Oil and Gas Archives - Alberta Views

Financial Bonanza

Graham Thomson — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:01:17 +0000

How is this fair?” That thought may have crossed your mind when filling up at the pump as the price of oil soared last winter after the US and Israel attacked Iran. Here you were, living in an oil-rich province where energy companies were suddenly awash in windfall profits. Where your government was raking in tens of millions of dollars in unanticipated royalties. And where you were paying near-record prices for gas.

According to a study by The Guardian, the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies collected more than $30-million every hour in “unearned” profit during the first month of the Iran war, and stand to make “$230-billion by the end of the year if the price of oil continues to average $100.” That’s a pretty big “if”—but it does put an eye-watering number on the potential windfall for companies in 2026 compared to anticipated profits before the war started. And it’s why people began talking about a “windfall tax” on the companies.

“As the owners of the resource, Albertans should get the lion’s share of those profits,” wrote Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan in the first week of the war. “And the way to do that is to introduce a windfall profits tax on top of the royalties that oil companies pay in exchange for the right to exploit publicly owned assets.”

This wasn’t a sudden revelation but rather part of McGowan’s long-standing argument that Alberta must increase oil and gas royalty rates. And he’s not alone. A long list of prominent economists have been saying the same thing for years—and they doubled down as the Iran war dragged on into April. “Taxing windfall profits won’t worsen inflation; it will recapture unearned gains from corporations and resource owners and can be used to protect vulnerable populations,” declared a group of economists led by Nobel-prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz.

It all sounds straightforward. Indeed, about 25 countries had already introduced a windfall tax well before Donald Trump’s misadventure in Iran. And Alberta does have a sliding scale for oil sands royalty rates, where they increase relative to the price of oil. But this isn’t enough for critics such as McGowan.

Oil companies are suddenly awash in windfall profits—while we’re paying near-record prices for gas.

Oil companies are pushing back, arguing windfall taxes discourage investment. They quote University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, who in 2022 said in an interview that “having a government just enact an ad hoc tax out of nowhere based on just whatever they think the rate should be—that’s problematic because it creates uncertainty.”

We also bump up against the “symmetry argument,” in which oil companies, facing a windfall tax from governments during boom times, could then demand some sort of “calamity compensation” from governments when oil prices collapse—as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To save ourselves from jumping on the never-ending merry-go-round of arguments for and against a windfall profits tax, let’s just ask one short question: Would a windfall tax ever fly in Alberta The even shorter answer: No.

That’s not just because Alberta is governed by the fossil-fuel champion Danielle Smith. A windfall tax is part of a political suicide trifecta, along with raising royalty rates and introducing a provincial sales tax. The provincial NDP has also shied away from the trifecta. After campaigning in 2015 on implementing “competitive, realistic royalty rates as prices rise,” NDP leader Rachel Notley then performed a whiplash-inducing policy shift upon becoming premier. She went through the motions of a royalty review, then concluded the rates under previous Progressive Conservative governments were suddenly okay.

At the time, an irate McGowan complained that the NDP government was committing a “profound political mistake.” McGowan vowed to continue the battle for higher royalties, a fight that now extends to a windfall tax.

The public appetite for higher royalties comes and goes in direct relation to the world price of oil. When it’s over US$100 a barrel, Albertans practically march on the legislature, demanding a bigger share of energy revenues. When the price drops, so does the appetite. We felt the hunger pangs return last spring, watching our wallets drain as our tanks filled. In that context a tax on skyrocketing oil profits looked pretty good.

But even if there were a windfall profits tax, how would you, as an inflation-pummelled Albertan, benefit Alberta governments in the past have tended to spend windfall revenue to avoid making hard political decisions. The nadir of that unofficial policy came in 2006, with “Ralph Bucks.” Premier Klein, trying to boost his flagging popularity, gave a $400 “prosperity” cheque to pretty much everyone in the province. A lot of Albertans were happy. Like McGowan today, they saw it as a just counterbalance to high oil prices.

But there was no long-term plan, no saving for a rainy day; just a cheap political stunt. You could still argue a windfall tax is a good idea—but you can’t deny that Alberta has a poor track record of dealing with windfall revenues in the past.

Graham Thomson is an Edmonton-based political commentator who has covered Alberta politics since the early Don Getty era.

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Creating a Buzz

Doug Firby — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:34 +0000

It was a frosty winter day, but Calgary supply chain specialist Dave Acquah was steaming. “I just renewed my auto registration for 2026,” he fumed on the Tesla Owners Club of Alberta Facebook page. “$300 total ($200 EV tax). I need someone to put me in a pile of snow for 5 hrs to cool my body temperature down. That electric vehicle tax.”

Acquah, who bought a 2024 Tesla Model Y, shares a frustration many owners of electric vehicles (EVs) in Alberta feel: they live in one of only two provinces in the country—the other is Saskatchewan—in which you’re taxed for simply owning a zero-emissions vehicle.

It’s not so much the existence of the tax that annoys Acquah and other EV owners. Instead, they say it’s a symptom of a larger anti-electric-car attitude in Alberta’s UCP government, which is actively stifling local EV adoption. The effort is marked by heated rhetoric by conservatives who see the vehicles as part of a Liberal anti-oil conspiracy. Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, for example, once claimed an EV sales mandate would be akin to “banning the rural way of life.” Danielle Smith called federal EV adoption targets “environmental extremism.”

But if the UCP is hostile to EVs, they’re swimming against a global tide. One in four new cars sold around the world in 2025 were electric. Some 20 million EVs were sold globally that year. In China fully half of new cars are EVs. Alberta lags far behind not only that rate but even other Canadian provinces. BC has 195,000 registered EVs on the road, for example, nearly 10 times Alberta’s meagre total of 20,000.

EVs remain polarizing in Alberta, says Andrew Batiuk, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta (EVAA), where they pit environmentalists and tech fans against supporters of oil and gas who perceive a threat to the province’s economy. As the naysayers see it, the more EVs there are, the less fossil fuel that gets burned. And that’s a sore spot for Albertans who rely on oil and gas for their livelihoods. That’s partly why the province aggressively opposed the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard—the so-called EV sales mandate—that Justin Trudeau’s government introduced in December 2023 to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. Prime Minister Mark Carney has since cancelled the mandate.

Opponents aren’t wrong that the cars reduce the world’s demand for oil. It’s estimated that EVs already displace somewhere between 1.3 and 1.8 million barrels per day of oil consumption. That’s a fraction of the over 100 million barrels of oil currently being burned daily. Nonetheless, the trend has been noticed in the oil industry, which provides 144,000 jobs in Alberta. It also threatens a government that relies on that industry. Alberta is projecting $13.2-billion in non-renewable resource revenues in 2026/2027, 18 per cent of its total revenue.

All of this biases our government against EVs. Premier Smith has even gone so far as to aggressively promote the production of so-called blue hydrogen from natural gas for use in hydrogen-powered vehicles. Across the world, sales of these rivals to EVs are faltering. The cars are virtually absent from Alberta. The province’s only public hydrogen refuelling station, at Blackjacks Roadhouse in Nisku, which Smith’s government helped fund, closed down permanently in early 2025.

The economic impact of oil and gas gives the industry an outsized influence on provincial policy. Charges Daniel Breton, president of Electric Mobility Canada: “I see the premier of Alberta more or less as a puppet of the oil and gas industry, and her government as well.”

But for all of this hostility, EVs may yet prevail—even in Alberta.

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and at times deliberate misinformation. One favourite claim is that EVs—with their multiple battery packs—are worse for the environment than gas-powered vehicles. Initially, an EV does indeed have a higher carbon footprint, Batiuk says. Making the batteries is energy intensive and requires rare-earth minerals. But the gap with gas-powered vehicles evens out within one to two years of ownership, depending on distance driven. After that, the carbon footprint of an EV becomes substantially smaller, especially since Alberta has converted its electricity generation from primarily coal-fired plants to natural gas, solar and wind.

The EVs-are-worse argument has been debunked by no less than the Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose website announces: “FACT: Electric vehicles typically have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging, plus they are far more efficient when it comes to energy use.”

Other biases are almost comical. Angie Dean, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Alberta, says someone once asked her if it was OK to wash her electric car.

Ironically, the people who make and sell EVs don’t always help. “Misinformation is a huge problem, even when it comes to car manufacturers,” says Electric Mobility’s Breton. He argues some manufacturers are “spreading crap” about EVs—even their own models—because they don’t particularly want to build the vehicles, or are frustrated by “unrealistic” government EV sales mandates. The “green halo” effect of having an EV in, say, Ford’s lineup might be good for the company’s marketing image. But EVs are costlier to make, and many, such as the F-150 Lightning, are sold at a loss. (Ford recently announced it is ending production of the truck.)

Anti-EV campaigners often draw on outdated anecdotes and deliberate misinformation.

Dealers sometimes discourage buyers from choosing EVs. Doug Green, dealer principal of High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC in High River, says he invested $250,000 in equipment upgrades at the dealership to service EVs at the urging of GM, but he has sold only three of the vehicles, at a net loss of $10,000. “I was so happy to be rid of those,” he says. He also paid $6,000 to ship three additional unsold EVs to dealers in Quebec. Green says one customer in town bought a Blazer EV, only to discover she’d have to shell out $3,000 to install curbside charging from her duplex, which doesn’t have a garage. “She was unprepared,” Green said. Meanwhile, he says, the only public EV-charging station in town was out of commission. Chargers have since been added at the Ford and Chrysler dealerships.

Angie Dean wasn’t surprised to hear of the GMC dealer’s attitude. “I’ve heard so many stories from people who have gone into car dealerships and been excited about an electric car and [are told], ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me show you this gas car here.’”

And then there’s the myth that EVs don’t work in cold weather. Green claims an electric SUV with a rated 500-km range is really only capable of travelling 300 km, because you shouldn’t fully charge the battery. And, he contends, it will suffer dramatic power losses in the cold. “If you drive in the wintertime, and you put winter tires on, then it’s going to go in half,” he says. “If it’s cold out, then it’s going to go in half again, and if there’s snow then it’s going to go in half again.”

Dean scoffs at Green’s doomerism. She said her Tesla Model Y might lose 40 per cent of its range when the temperature hits minus 40, but that’s “extremely uncommon.” In Calgary’s more typical winter temperatures, she says she sees an estimated 15–20 per cent loss of range. Yet some people just don’t believe her. She recalls an incident in February 2025 when she parked at a local Home Depot. “This guy walks up to me and says, ‘You know those things don’t work here in the winter.’ And I was, like, I’m right here! Do you think I just pushed the car here?”

