Good morning, everyone.

Are we witnessing peace in our time? Have Alberta and Ottawa actually reached a détente?

On Thursday morning, Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney sat down in Calgary and signed an energy accord that could see Alberta get the pipeline it has been desperately seeking.

While there are still a lot of steps before Alberta bitumen is flowing through new pipe to the British Columbia coast, hope was definitely in the air.

“I am not blind to the fact that the people of Alberta have had the rug pulled out from underneath them too many times to count over the past 10 years,” Smith said after the signing ceremony.

“I also know that a new relationship and a new beginning need a starting point grounded in good faith, and today, I hope, is that new starting point.”

Carney was equally buoyant about the prospect of finding common ground with a province that has felt like Ottawa’s punching bag for the last decade.

“It’s a framework for building more competitive, independent and sustainable economies in Alberta and across Canada,” he said in Calgary.

The ultimate goal of the memorandum of understanding is to unlock Alberta’s energy sector and find new export markets, hopefully leading to the construction of a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. While a private backer is still needed, according to the deal, any new pipeline would also include Indigenous co-ownership.

Further, Ottawa’s clean-electricity regulations for Alberta have been suspended, in exchange for the province increasing its industrial carbon price. And, one of the biggest thorns in Alberta’s side, the oil and gas emissions cap, has also been shelved.

Of course, with any deal like this, there remains a healthy dose of skepticism and outright detractors.

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, from the House of Commons on Thursday, spoke more about a pipe dream, rather than a pipeline.

And while there were lots of smiles and standing ovations in Alberta, the deal did cost the Prime Minister a member of his cabinet. Steven Guilbeault, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and the cabinet’s Quebec Lieutenant, resigned from his position over the accord. The former environment minister said he was disappointed to see the dismantling of several elements of the climate action plan he had worked on.

The strongest disapproval, however came from B.C.

Premier David Eby, who was excluded from the talks between Ottawa and Alberta, said he would have liked refining capacity in Canada and spill response to be part of the agreement. He added that he worried with so much focus on a pipeline, other projects may get short shrift from the federal government.

“The bottom line for us is that we need to make sure that this project doesn’t become an energy vampire, with all of the variables that have yet to be fulfilled,” he said.

He also urged the Prime Minister to immediately meet with Coastal First Nations, who have long said they will fight any changes to the oil tanker ban in their waters.

“We have zero interest in co-ownership or economic benefits of a project that has the potential to destroy our way of life and everything we have built on the coast,” said Marilyn Slett, president of the Coastal First Nations and elected Chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, in a statement.

However this agreement plays out, there is hope that better relations between Ottawa and Alberta are on the horizon.

When Smith heads into her United Conservative Party convention in Edmonton on Friday, she may get a warm reception from a crowd where many have been banging the separatism drum. While the Premier had kiboshed any official agenda items about abandoning Canada from the annual meeting schedule, separatism was surely going to be the elephant in the room.

But on Thursday, Smith said she hoped the deal with Ottawa could calm those waters.

“Genuinely addressing the concerns of Albertans is always a pathway to have a good and solid relationship,” she said.

This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.