dirty energy.” A little more than half of the province’s oil now comes from Western Canada, almost all of which flows from Alberta oilsands. All told, Quebec derives far more of its energy from dead dinosaurs than from rushing water.

Nonetheless, as Massé’s motions shows, the province’s desire to keep pipelines from running through its borders is a political reality that is equally abiding, to be tested in the courts sooner rather than later.