Dean’s experience reflects research by Recurrent, a US-based organization that tracks EV performance. The study, conducted during the winter of 2025–26, analyzed data from more than 30,000 vehicles across 34 models from 13 automakers. Although performance varied by make, the study found that EVs maintain on average around 80 per cent of their rated range in freezing conditions.

Meanwhile an underreported fact is that gas-powered cars are likewise less efficient in colder weather. The EPA estimates that a drop in temperature from 24°C to 7°C can increase gas consumption by 12–28 per cent. And EVs actually start more reliably than gas cars do in the winter, because they aren’t affected by cold-sensitive oil and have no sparkplugs, which are especially susceptible to low temperatures.

Even when people appeal to facts to disparage EVs, their assertions are often only half true. The UCP government claims, for example, that electric vehicles do more damage to roads than gas-powered cars do, because they’re heavier. An EV does tend to weigh more than its internal combustion engine equivalent—perhaps 10–15 per cent more. But as Breton notes, EVs are lighter than the giant pickup trucks so common in Alberta, and the province isn’t levying a special tax on pickups. “Alberta and Saskatchewan are both taxing EVs under some dubious excuse,” Breton says. “It has a lot more to do with politics than facts.”

Horner, the Alberta finance minister, also justified the $200 tax when he introduced it in February 2025 as a way to offset revenue lost by drivers who don’t buy gasoline or diesel, which is taxed by the province. But Breton questions why the flat rate is disproportionately high. Albertans, on average, drive 15,200 km per year, consuming 1,216 litres of fuel in a typical mid-sized vehicle. Under the province’s current fuel tax of 13 cents per litre, that would translate into $158 in road taxes—21 per cent less than what EV owners must fork over. Says the EVAA’s Andrew Batiuk: “It seems punitive.”

In an emailed statement, Horner claims the tax is “fair” and states: “Alberta’s tax on electric vehicles is in line with what drivers of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle pay in fuel tax annually.” EV proponents find such stonewalling typical. Batiuk says his organization just can’t get the ear of government: “We don’t have much of a relationship with them.”

And if Alberta’s government were truly interested in a full accounting of the costs and benefits of EVs vs. traditional vehicles, it would consider other facts. Pollution from gas- and diesel-fuelled cars and trucks is killing people. A March 2022 federal report analyzed data from 2015 and found that 1,200 Canadians, including 82 Albertans, died prematurely that year from the effects of pollution from cars and trucks. Another 2.7 million people suffered from acute respiratory symptoms. Breton argues considerations such as marginally higher EV weight need to be weighed against the $9.5-billion annual health cost to Canadians from gas-powered vehicle pollution.

Horner’s statement dismissed pollution and health concerns. “Alberta has some of the cleanest air in Canada and the world, and that isn’t changing,” it read. “Our transportation emissions have declined 12 per cent since 2015 and will keep falling.”

But the main barrier to EV adoption in this province isn’t special punitive taxes, uninterested EV dealers or disinformation. Alberta drivers won’t fully embrace EVs until there are enough public chargers available across the province to ease so-called “range anxiety”—the fear that one’s car battery will deplete far from home. Similarly, the extent of the local charging network affects whether or not we will attract EV-driving tourists from places like BC, says Danielle Wiess, director of transportation initiatives at the Fernie-based Community Energy Association. “EV drivers go where they can charge.”

But the UCP government is offering no help to expand Alberta’s charging network. The province had 429 EV charging stations in December 2025. That’s just 6 per cent of the 7,000 chargers found in BC, which has 5.7 million residents versus Alberta’s five million.

In 2020 the Community Energy Association managed the Peaks to Prairies charging network, which connected communities from Canmore to Medicine Hat and south to the US border. Working with local municipalities, ATCO installed 20 direct-current fast-charging sites across southern Alberta. The $1.2-million contribution from the then-NDP government was the last time Alberta has funded any EV charging infrastructure, says Wiess.

Charging one’s EV at home also remains a vexing problem for Alberta’s renters and condo dwellers. Provincial building codes don’t require EV charging capacity to be added to new multi-unit residential buildings—condos and high-rise apartments. “We’re still building condos and apartments without charging infrastructure considered,” says the EVAA’s Batiuk. “At [a single-family] home, you can plug in an EV. But when you live in a condo or apartment, you don’t have the option to charge at home. Selling that person an EV is a more difficult task.”

The situation is even more challenging in rural areas that lack the fast EV chargers found in the Peaks to Prairies network. “If I have a boat to pull to a lake, and I pull it to Little Bow Provincial Park, there’s no chargers down there,” says Green, the GMC dealer.

Under a joint federal/municipal program, incentives cover up to nearly half the cost of installing chargers at businesses, condos, Indigenous communities, public facilities and not-for-profit organizations. But remote communities that install such infrastructure can encounter sticker shock just to keep their chargers operating. In December 2025 a City of Cold Lake committee reported that it would need to quadruple the rate the city offers at its city-owned EV charger. Wiess says Level 3 (also known as DC fast) chargers incur high demand costs if they’re used infrequently.

Alberta is also at odds with provinces that have created incentives to purchase EVs. BC offered rebates of $4,000 to buyers of electric vehicles but scrapped the program in May 2025 under budget pressure. Before the program ended, zero-emission vehicles accounted for almost one in four new vehicles sold in BC. In 2025 BC registered almost as many EVs in just its fourth quarter as Alberta’s overall number of EVs. (Alberta and Newfoundland are the only provinces that don’t provide Statistics Canada with data on new EV registrations. They only report total registered EVs.) Quebec, with a population of nine million, has even bigger incentives than BC did, and registered 82,700 EVs in 2025.

The feds announced in January they will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into Canada. Previously tariffs made these prohibitive.

The ingrained resistance to EVs in Alberta manifests in some of the most unlikely places. Batiuk discovered that the owners of Ol’ MacDonald’s Resort and Campground, on Buffalo Lake about an hour northeast of Red Deer, imposed a $60/night EV surcharge in 2024. A notice on the resort’s website stated its “electricity etiquette” rule is “a small price to pay to ensure the fair and sustainable use of these shared resources.” (The Alberta Motor Association reports that the typical cost to charge an EV in Alberta ranges from free—at roughly half of Calgary’s public charging stations—to $15 at fast-charging sites such as those in the Peaks to Prairies network.)

Messages left at the resort for listed owner Jean MacDonald were not returned. “We [also] tried to talk to them,” says Batiuk, “and they weren’t interested in talking to us.”

But EV advocates such as Batiuk, Dean and Breton believe EVs will eventually prevail—including in Alberta. The federal government recently committed $1.5-billion to expand Canada’s public EV charging network, so essential to driving the vehicles any distance, especially rurally. Mark Carney’s government also announced in January 2026 that it will allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country at a nominal 6.1 per cent tariff rate. Previously a 100 per cent tariff had made the cost of these cars prohibitive. Even premier Smith had called for Carney to drop the tariff and let Chinese EVs in—if only because she hoped it would enable Albertans to sell more canola and pork in China.

Major Chinese manufacturers such as Chery and Geely are preparing to enter the Canadian market. BYD, which in 2025 surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest EV maker, plans to open 20 dealerships in Canada, first in Toronto, then in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

Those Chinese EVs may comprise just a fraction of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada each year. But more significantly, federal EV incentives are being restored. Sales of EVs across Canada dropped by nearly one-third last year as provincial and federal incentives ended. In February of this year Carney introduced a new, $2.3-billion, five-year program that offers individuals or businesses up to $5,000 to purchase various types of EVs. At the time, the prime minister predicted EVs will reach 75 per cent market share in Canada by 2035 and 90 per cent by 2040.

By the time the federal incentives end in five years, Breton says, they may be unnecessary. This is a point on which EV advocate Breton and EV skeptic Green agree. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” says Breton. “Just don’t stand in the way of progress.” “I’m always interested in change,” says Green. “Just let the free market decide.”

Dean, a planner with the City of Calgary, says she sees beyond the personal benefits of driving an EV. She believes she’s helping future generations, and every effort counts. Someone once told her, “Your one electric car isn’t going to do anything,” she says. “And I replied, ‘But it’s what I can do. If I can do something, I’m going to do it.’ ”

Doug Firby has over four decades of experience in newspapers, including at the Calgary Herald. He’s now president of Troy Media.

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Burying Billions

Graham Thomson — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:00:11 +0000

Hope is not a strategy. Unless, that is, you’re a fervent supporter of big carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) projects, believing that they’ll significantly reduce emissions of CO₂.
In that case, hope is pretty much all you have. That’s because CCS projects have a history of raising hopes and then dashing them.

For people who want another oil pipeline built from Alberta to the west coast, hopes are today being raised again, this time via the Pathways Alliance proposal. This is an ambitious project to capture carbon dioxide emissions from 20 oil sands facilities, pump them through a 400-km pipeline, and then inject the CO₂ (compressed into a supercritical fluid) into a saline aquifer deep underground near Cold Lake. The goal is to be sequestering more than 20 million metric tonnes of emissions from the oil sands every year by 2030, about one-quarter of the industry’s total emissions.

This is what prime minister Mark Carney means when he talks about “decarbonized oil,” much like the original greenwashing term “clean coal.” Both terms are oxymorons. Coal and oil are neither clean nor decarbonized. But because emissions are captured and pumped underground, politicians can say the oil industry is reducing its carbon footprint. It’s also worth pointing out that some CCS projects inject the compressed CO₂ into old oilfields to pump out even more oil, in a process called “enhanced oil recovery.” Hardly a way to reduce emissions.

This isn’t just a public relations move. The Pathways Project is a key component in premier Danielle Smith’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Carney to champion a new pipeline to pump oil sands bitumen from Alberta to the west coast for shipment overseas. Each project is conditional on the other. As the MOU spells out, the Pathways Project is a prerequisite “to the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline, given that the two projects referred to in this MOU are mutually dependent.”

In other words, Smith will have to show the Pathways Project is moving ahead for Carney to push ahead with a pipeline deal (opposed by BC politicians and First Nations), while Carney will have to show he’s serious about getting the pipeline approved for Smith to find a way to make the Pathways proposal work.

And if we’re talking about CCS, we’re inevitably talking about government subsidies of one kind or another. Pathways is estimated to cost $16.5-billion. The oil industry would like the federal government to cover 75 per cent of the cost. Ottawa has offered 50 per cent in tax credits, while Alberta has offered 12 per cent. Tax credits, though, never seem to be enough.

CCS doesn’t live up to its hype: that it can “solve” our CO₂ problem while allowing us to keep burning fossil fuels.

In 2008 then-premier Ed Stelmach announced a climate change strategy for Alberta reliant on carbon capture, in which we’d sequester 140 million tonnes a year by 2050. To kickstart what he hoped would be a CCS gold rush (futilely, it turned out), he promised $2-billion for half-a-dozen proof-of-concept projects. So far, Alberta taxpayers—i.e., you and I—have spent over $1.2-billion on two projects that bury about one million tonnes a year.

Sadly CCS has never lived up to the hype as a magic bullet to solve our emissions problem while allowing us to keep burning fossil fuels. And this isn’t unique to Alberta. The billion-dollar Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, for example, was supposed to capture 90 per cent of emissions from a coal-fired power plant but manages on average only 50 per cent, prompting the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis to label it an “underperforming failure.” The institute concluded: “Canadians should not be proud of the money and resources wasted on CCS, and should be especially concerned about the billions… now earmarked for additional CCS investments.”

Worldwide, a report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development concluded that a “majority of the 149 CCS projects that were projected to be storing carbon by 2020 globally have been either cancelled or put on an indefinite hold because of incredibly high costs and technological challenges.”

Putting aside major obstacles to the Alberta/Ottawa MOU, including the potential costs to taxpayers, environmental risks, and opposition from First Nations, will the Pathways Project actually work Will it overcome the obstacles that have tripped up so many hoopla-driven projects of the past?

The troubling reality is that these questions are moot. Alberta doesn’t need to prove the project will actually live up to the hype; at this point it just needs the hype. Alberta and the federal government aim to enter into a trilateral MOU with the Pathways companies by April 1, 2026, to find actions to reduce the “intensity” of emissions. Even meeting that relatively low standard doesn’t mean either Pathways or the new bitumen pipeline will ever get built. But it does keep alive the political mythology of CCS as a way to significantly reduce emissions while justifying the construction of more fossil-fuel projects.

Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.

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Should the BC Tanker Ban be Lifted?

Denise Mullen and Anna Barford — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 10:00:59 +0000

denise mullen Says Yes

Business Council of BC, director of environment

In 2019 the federal government enacted the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, prohibiting ships carrying more than 12,500 tonnes of crude oil, certain heavy fuel oils or bitumen blend from loading, unloading or anchoring at ports along the BC coastline from northern Vancouver Island to Alaska. The Act was framed as a measure to protect coastal communities and sensitive ecosystems from the risk of a spill.

People on the west coast still remember the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. But the west coast’s actual spill record tells a very different story. At the national, regional and international levels, little evidence suggests a ban was ever necessary in BC or that it has prevented the outcomes it claims to address. In fact, most marine incidents in BC involve tugboats, barges carrying diesel, or leaking and abandoned fishing vessels, not tankers laden with heavy crude. Conflating ordinary maritime risks with large-scale tanker shipments is both logically incoherent and inconsistent with sound risk-management practice.

Supporters of the Act often point to a decline in spill incidents since 2019. Conveniently, Canada’s publicly available marine spill data only begins that year, making it easy to draw false conclusions. A broader review of regional and international records shows that oil spills have in fact been falling for decades, with the sharpest declines beginning in the 1990s after double-hulled tankers became the international standard. Since then, the global volume of crude shipments has grown significantly yet major spill incidents have been exceedingly rare.

Blocking northern tidewater access for BC and Alberta oil producers also carries significant consequences for economic prosperity in the West and, by extension, for Canada as a whole. The ban functions as a geographically selective trade barrier that uniquely limits one sector: western Canadian energy exports. Notably no comparable restrictions apply to tanker shipments serving Atlantic Canada or Quebec.

Canada’s tanker ban doesn’t reduce risk; it simply adds costs and eliminates opportunities for trade. The real drivers of spill-reduction have been international rules mandating double-hulled vessels and improved navigation systems, not region-specific prohibitions that single out one coastline while tankers operate safely elsewhere.

By shutting off potential routes to Asia, the Act entrenches Canada’s dependence on the US market, where our crude sells at a discount. This results in lost government revenues, lower private investment and less infrastructure development at a time when Canada can least afford it. By arbitrarily closing infrastructure corridors, the federal government has signalled to global investors that Canada is closed for business. Far from creating certainty, the Act undermines confidence in one of the country’s most important industrial sectors.

The tanker ban is unnecessary, discriminatory and damaging to Canada’s long-term prosperity. It closes doors at a time when we need to open them—to strengthen national unity, diversify our trading partners and ensure that future generations inherit a stronger and more resilient economy.

anna barford Says No

Stand.earth, oceans campaigner

Fast-forward to the year 2070 in the Great Bear Sea off the north coast of British Columbia. Massive oil tankers are everywhere. The waters that once were home to whales, otters and Indigenous communities have become a fossil-fuel-export highway with vessels criss-crossing the sea to bring harbour pilots on board, load cargo and deal with incidents ranging from small onboard fires to major collisions. Fishing vessels need to navigate carefully around these hulking ocean-going vessels and are forced farther out, to rougher waters, to make their catch. Cruise ships now avoid the inside passage because of the risk of collision as oil tankers leave port with their heavy loads. The devastation from a previous spill near Prince Rupert (workers are still trying in vain to clean up the shoreline) isn’t exactly what cruise passengers sail to Alaska to see anyway.

So, how did we get here?

The good news is that the dystopian future described above is currently impossible, because of the protections of the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which received royal assent in 2019. The law enshrined a voluntary tanker exclusion policy that had been in place since 1985. Advocated for by Indigenous people in the region, the moratorium protects the Great Bear Sea, including Haida Gwaii, by banning tankers of over 12,500 metric tonnes and commodities such as partially upgraded bitumen and synthetic crude oil from the area.

With good reason. From near-misses to sleepy captains grounding their ships, the list of incidents in recent years off the BC coast is already long and varied. It proves that things go wrong even under the best conditions. Ship parts can arrive defective, fall into disrepair, or simply be used inappropriately, all of which can cause a spill. A frequent cause of accidents—human error—is impossible to eliminate completely.

If the ban is lifted, it will only be a matter of time before a catastrophe occurs and the ecosystem and the communities living along shipping routes pay the price. The Great Bear Sea is far from an empty seascape. It is home to a thriving group of communities, to marine wildlife and to a sustainable economy that includes harvesting wild salmon. All of this is at risk of being lost if a captain even slightly misreads a chart.

Oil spills are all but impossible to clean up in the wild. In the same way that asphalt sticks, tar sands oil coats or sinks and doesn’t go away. And a spill in an especially remote location Forget about recovery.

The Great Bear Sea has an economy based on its incredible natural location. In contrast, the value that Canadians receive from oil pipelines and oil tanker traffic is low, especially compared to what’s lost in the inevitable spills.

Indigenous people have been clear: Canada must respect that they have a say about what happens in their traditional lands and waters. Indigenous people in the area continue to support the moratorium. The people who live where the impacts will be felt most should get to help make that decision, and they already did—they were instrumental to bringing in the oil tanker moratorium. We should respect it.

denise mullen responds to anna barford

It is true. The stretch of coastline from the tip of Vancouver Island to the border with Alaska at the Portland Channel is one of the most stunning places on earth, a rugged expanse of fjords, islands and rich biodiversity. It is also home to communities who depend on these waters. It deserves respect and care.

But the tanker ban in this region is rooted not in modern evidence, but in catastrophizing a possibility from the past. It is a blunt, one-size-fits-all instrument that ignores today’s world-leading marine safety systems and denies communities along the full supply chain—including Indigenous communities who support responsible development—the opportunity to participate in the economic benefits of Canada’s resource sector.

The moratorium was not born from balanced risk assessment. It was born from fear, amplified by availability bias: a vivid event like the Exxon Valdez disaster imprints so deeply that we assume it will repeat, even when technology, regulation and industry standards have fundamentally changed. Fear is understandable. But when emotion becomes the foundation for public policy, we stop evaluating real-world evidence and weighing risks and benefits. Instead, we default to “better safe than sorry,” even when the cost is lost opportunity for families, communities, the province and the country.

And that is what we have done.

If we project forward based on this mindset, the alternative vision of 2070 is not a pristine coastal utopia, but a Canada that traded away opportunity and economic security because it allowed fear to outweigh facts. In this future, small coastal communities that could have thrived as hubs of responsibly managed energy exports are left dependent on seasonal tourism and government transfers. Inland towns that once supported resource development see their children leave, services shrink and their standard of living fall to historic lows.

This isn’t some far-off cautionary tale. Today Canada has the second-worst economic performance in the OECD and is forecast to have the weakest GDP-per-capita growth through 2060. We already feel the pressure: long ER waits, infrastructure funding strains, tight budgets for schools and social programs. Responsible, well-regulated energy development, including safe tanker traffic, supports the revenues and investment that keep those systems strong. We don’t strengthen Canada by shutting down opportunity. We strengthen it by leading the world in safe, responsible development that protects both our coast and our economic future.

The tanker ban and pipeline opposition more broadly are part of the same story. In 2019 we effectively cut off northern tidewater access for one of Canada’s most productive sectors because fears carried more weight than facts. That decision didn’t cut global demand for fossil fuels or reduce GHG emissions. It only shifted supply to other countries with weaker environmental standards and fewer protections for workers and communities.

The ban was born not from balanced risk assessment but fear, amplified by the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Meanwhile, global energy demand continues to grow as populations rise and as aviation, shipping, petrochemicals and heavy industry expand. The world needs responsibly produced oil, and instead of stepping up to supply it, we have been standing in our own way. Our allies are seeking secure, democratic energy partners, and Canada should be their first choice.

And this isn’t just about oil. As a country built on responsible resource development and trade, Canada is at risk of shutting down what we have done responsibly for generations. Instead of leading with innovation, strong regulation and genuine partnership with Indigenous people, we are undermining the very strengths that once defined us.

Canada can protect the Great Bear Sea while participating in the world. We can uphold the highest environmental and marine safety standards, because we already do. Spill incidents have declined for over 30 years thanks to double-hulled tankers, modern navigation and emergency preparedness. Protecting our coast and protecting our prosperity are not competing goals. They are interconnected. Canada has everything it needs to become a safe solution for a world that needs secure, responsibly produced energy during the transition.

The tanker ban has not made Canada stronger. It has made us poorer, and without improving global environmental outcomes. It is time to choose confidence over fear, excellence over prohibition, and leadership over withdrawal. The Great Bear Sea can remain one of the most cherished places on earth, not because we turned away from opportunity but because we led responsibly while safeguarding it.

anna barford responds to denise mullen

Denise Mullen raises some interesting points but excludes some important facts and perspectives.

The story of the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act is one of Indigenous advocacy, organized local communities and businesses already operating in the area. The legislation prevents the destruction of a region too precious to lose. When heavy crude from tar sands spills, there is no recovery. The legacy of even one major spill off the coast of northern BC would be a scar carved through species, the shore and anyone that’s been touched by this region.

We haven’t had a catastrophic tanker accident in the region because we don’t allow tankers to operate there. And we haven’t been so lucky on the BC coast when it comes to other vessels. In 2016 the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart spilled 110,000 litres of diesel near Bella Bella, with huge impacts. In 2021 the massive MV Zim Kingston caught fire, and the coast to this day is dotted with its spilled cargo. Increased traffic on the BC coast has seen more ships strike whales and more underwater pollution.

We must work to avoid further disasters, not pretend they’re impossible. Double-hulled tankers are still subject to human error in manufacture and operation, vulnerable to extreme weather and waves, and at risk from other boats also controlled by humans. And they are primarily designed to cruise the open ocean, not the network of channels and islands in the Great Bear Sea, which requires sharp turns and is known for its rough waters. Even with an additional layer of protection, if something does leak or spill, the damage would be costly and irreversible.

The energy sector has abundant access to tidewater, and already an oil pipeline and terminal operates on the west coast: the Trans Mountain system. There is capacity to export more tar sands across the Salish Sea, and the Port of Vancouver facilitates other energy exports too, including coal. The energy sector is also barrelling ahead with exports via the Great Bear Sea through Prince Rupert and with a liquid natural gas (LNG) facility at Kitimat, with expansion plans in other locations.

The fossil fuel component of the energy sector contributes relatively few jobs, relatively little GDP and keeps very little value in Canada. Dominated by multinationals and oligarchs associated with crumbling democracies and human rights violations around the world, fossil fuels are building an economy that doesn’t serve Canadians or contribute to peace or prosperity globally. LNG Canada’s owners, for example, include a multinational, three state-owned oil companies and an investor group backed by Saudi Aramco. Energy does more for the MAGA crew than for Canadians, because major projects demand taxpayer subsidies and spew pollution. More tankers put at risk existing interests such as those of fisheries, tourism and local food security.

We can’t pretend further disasters are impossible. Even double-hulled tankers are subject to human error.

The Great Bear Sea is a wondrous place teeming with wildlife and communities supported by the ecosystem, and it is special partially because of the policy protections in place. The incredible vision already displayed in the region positions Canada as a leader in Marine Protected Areas created and managed by Indigenous people.

Meanwhile, investors look for a consistent policy landscape to assess strategy and potential market growth. Flip-flopping on the BC coast tanker ban would send a message that Canadians are governed by “vibes” and can’t discern what’s worth holding on to. Consider too the potential for investment in other industries, the innovation that could be sparked with the billions of dollars that Canadians currently funnel to fossil fuels.

What happens if we leave the ban in place Tar sands products will continue to be exported via the Trans Mountain pipeline, and the Great Bear Sea will continue to export LNG while also supporting fishing, tourism and healthy communities. An oil tanker rupture in the Great Bear Sea will be avoided because we see the importance of a diversified, resilient and sustainable economy.

What happens if we rip up the ban In the worst case scenario, oil spills will foul the Great Bear Sea. Fishing could become a memory, along with the jobs and dreams of small-scale fishermen who own their own boats. No BC wild fish in local restaurants; no exporting BC fish. Ghost towns spring up where once tourism invigorated locals and visitors alike.

A catastrophic spill in the Great Bear Sea would only need to happen once to eliminate economic opportunities grown over generations. Forcing BC to allow more tar sands to pour across the province—via land and sea—is the opposite of unity; it is the pitting of westerners against each other. Indigenous people are clear. Local communities are clear. Private companies are clear. The BC tanker ban must be maintained.

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Read more from the archive “Freedom Gas?” April 2023.

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Should Canada Cap Oil and Gas Emissions?

Aly Hyder Ali and Heather Exner-Pirot — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 10:00:34 +0000

Aly Hyder Ali says YES

Program Manager, Oil and Gas, at Environmental Defence

Canada is running out of time to meet its climate goals, and the biggest obstacle standing in the way is unchecked pollution from the oil and gas industry. Despite being responsible for nearly a third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint. While other sectors have reduced theirs, oil and gas emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990. The solution is clear: Canada needs a strong, enforceable emissions cap on the oil and gas industry—one that ensures real reductions, not more delay.

The global energy transition is accelerating. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for oil and gas will peak this decade, then decline. Other countries are ramping up investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean technology. If Canada continues to lean on an emissions-intensive, high-cost, fossil-based economy, we’ll be left behind. An emissions cap would send a clear message that we’re serious about transitioning to a clean, future-ready economy. It would drive innovation, create opportunities in renewable energy and reduce the risk of stranded assets.

But this isn’t just about future markets; it’s about protecting Canadians right now. Pollution from fossil fuels is linked to thousands of deaths each year and contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Communities near oil and gas facilities face higher risks of exposure to toxic pollutants. Wildfires, droughts and floods—driven by rising temperatures—have become a costly reality across Canada. Cutting oil and gas emissions is a direct investment in public health and safety.

Then there’s the climate responsibility. Canada can’t meet its GHG emissions reduction targets without addressing its largest source of pollution: the oil and gas industry. Voluntary measures from the sector have been largely non-existent. Companies have spent millions of dollars to talk a good game, but data tells us a different story. Investments in decarbonization remain a fraction of what’s needed, while capital spending continues to expand fossil fuel operations. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies in Canada are actively lobbying against climate regulations, all while recording massive profits.

A cap isn’t about punishing the oil and gas industry. It’s about fairness and responsibility and building the kind of nation we want to be. We need to invest in a healthier, sustainable future, not cling to outdated, polluting systems that benefit the few at the cost of the many. Every sector must do its part. Canadian households are already adapting to reduce their carbon footprint. It’s time Canada’s biggest polluters followed suit to help build a stronger, cleaner and more equitable country.

We can’t afford more delays. This is a pivotal moment for climate leadership and for real nation-building. For the health of our economy, our environment and future generations, it is time to make the emissions cap a reality.

heather exner-pirot says no

Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment

Greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change, and it’s in our self-interest to reduce them. By doing so we would also improve air and water quality. I’m for reducing emissions. But the question is whether Canada should cap oil and gas emissions. I say no, and the main reason is that oil and gas isn’t under Canada’s jurisdiction; it’s under Alberta’s.

Section 92A(1) of the Constitution Act affirms that provinces have the “exclusive” ability to make laws for the “development, conservation and management” of non-renewable natural resources. This was tested with the Supreme Court’s October 2023 ruling in Reference re: Impact Assessment Act. The majority identified that the federal government’s broad scope of “effects within federal jurisdiction” under the IAA would allow them to deny projects solely based on their GHG emissions. They determined that this eroded the balance inherent in the Canadian federal state and was unconstitutional.

Indeed, Alberta has already exercised its jurisdiction on this issue and does have a cap on its oil sands emissions. It passed legislation in 2017, under the Notley government, and limits total oil sands emissions to 100 megatonnes (MT) annually. Currently the oil sands emit about 80.1 MT, and there is no foreseeable future where they would exceed that cap. Emissions intensity—the amount of CO₂e per barrel produced—has declined in the oil sands for six straight years.

So, Canada has no jurisdiction to cap oil and gas emissions, and Alberta has already capped its oil sands emissions. This should be the end of the debate. It’s not, however, because the federal government has expressed its intention to impose an emissions cap on Canadian oil and gas and has proposed draft regulations to that effect. These would be a disaster on every front: economically, politically, legally and technically.

It would be hard to imagine a more expensive or divisive policy. The regulations are a relic of Trudeau-era ideology rejected in the 2025 election. They wouldn’t just cut emissions but would cut production too: of oil sands oil, conventional oil, natural gas and liquids such as propane. They would result in less investment, fewer jobs, a diminishment of royalties and corporate taxes, no new LNG terminals, no new pipelines, no Atlantic offshore development and no new export markets. Just the threat of them has already harmed the economy.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer determined that the cost of the emissions cap to Canada’s GDP would be $20.5-billion by 2032 and that the cap would cut 7.1 megatonnes of GHGs. That’s an implied carbon price of $2,887 per tonne. Prime minister Mark Carney “axed” the consumer carbon tax of $80 per tonne. If our goal is to cut emissions, it could be done more cheaply by means other than an oil and gas emissions cap.

Canadians want to build infrastructure, grow the economy and diversify trade. No policy threatens this more than the proposed emissions cap does. It needs to be quashed, for good.

Aly Hyder Ali responds to Heather Exner-Pirot

Heather Exner-Pirot argues that Canada should not cap oil and gas emissions, citing constitutional overreach, economic harm and lack of necessity. But closer scrutiny shows these claims don’t hold. The oil and gas sector is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, its voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed, and a federal cap is both legally justified and economically necessary.

Exner-Pirot references provincial powers under Section 92A of the Constitution and the 2023 Impact Assessment case. But this misrepresents the scope of federal powers. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the federal government has authority over matters of “national concern.” GHG emissions are transboundary pollutants, which means that what Alberta emits affects Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. The 2021 Supreme Court reference case on carbon pricing explicitly upheld Ottawa’s right to regulate GHG emissions, calling this a national concern. A federal cap on oil and gas emissions targets pollution, not resource extraction, making it constitutional.

Yes, the oil and gas industry has made some progress in reducing emissions intensity. But total oil and gas emissions continue to be Canada’s largest source of climate pollution. Since 2005 oil and gas emissions have increased significantly, even as other sectors have shrunk theirs.

Exner-Pirot also foresees job losses and GDP decline under an oil and gas emissions cap. But global markets are already shifting: the International Energy Agency projects global demand for fossil fuels will peak this decade. Supporting fossil fuel expansion is bad for the environment and economically irresponsible. Conversely, clean energy investments are surging worldwide.

She also highlights the cost per tonne of reductions but ignores the massive economic and health damages tied to climate inaction. Climate disasters are increasingly expensive: 2024 was the costliest year for severe-weather-related insurance losses in Canadian history, at over $8-billion. And this is only expected to get worse, as 2025 is already our second-worst wildfire season ever. Furthermore, the Canadian Climate Institute estimates that climate impacts will reduce Canada’s GDP by $25-billion starting this year. The damage will only spread if we ignore climate change.

Oil and gas is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, and voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed.

The health costs too are staggering. Air pollution from fossil fuels causes an estimated 34,000 premature deaths annually in Canada, with direct economic and societal consequences. Additionally, a recent study published in the journal Science shows that air pollution from the Athabasca oil sands may be up to 6,300 per cent higher than industry-reported figures. This pollution would rival all other human-made sources in Canada combined, and it raises dire health concerns for nearby communities.

The harms of oil and gas emissions aren’t evenly distributed. Air pollution disproportionally affects communities—particularly Indigenous, racialized and low-income—that are closest to industrial sites or lack resources to protect themselves. Indigenous communities near the oil sands face higher rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses linked to industrial emissions.

A cap is not an extra burden. It’s risk mitigation and protection for public health and the economy.

Exner-Pirot says an oil and gas emissions cap would be divisive. But depending solely on households and small businesses to shoulder Canada’s emissions-mitigation burden while oil and gas companies continue to pump out vast amounts of pollution with no accountability is inequitable. Rather than divisive, an oil and gas emissions cap would share responsibility fairly. It would ensure that industry’s operations align with national and international climate goals. If industry were to support a cap, they would show they’re serious about reducing emissions. This would send clear signals to investors, workers and communities that a smooth, fair transition is possible—rather than a chaotic collapse.

Exner-Pirot calls a cap unconstitutional, economically damaging and unnecessary. But constitutionality is established by a Supreme Court ruling. An early transition is far more economically prudent than clinging to fossil-fuel dependence, as renewables offer stronger long-term returns and avoid risk of stranding assets. Emissions data contradict the promise of voluntary emissions reduction from the oil and gas industry. And the health and environmental costs of delay are crippling, with climate disasters and pollution already exacting a heavy toll.

Canada promised in 2021 to cap oil and gas emissions. Fulfilling that commitment is not about ideology but about survival. Implementing an enforceable federal cap is about safeguarding our climate, economy and communities. It is time to deliver on that promise.

Heather Exner-Pirot responds to Aly Hyder Ali

What’s the case for capping oil and gas emissions According to Aly Hyder Ali, it boils down to some tried and true environmentalist warnings: we can’t meet our Paris Agreement commitments without a cap; companies won’t reduce emissions without a cap; and we’ll be left behind in the energy transition if we don’t do it.

I’ll grant him that our efforts to meet the Paris goal are all but certain to fail. That doesn’t preoccupy me much. For those people who still prioritize that goal, however, I reiterate it could be achieved at less cost to the Canadian economy than through imposing an emissions cap.

Hyder Ali argues that “the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint” and that “emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990.” The first point is demonstrably false, and the second is a red herring.

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector peaked in 2015, even though we’ve added over a million and a half barrels of production since then. How was this accomplished Through industry’s sincere efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, including through methane capture, electrification and efficiency measures.

Emissions intensity per barrel in Canada has decreased by over one-third since 2000. This kind of achievement takes significant human, physical and financial capital, and yet it is totally dismissed.

It’s unfair for Hyder Ali to point to 1990 as a benchmark year. Emissions rose sharply between then and the early 2010s because a couple hundred billion dollars of investment in the oil sands came to fruition and production grew dramatically. But ever since 2015—the year of the Paris Agreement—we have seen a decoupling between production growth and emissions. We know that the oil sands can meaningfully reduce GHGs.

Not only does the federal government not have the jurisdiction to enforce a cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

The argument that Canada will be “left behind” unless we turn to greener alternatives is rarely substantiated. The main markets for our oil, led by the US, do not pay a premium for lower-carbon products. And our LNG is already some of the least GHG-intense in the world.

We can plainly see Europe’s economic trajectory as it has tried to decarbonize its energy and offshore its industrial activity. This isn’t a path to emulate. Today most of the world isn’t ramping up its energy transition but rather plateauing—or, in the case of the USA, retreating. Bans on offshore drilling and fracking in New Zealand and Mexico have been reversed. Canada would be an outlier if it didn’t recalibrate some of its own expensive climate measures.

At any rate, there’s no reason to believe that a supportive environment for oil and gas production detracts from investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean tech. Quite the opposite: the revenues generated from a healthy oil and gas sector allow governments and corporations to invest in such technology. Starving the industry of capital and growth with a cap would inevitably result in it spending less on decarbonization, not more.

But my main criticism of Hyder Ali’s argument and those like it is they remain in the abstract, indifferent to the trade-offs involved. These are emotional and ideological appeals. They fail on the details. They’re impracticable. When the federal government proposed draft regulations and modelled the costs of an emissions cap, it was a hot mess. The assumptions made no sense, unintended consequences weren’t accounted for, the costing wasn’t logical and there were inherent contradictions.

How would a cap work with Alberta’s existing industrial carbon pricing and emissions trading system and comparable frameworks in BC, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland How can the energy sector meet ambitious targets without limiting production How can operators plan without knowing their exact compliance obligations We don’t know.

The proposed cap is emblematic of a policy approach that has put Canada’s unrealistic Paris commitment at the top of a hierarchy, with every other policy issue subordinate. This isn’t what Canadians want. We’re preoccupied with housing, the high cost of living, Trump’s threat to our economy. Prime minister Mark Carney ran on a promise to make Canada an energy superpower with the strongest economy in the G7. Paris and the 2030 commitment weren’t even mentioned in his platform. Nor was an emissions cap. Not only does his government not have the jurisdiction to enforce an emissions cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

We all want a healthy environment alongside a strong economy. We all want world-class environmental, social and governance standards. But it’s manifestly not in our interest to regulate our oil and gas to the point where production is so uncompetitive that other jurisdictions, likely higher-emitting ones, take up our market share. That’s the choice: produce oil and gas in Canada or let someone else—likely not a democracy or an ally—produce it instead. Hyder Ali is arguing for the latter.

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Dirty Cleanup Scheme

Bob Weber — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 10:00:29 +0000

Before becoming a band councillor of the Cold Lake First Nation, Sonny Nest was an oilpatch pressure welder. Back in the day, he fabricated well sites, assembled pipelines, whatever was required. After he retired and went to work for the band, he would engage with energy companies, ensuring his people got a share of the money being spent on their traditional territory. He knew his way around the industry and the land, and people got in the habit of calling him with questions.

He got one such question early in September 2017. A fellow councillor sent him a text about something going on at a well on band lands. Nest got in his truck to have a look. A security guard wouldn’t let him on site, but Nest just barged through. “I backed up and made like I was leaving,” he recalls. “When she closed [her truck] door, I just drove right by.” What he saw has never left him.

“It looked like nighttime in the middle of the day,” Nest says. Oil was shooting 100 metres into the air. Nest figures wind blew the plume for nearly half a kilometre, well past the lease boundaries and into nearby ponds. Within the lease, Nest says the oil and contaminated water pooled more than half a metre deep. He got as close and stayed as long as he dared, took some pictures, and left. There’s a video of Nest describing the blowout at a September 25 band council meeting. He can barely speak through his anger. “That whole area is pretty badly covered,” he said. “This didn’t happen on a lease pad. This happened on our territory, our water, our animals. The province mismanaged this. They’re not doing what they have to do.”

The Alberta Energy Regulator’s (AER’s) records for incident 329397 describe a prompt, efficient and thorough cleanup. Vacuum trucks were already onsite by the time Nest arrived. Hundreds of poplars—clean and white on one side, oily black on the other—were cut, chipped and hauled away. Absorbent booms sucked guck from ponds and streams. Contaminated topsoil was stripped.

Of an estimated 250 m³ of oil and contaminated water that shot from downhole, about 190 m³ was reportedly recovered. No wildlife or water impacts were documented. In November 2018 an assessment by the company and released under access to information legislation found “no elevated surface or soil concentrations associated with the release.” Incident 329397 was officially closed.

Nest isn’t buying it. He’s seen plenty of spills, and he scoffs at the official release estimate. He saw bears and two flocks of geese the day of the blowout. Cranberries, eaten by bears, were exposed to the plume. Nest hunts and traps for food, but he no longer harvests that area. “I won’t take anything from where the contamination happened,” he said. “I’ll never feel safe there.”

Nest doesn’t trust the AER. Neither do many other Albertans. “The trust has been broken,” a government report titled the “Mature Asset Strategy” admitted in April 2025. The report was commissioned by premier Danielle Smith as part of her review of the AER.

The regulator is responsible for the “safe, efficient, orderly and environmentally responsible development of energy resources throughout their life cycle.” Trust has been broken at every stage of this cycle. Smith’s report focuses on the province’s “orphan well” issue and “related challenges surrounding legacy asset retirement and closure funding.” It adds that a lack of trust was “voiced repeatedly by representatives of rural municipalities and private surface-lease owners,” the very communities the oil and gas industry works most closely with.

He doesn’t trust the AER. Neither do others. “Trust has been broken,” a government report admitted in April 2025.

Such an admission from the government is new. The author of it is surprising too—David Yager, a long-time oil and gas industry insider, conservative activist and confidant of premier Smith. Yager led the consultation that resulted in the Mature Asset Strategy. “Mature assets” is the industry term for the hundreds of thousands of wells, pipelines and outbuildings that continue to dot the Alberta landscape years after the oil and profits are gone.

The report’s proposals are the clearest indications of how Smith intends to address Albertans’ low trust in the AER. Officials say the strategy will ease industry burdens, free resources for cleanup, return activity to parts of the province and accelerate remediation. Critics, however, say the strategy simply caters to industry, and will transfer risks—and the costs of restoring sites to their previous state—to taxpayers. Bill Heidecker, president of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, called the strategy a “Christmas wish list” for industry. “I’m outright disgusted,” he said. “The predetermined outcome was that the industry needed more leniency. That is extremely disturbing to landowners.”

For decades, independent researcher Kevin Timoney has explored how trust in the AER was broken. He’s poked and prodded at how the regulator reaches conclusions like the one delivered in 329397. That work has resulted in five published, peer-reviewed scientific papers and two books. “What the AER is reporting to the public is very different from what they have in hand,” he says. “The public doesn’t know what’s going on.”

This past winter he published research looking at 514 spills between January 2014 and March 2023. He compared how spills were recorded in three different databases: the official AER record, records from the province’s Environmental Management System, and spill reports released under access to information legislation. He found some odd things. First, according to the AER records, crews either got all the oil (75 per cent of cases recorded 100 per cent cleanup) or none of it. “In practice, most spills would experience partial recovery, but no partial recoveries were recorded,” he wrote in the journal Environmental Monitoring Assessment. Those all-or-nothing records, he wrote, “demonstrate that the values are subjectively chosen and arbitrary, not the result of measurement.”

The AER’s ability—or willingness—to evaluate even the size of Alberta’s oil and gas liability problem is in doubt.

As well, spill volumes in the AER record were consistently lower than those in the other two sources—sometimes by a lot. The AER recorded one spill as 45,000 m³; the access-to-information documents recorded volumes 100 times larger. The AER also under-reports spill numbers, Timoney says, because it sometimes lumps together spills in the same area. The AER’s 514 spills break out into 989 different events.

Spill footprint estimates were also suspect. The AER says almost all spills affected less than 100 m² of land. At the same time, it reports most spills released more than 10 m³ of oil or gas, and nearly 40 per cent released more than 100 m³. “It is unlikely that spill volumes of more than 10 m³ could be contained within (that) area, and virtually impossible for spill volumes of more than 100 m³ to be contained within (that) area,” Timoney wrote. Spill locations were inaccurate, sometimes by many kilometres. Dates were wrong. More than once he found recovery volumes exceeding spill estimates.

And everywhere in the AER record, he said, are assumptions that spills caused no harm and that contaminants were captured. “You keep looking for the proof and it’s not there. The entire system is based on industrial self-reporting. It doesn’t take a large jump in logic to realize that the people spilling this material have a vested interest in under-reporting the volumes and effects.”

Spills occur at active wells, but Alberta has many more wells that are either inactive or squeezing out a mere trickle of oil. Albertans—especially landowners on whose property the wells are sited—expect those sites to be returned to their original state. A big part of the AER’s job is to track those impacts and enforce industry efforts to, in the words of right-wing sage Jordan Peterson, “clean up your room.”

For more than a decade, academics at the University of Calgary have tracked the AER’s performance. Their work can often be found on ABlawg, a go-to website for informed legal commentary about provincial laws and policies. In February 2025 ABLawg analyzed the AER’s 2023 liability management performance report. Its conclusion: “This is not a performance report—it is another exercise in public relations.”

Cleanup spending is increasing. The AER had set a $700-million industry-wide requirement in 2024, which was to increase to $750-million this year. Industry has significantly exceeded that target. But that’s not the whole story. Law professor Shaun Fluker, a regular ABLawg contributor, points out the AER has never explained how that spending target was set. As well, the regulator divides wells into low, medium and high risk without defining those categories. And Fluker notes the number of high-risk wells, representing at least $2-billion in liability by the AER’s own estimates, has barely budged. Nor is there any schedule for when the province’s already depleted wells will be cleaned up. “The AER is allowing industry to tread water,” Fluker says.

Fluker says there isn’t enough information to gauge cleanup progress. “The regulator’s not really helping us understand how effective the regulatory framework really is. We don’t have benchmarks, and there are no real stated goals. The regulator’s not telling us how they use this information in actual decision-making, other than to say they do. ‘Trust us’ isn’t well received.”

Although the AER now collects security deposits when well licences are transferred to companies considered high-risk, these amount to less than a quarter of the estimated cleanup cost, Fluker says. Little security is required for low-risk transfers. That, he says, kicks the liability can down the road until the resource that would have paid for cleanup is pumped out and piped away.

The AER’s ability—or willingness—to evaluate even the size of the problem is in doubt. It now estimates there’s about $36-billion worth of oil and gas industry liability in Alberta to clean up. However, internal AER documents reported on by The Canadian Press suggested a total tab of $88-billion. Other internal AER estimates have gone as high as $260-billion, although the regulator has since said those represent a hypothetical worst-case scenario and calls them “an error in judgment.”

The vast range of estimates shows Alberta doesn’t actually have a handle on its single greatest environmental challenge, Fluker says. “The AER continues to use methodology it developed at the turn of the century that has been shown to be wildly inaccurate.” Alberta’s Auditor General has pointed out the problem several times. The AG’s 2023 report on the regulator found problems with poor performance measures, lack of timelines, and lax inspections.

Even industry acknowledges problems. Consultants have developed their own ways of estimating what they call asset retirement obligations, a crucial calculation for any company committed to maintaining accurate books. “We recognize that current AER liability estimates, while valuable, have inherent limitations,” wrote Jennifer Baerg of Xi Technologies, a Calgary firm that helps energy companies estimate their true cleanup costs. “They do not currently include remediation costs within reclamation figures, and the public data used is constrained by regulatory scope and availability …We believe it is prudent for companies to go beyond basic compliance and also utilize other methods for calculating end of life costs for oil and gas assets.”

In February the AER published reforms to how it estimates liability. These commit the regulator to provide data on total estimated liability as well as assessments of the abilities of individual licence holders to meet environmental commitments.

But even those welcome changes lack specifics on exactly what will be released, Fluker says. As well, the changes only clarify how the AER sets its cost estimates, without improving them. “The AER is aware these estimates are out of date and significantly too low but is delaying updating these cost estimates,” Fluker wrote in an ABLawg analysis. Neither do the estimates include the cost of remediating pipelines, a multi-billion-dollar item. The changes also let the AER determine how much cleanup security is required rather than legislating levels.

It’s as if the province has awoken the morning after a lively party. It’s time to tidy up, but there are dirty glasses all over the house and some guests are still around, piling up more dishes. The mess includes not only leaks at active well sites and neglected cleanup at tens of thousands more sites, but unpaid taxes to rural municipalities that at end of 2024 totalled about $254-million and 274,215 marginal and non-producing wells. The Mature Asset Strategy is the government’s vision for how to keep the party going while clearing enough tabletops to set down fresh drinks.

The strategy’s proposals result from a series of consultations held between August and December 2024. They involved nine provincial ministries, four provincial agencies, five municipal governments, five rural or municipal agencies, six industry trade organizations, three Indigenous representatives—and 64 private oil and gas companies.

It seems, in places, to suggest a large part of the problem lies with an ungrateful, misinformed and demanding public. “For decades,” David Yager wrote, “resource development in Alberta was built on a partnership between the public (as owners of most subsurface resources) and private landowners (who provide access as required by law), underpinned by mutual benefit and respect. However, in the 21st century, resource wealth has been taken for granted, individual rights increasingly rival or surpass the so-called ‘greater good,’ and mature assets are now operated by underfunded licensees, making fixed costs—such as surface lease payments and property taxes—critical to sustaining operations.”

Easing the liability posed by those mature assets is a big part of the strategy. At present, producers must keep the possible environmental liabilities on their books long after old wells are officially closed, in case problems surface down the road. Those liabilities can persist for years. The strategy’s “long-term liability indemnity fund for closed assets post reclamation certificate” would enable producers to remove those liabilities by buying insurance for wells that have met cleanup standards, to protect against a possible future remediation failure. It would turn a long-term corporate liability into a small annual expense. Government officials, speaking on background, say money from industry in the insurance fund would cover “rare” environmental failures. The fund would be managed by government. This means the government would have to ensure the fund is adequate. If it were to become drained by multiple failures, which officials consider unlikely, taxpayers would top the fund up.

The strategy also proposes an entity called HarvestCo. This Crown corporation would take over marginal wells from failed companies that would otherwise be turned over to the Orphan Well Association, an industry-funded organization responsible for cleaning up wells for which no owner can be found. Instead of capping and closing them, HarvestCo would operate the wells and use the resulting revenue to fund cleanup of truly dry wells. Officials say HarvestCo would be viable because it wouldn’t have to generate a profit or a rate of return on money used to buy the wells. Those requirements, officials say, are why so-called “stripper” companies such as Sequoia Resources failed so spectacularly, dumping millions of dollars worth of liability onto the Orphan Well Association.

Critics say Alberta’s new cleanup strategy caters to industry, and transfers risks—and costs—to taxpayers.

The Mature Asset Strategy also seeks some way to lessen the impact of the Supreme Court of Canada’s “Redwater” decision. That ruling held that under federal bankruptcy law, a failed company’s legal environmental liabilities must be covered before creditors can divvy up what’s left. “Redwater” was hailed as a victory for the polluter-pay model. But industry has long held the decision adds risk for lenders and restricts access to capital. The strategy proposes that cleanup money should be attached to the well licence, not the licence holder. That means the purchase of a well would come with some remediation resources already in place, reducing lenders’ risk.

Two other proposals include issuing carbon credits for carbon dioxide pumped underground to force out more oil. The value in those credits could help finance remediation, the document says. Government officials say a similar model exists in the US, where companies sell the carbon credits they get from closing wells and use the money to fund reclamation. The strategy also suggests a more “transparent” process to review non-payment of taxes, a major concern of municipal governments, and a new quasi-judicial tribunal to adjudicate such disputes.

Observers welcome some of the strategy’s suggestions. Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary resource law professor, says attaching cleanup dollars to wells is a good idea. Companies would have to put up money up front, but they know it’ll be part of the purchase price when the well is sold and thus will come back to them. “When that asset changes hands, that money is always there,” Olszynski said. “How much money is another question, but it’s head and shoulders above the current system.”

But many concerns persist. Jason Schneider, reeve of Vulcan County, represented Rural Municipalities Alberta (RMA) at consultations that led up to the strategy. He says industry representatives dominated rushed discussions. Schneider sensed from the start that some kind of fix was in. “It was definitely weighted to oil and gas,” he said. “They definitely had much more opportunity to present their side. I felt like certain ideas were already in the works.”

Schneider also doubts a beefed-up, quasi-judicial Surface Rights Board can fix the unpaid tax issue. “We deal with a lot of these quasi-judicial boards,” he said. “They can be extremely frustrating to deal with. They’re given a mandate and it’s hands off. There’s no mechanism for when they make a bad decision.” Boards dealing with the energy industry tend to be dominated by people working in the industry, Schneider said. “They seem to develop their own mandates rather than serve the public.”

Paul McLauchlin is a former president of the RMA. He says the Mature Asset Strategy was written for industry. “It’s being driven by industry concerns, not by the concerns that are at hand, which are surface rights, taxes and liability reduction. It was never really defined what a mature asset was. If you’re going to give a lot of regulatory reductions, everybody in the province is going to call themselves a mature asset.”

On March 26, 2025, the Action Surface Rights Association sent a letter to its members suggesting the Mature Asset Strategy was more about protecting energy companies than landowners or the environment. “The few positive recommendations in this report are dwarfed by the negative impact of recommendations to loosen regulations on industry and reduce their liabilities, which can only be at the expense of landowners and taxpayers,” wrote Heidecker. “We are deeply troubled by (the strategy’s) direction.”

Heidecker said landowners weren’t even at some of the discussions behind many of the strategy’s proposals. “If the intent is to take this report and go straight to policy, there’s massive concerns. It wasn’t a proper stakeholder engagement.”

Critics are skeptical about both the insurance fund and HarvestCo. McLauchlin called HarvestCo a dodge to keep marginal wells out of the orphan well fund and reduce the need to increase the industry levy that funds it. That extra money will come instead from the public. “There’s no way they’re not going to be using public money,” said McLauchlin. “There is no business case for low-producing wells.” Olszynski said HarvestCo keeps profit in private hands while pushing the risk onto taxpayers. “When it comes down to marginal production, the profit-making enterprise walks away and the state enterprise picks it up. If we’re going to nationalize the sector, we should just nationalize the sector.” Olszynski also points out that, yet again, the government has refused to even suggest that some kind of timeline should be imposed on energy companies to clean up their wells.

New Democrat energy critic Nagwan Al-Guneid is concerned about an insurance fund “managed” by the province. “I’ve asked the minister what that actually means,” she said. “There’s no definition.” Al-Guneid points out that despite the confident tone of the strategy document, it contains no financial analysis of how—or even whether—HarvestCo or the insurance fund might actually work. Nor does it defend the common-sense idea that those responsible for a mess should clean it up. “There are zero mentions of the polluter-pay principle in this report,” she said. “This report seems like a scheme to use public money to cover for the cleanup of bankrupt oil companies.”

Al-Guneid fears that proposals given to a supposedly independent regulator are in fact backdoor government policy. She points out premier Smith has long supported the use of tax dollars to clean up after the energy industry. Smith called for such programs as head of the business lobby the Alberta Enterprise Group. As premier she told her energy ministers to implement royalty credits for companies that met cleanup obligations. As well, Yager himself is closely associated with Smith, boasting a 16-year friendship with the now premier. Yager is both a “special adviser” to Smith and sits on the AER’s board. Published reports have found he’s received at least four sole-source government contracts worth nearly $500,000.

“There is that history,” said Al-Guneid. “We’re seeing massive political interference in the process.” Indeed, in July the environmental law firm Ecojustice asked Alberta’s Ethics Commissioner to look into how the Mature Asset Strategy was developed. On behalf of a central Alberta landowner, it has asked Shawn McLeod to examine Yager’s role in the process, as well as his sole-source contracts. The firms allege Yager’s straddling the public–industry fence creates conflicts of interest and raises questions about the Mature Asset Strategy.

Government officials hasten to point out the Mature Asset Strategy document is just a series of proposals. They do not—yet—represent policy. Consultations and discussions will continue, officials say. They add that one of the main points of the report is to encourage industry activity in areas it has largely left. Most of the unpaid taxes and unreclaimed wells are in southern and central Alberta. Getting industry active again in those regions will restart the normal well life cycle, they say, culminating in cleanup. How long it will take, they’re not saying. They only say that at some point the problem will stop getting bigger. Government knows there’s a problem, and officials say they’re confident the strategy’s proposals will improve relations with rural municipalities and landowners.

But it’s not clear they go far enough to restore trust in the Alberta Energy Regulator—now commonly believed to be subservient to the industry it purports to regulate. “Nothing is broken here except the regulator,” McLauchlin said. “That trust has been broken for a long time. Is the AER a vehicle for extracting resources, or is it protecting the public good?”

Shaun Fluker too raises concerns about the AER’s relationship with the public. The agency is wholly funded by industry, which Fluker says isn’t uncommon for regulatory bodies. But, he says, for a body with a strong public interest mandate it has “precious little” public representation. “You have to be making sure that the regulator isn’t governed entirely by the industry it regulates. That leads strongly into situations such as regulatory capture.” He says the AER’s arm’s-length status from government is in doubt. The regulator was recently deferential to energy minister Brian Jean when he suggested a previously rejected coal exploration project should move to a public hearing. “That raised questions about the so-called independence of the regulator,” Fluker said.

I contacted the AER for this article. At its request, I sent the regulator a list of detailed questions about the concerns Albertans are raising. Its responses were to defer to the provincial government or point to public reports already released—the same reports on which its critics base their concerns. But it did respond to the following: “Over and over I hear the charge that the AER is a captured regulator. Is that fair Whom does the AER serve?”

This is its response, in its entirety: “The AER is mandated by the Responsible Energy Development Act to provide for the efficient, safe, orderly and environmentally responsible development of energy and mineral resources in Alberta. The AER carries out this statutory mandate in service of the interests of all Albertans. The AER’s mandate and governance structure ensures that the AER operates independently of the industries that it regulates, and at arm’s length from the government of Alberta.”

Landowners are running out of patience with such assurances. Dwight Popowich, the landowner behind the Ecojustice complaint, has a farm near Two Hills. It has one oil well that produced for about four years and has since sat idle for 13. Now he’s told by the Orphan Well Association that it’ll be at least another decade before it gets cleaned up. Enough, he said. Popowich, backed by landowner groups and other organizations, has filed a formal request for a hearing on how the AER has consistently allowed industry to underfund the cleanup of abandoned wells. That request uses the regulator’s own figures to suggest that in order to keep up with growing inventory, the Orphan Well Association is behind by $862-million, a gap that’s only expected to grow. The application also says the regulator is too willing to dance to the government’s tune.

“This is supposed to be arm’s length,” Popowich said. Now the provincial government is proposing to make the AER weaker than ever. “We’ve lost trust in the industry regulator,” he said. “When we lose trust in our institutions, we’re in trouble.”

Even the AER’s harshest critics acknowledge the need to keep Alberta’s energy industry viable. But patience is fading as the industry’s messes just keep getting bigger, and as its regulator grows increasingly unwilling to do its job. Just ask Sonny Nest. “The [AER] sticks a dipstick into the contamination and puts it in a vial and sends it to a lab. But that’s not the full amount. It says ‘That looks pretty good. Let’s call it a day.’ But I still don’t know what’s underground.”

Bob Weber retired this year from The Canadian Press. He started at CP in 1996 and specialized in environmental and Arctic issues.

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Update from The Narwhal “‘By the wayside’: rural Albertans are angry at companies not paying their bills” Nov 5, 2025.

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What a State

Curtis Gillespie — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:00:27 +0000

Who would have thought an animated cartoon from 1940 would be applicable to Alberta in 2025 In “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” part of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, Mickey Mouse plays the lowly helper to a powerful wizard. Anyone who grew up watching Disney cartoons will remember poor little Mickey fetching buckets of water to fill the well. When the sorcerer retires for the night, Mickey gets a bright idea. He dons the sorcerer’s hat and conjures up darkly powerful magic to compel a broom leaning against the wall to do the heavy lifting. Convinced of his brilliance, Mickey nods off.

He wakes up to find the broom flooding the house, bucket after bucket. He can’t summon the magic to stop it, and so he destroys the broom with an axe, leaving it in splinters. Unfortunately, magic proves more powerful than the axe. Each splinter turns into a new broom, and they take up the bucket work a hundredfold. It’s full-on chaos, a flood Mickey has no power to halt. He is rescued only when the sorcerer returns and restores control through a mature use of magic. Mickey is chided by the sorcerer and literally swept out of the room. The message is obvious: don’t play with things you don’t understand and can’t control.

We’re living in an Alberta version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In the most fraught of political moments, we’re governed by a premier playing with forces she doesn’t understand and can’t control.

When Donald Trump won a second term, people of sound mind worried about a thousand things. Ukraine, NATO, the Supreme Court, the media, higher education, the climate, Russia, Taiwan, the global economy, the state of democracy, race relations, LGBTQ+ rights, the nuclear arsenal, Iran, the Middle East… the list goes on and on. It’s probably safe to say that Trump threatening to take over Canada wasn’t one of them. But now that that bizarre threat is here, it seems an almost obvious extension of Trump’s grotesque sense of entitlement. Of course he wants to take over Canada. It just makes sense! The border is artificial (as opposed to, you know, all those other borders), and wouldn’t America be even greater if Canada were the 51st state It’s not annexation, it’s a win–win!

Absurd and offensive and ignorant, yes. But that doesn’t mean the threat isn’t real. Because in his uniquely and yet somehow captivatingly moronic way, Trump has put his finger on (and poked) Canada’s most exposed nerve, our vulnerability in being on the north side of the world’s longest undefended—and now longest disrespected—border. It’s a fate that brings with it certain realities and certain comparators, such as Russia and Latvia, or China and Taiwan. Latvia and Taiwan are minnows hooked to whales through history, geography, language, economics and culture. Yet they are distinct and unique countries. As is Canada.

But as David French in The New York Times and Will Saletan in The Bulwark, among others, have recently pointed out, Trump views Canada as “his Ukraine.” Meaning, he sees Canada as a territory well within his rights to annex or, at the very least, to make us, in French’s terms, a “nominally independent vassal” of the US. Saletan even noted the similarities in the rhetoric between Trump and Putin when talking about Canada and Ukraine, respectively. “Artificial borders,” “economic reliance,” “shared language”—Trump sees these as evidence of his imperialist thesis. Take him literally or take him for a fool, but anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth has the potential to be acted upon.

Cheryl Oates is a political and public affairs consultant who was premier Rachel Notley’s executive director of communication and planning. Oates sees a transition in the current climate from farce to something considerably more alarming. “From the beginning,” she says, “people didn’t take the things Trump said very seriously. But the rhetoric escalated quickly, and the day he said ‘I have ruled out using military force to take Canada’ was really, to me, a wake-up call. Wait, what?! What have you ruled out We’re talking about an economic war, I think, with huge implications for Canada. It’s not a joke anymore.”

In other words, on top of all our internal challenges, Canada currently finds itself next door to a country run by a sociopathic criminal advocating the dissolution, or at least the submission, of our country. He wants us to bend the knee to the sovereign. Not only do we dismiss this threat at our provincial and national peril, but it has broader and bleaker global implications.

Into this maelstrom of geopolitical chaos skipped our folksy premier, arriving, as she said, to “play good cop,” in the middle of a Canadian federal election no less, which, I guess, made Mark Carney the bad cop. But even if the situation had called for a good cop, Danielle Smith would hardly be suited to the role. Her political track record is full of the kind of mistakes, misreads, naiveté and political miscalculation that doom most politicians not named Trump. As Maclean’s noted prior to the last provincial election, Smith’s troubles are due mostly “to her inability to keep her foot out of her mouth, and her susceptibility to some truly out-there ideas.” The article noted she has “refuted the existence of mass graves around residential schools… and [said] Russia invaded Ukraine to fight neo-Nazis and shut down US-funded bioweapons labs. She has been especially vocal when spreading misinformation about COVID-19… and compared vaccinated Canadians to supporters of Hitler.” The magazine reminded readers that Smith won the UCP leadership by embracing the fringe right through such groups as Take Back Alberta. Since getting elected she has threatened to delink Alberta from the Canada Pension Plan and wrought havoc at AHS, prompting multiple investigations into corruption.

When external menace was added to the mix once Trump began musing about making Canada the 51st state and began referring to Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau,” it seemed a signal, surely, to recognize that these are different times, serious times. Prudence, caution and national cohesion would have seemed appropriate.

A country run by a sociopathic criminal advocates the submission of our country.

Instead, Danielle Smith has gone her own way, mostly by playing footsie with so many elements of the American right that she’s worn a hole in her socks. Visiting Mar-a-Lago like some giddy tourist. Appearing on stage at PragerU in Florida with extremist Ben Shapiro. Standing alongside Trump bootlicker Kevin O’Leary. Sending direct signals to the Trump administration that the oil and gas sector (wink, wink, Alberta) should be exempt from tariffs. Refusing to join her fellow premiers in a put-Canada-first show of strength. Presenting Carney with a MAGA-adjacent set of ultimatums upon first meeting him and threatening a national unity crisis if her demands are not met. Siding with a loony op-ed from Preston Manning advocating Alberta secession if the Liberals emerged victorious in the federal election. And interfering in the federal election to the detriment of fellow conservative Pierre Poilievre, by appearing on Breitbart News and pointing out to extreme-right Americans that Poilievre was “in sync” with Trump, a move that may have helped scuttle the Conservative ship in the election.

“When you start to put together all the things she’s doing,” says Ken Boessenkool, a long-time conservative strategist, “you have to ask yourself, what exactly does she think she’s doing I don’t even know what she herself believes. All I know is that some of the things she says and believes are crazy and deeply worrying.”

Carney said during the campaign that Canada and the US have, effectively, divorced. He doubled down in his victory speech, referencing the “American betrayal” and added, “America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. President Trump is trying to break us so he can own us. That will never happen… This is Canada, and we decide what happens here.” Ontario Progressive Conservative premier Doug Ford sent Carney a note after the election congratulating him and stating explicitly that he was looking forward to working with the federal government to strengthen our union in the face of the American threat. Carney has clearly been reflecting the mood of the country by bluntly telling Trump to butt out.

Smith, on the other hand, has all but sent Trump roses and chocolates.

“It’s almost as if she’s been saying Trump is right and Canada should be the 51st state,” says Boessenkool. “When a prominent—idiotic but still prominent—Canadian in Kevin O’Leary says we should negotiate this 51st state thing with Trump because it’s a real opportunity, and then you go stand beside him to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago, what do you think Trump thinks She may not have said it explicitly, but implicitly she put herself in the camp of ‘Huh, there just might be something to this 51st state thing.’ You really do have to wonder what she thinks she’s doing there.”

It’s a good question. And an urgent one. This is not about decoding whether Smith is courting the American right. She is. Nor is it about whether she thinks she’s cleverly using a hypothetical Americanization of Alberta, literal or figurative, as a crowbar to pry concessions from Ottawa. She does. No, the real question is whether she actually understands what she’s playing with.

Political grievance in Alberta is like the weather. Sometimes it’s stormy, sometimes a bit calmer, but no matter what, the turbulence is going to come back. Yes, in some ways Alberta is taken for granted by Ottawa, but so is every other province. That’s the nature of our system of government. I have argued in the past that Alberta’s grievances are exaggerated, misunderstood or both. The emotion behind them, however, is powerful. A wise approach would be not to stoke anger but to understand and ease it, to damp down the outrage with common sense, facts and dialogue. Smith doesn’t work this way. She knows precisely in which lobe of the brain voter indignation resides. She can agitate it with precise political tools. She’s activating a real emotion with disingenuous stimuli. The persecuted Albertan is her lab specimen.

Whatever you think about why Smith is positioning Alberta this way in relation to both Canada and the US, the people around the premier certainly have a plan. Her inner circle and particularly the executive director of the premier’s office, Rob Anderson, have long had designs on unravelling Canada and making Alberta more like the US. Anderson is a big ideological influence on Smith; in the same way Rod Love was Ralph Klein’s brain, he is the breeze that fills the Smith windsock. Anderson was one of the co-authors of the 2021 Free Alberta Strategy, which outlined how and why Alberta should pursue independence, and which then became the template for the Sovereignty Act of 2022. Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political science professor and another co-author of the Free Alberta Strategy, noted that the Sovereignty Act was expressly designed to be unconstitutional. Numerous prominent Conservatives, including former premier Jason Kenney, labelled the Sovereignty Act ill-advised or worse.

Cheryl Oates has long seen the pattern. “I don’t know if there’s ever been an Alberta politician who didn’t pick up on the anti-Ottawa sentiment,” says Oates. “It’s popular. If you ask Albertans if they feel they’re getting a fair deal in Canada, most will say no. Where it goes too far is when because of that frustration people are willing to consider themselves Albertans before Canadians or even consider not being a part of Canada. To me, it’s crazy that the leader of our province sees the prime minister of our own country as more of a threat to Alberta than Donald Trump. It’s disappointing that she tries to act as a diplomat toward the Americans and yet can’t demonstrate that inside Canada.”

“Danielle Smith is one of the most skilled communicators Canadian politics has ever produced,” says Boessenkool. “[And] I know what Rob Anderson’s strategy is, because he wrote it down. It’s not complicated. We should bring in the Sovereignty Act, we should fight Ottawa at every step, and if we don’t win, we should separate.”

Smith and Anderson must see currying favour with the US as a handy tool to advance their aims. It surely demonstrates to Ottawa that Alberta deserves better, because “Look, the most powerful country on earth loves us, so why can’t we get more love from our own country?!” Smith’s strategy of cozying up to MAGA to weaken Canadian federalism and therefore strengthen our province might seem in line with time-honoured tactics from any Alberta premier. “We’re being disrespected by Ottawa… Americans ‘get’ Alberta better than our own capital does… our energy is prized worldwide but despised and restricted at home.” And so a convenient way to bolster provincial clout is to hold national unity hostage.

It’s going to get worse if Danielle Smith continues to animate the splinters of authoritarian sentiment.

But in dark times the pursuit of such a strategy is troubling. Smith isn’t flirting with Barack Obama’s regime. This isn’t a rancher’s coffee klatch between Ed Stelmach and George W. Bush. Trump and the MAGA movement are not Republicans. They’re not Democrats. They are not even democrats. They don’t value the principles of justice, equality or transparency that their own country was founded upon, let alone ours. Why would anyone want to become part of the US at this point in its history It’s a troubled society: polarized, unhealthy, violent, plagued by inequality, beset by corruption, ruled by a man who keeps surprising the world with how low he can set the bar. And yet this is the country and the leader that Smith is prostrating herself before.

And so what happens if Trump and his lieutenants take Smith at her Sovereignty Act word and aggressively pursue annexation or vassal status with Canada, thinking, “Okay, clearly people up there want to join us” Or what if Trump just comes out and says “You know what, all we want is the oil and water anyway, so forget about Canada, we’re moving in, Alberta!” What happens if Smith’s rhetoric normalizes MAGA culture at home just enough to convince enough Albertans that a referendum on separation or joining the US ought to be put on a ballot Such a vote might have trouble making it to a referendum question due to a variety of issues, including Indigenous rights. (And Edmonton might decide to hold its own vote and separate from Alberta.) But the fact that I’m thinking this is just unlikely, rather than sheer insanity, is in itself a comment on our situation.

A situation that has, of course, only been made worse by Smith’s utter failure to read the realpolitik room. She thinks she’s been both savvy and statesmanlike in trying to play all sides, propping up Alberta, supporting the US and snubbing Canada. This despite the fact that Canadians have rallied everywhere—including in Alberta!—in looking across the 49th parallel and saying, loudly, that that is precisely what we do not want to become. The pivotal factor in the federal election was detestation of Trump and the disrespect he has shown towards an ally, so much so that Trump’s former communications director said after the election that the greatest achievement of his first 100 days was Mark Carney. And yet Smith, with accelerating obliviousness, has decided that now is precisely the right time to start pushing Alberta even further away from Canada and towards the US. She is openly signalling that Alberta should turn away from one of the most stable and prosperous countries on earth in order to embrace Rome on the verge of collapse.

But here is where the truly serious consequences emerge. More is at stake than the provincial and even national damage invited by Smith. There are wider and historically significant implications. Smith probably thinks she’s creating leverage and strengthening Alberta through threats of separation and closer ties to the US, but what she’s actually doing in Alberta is releasing, or at least encouraging, a set of forces that are pulsing with geopolitical radioactivity. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Gulf State leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu, Recep Erdoğan… these leaders can read the room and know that this moment favours their anti-democratic impulses.

The world is walking a very unsteady line right now between democracies and the rise of illiberal pseudo-democracies, autocracies and soft-authoritarian regimes. Most of the world’s more powerful countries are either non-democratic (China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia) or teetering on the democratic precipice (India, Brazil, Turkey and increasingly the US). In other words, the future of true democracy—individual rights and freedoms; the rule of law—is currently being guarded by a handful of countries (Japan, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most though not all EU countries, Ukraine, South Korea), few of which have economic or military clout to offset what’s happening in China, Russia, India and the US.

The weakening of democratic institutions is a process that echoes Hemingway’s famous line from The Sun Also Rises in which one character asks another how he went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” More recently the book How Democracies Die has gained currency for detailing “democratic backsliding,” in which formerly democratic countries slowly dissolve into autocracy, drip by drip, so that the public almost doesn’t notice. An article in The New Yorker in April 2025 showed how democratic backsliding is well underway in the US. I reported in 2019 on Viktor Orbán’s campaign against the Central European University in Budapest as part of his ultimately successful recasting of Hungary into an authoritarian state. In its most recent Democracy Index, published in February 2025, the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that its global average democracy score (out of 10) was 5.17, its lowest in decades. Democracy isn’t quite on life support, but it’s at the ER waiting to see a doctor.

Yet in this dangerous and delicate political moment Smith has decided it’s the right time to jam that crowbar into the Alberta border and pry open any crack she can find. Which raises the question of why one would choose to weaken one of the very few countries—your own country to boot—that is holding back the global surge of authoritarianism. There can be only three answers. You yourself are anti-democratic. You simply aren’t in possession of the political and historical wherewithal to know better. Or, like Trump, you’re the first and second reasons combined.

Anti-democrats like Trump or Putin know all too well that if an established and respected country such as Canada can be fractured without too much trouble—and, as a bonus, with help from the inside—then the rest of the world shouldn’t be too hard to divide up and take over. This is precisely why Trump keeps insisting, even on the morning of our federal election, when he posted on social media that Canadians should vote for him, that Canada would be better off as part of the US.

There could not be a worse time to be enabling these leaders—and similarly aligned sectors of the Alberta electorate. The spectre of MAGA authoritarianism looms in our province.

“Treasonous” may be too strong a word to describe Smith’s actions, but “misguided” and “reckless” are not. “She’s certainly earned political points with her base,” says Cheryl Oates. “But the more she cozies up to the US, the less unified we look and the less unified we are as we take on the threat from Trump.”

Like Mickey Mouse when he puts on the sorcerer’s cap and then drifts off for a nap, much here depends on when or whether Danielle Smith wakes up. But odds are it’s going to get worse before it gets better if through political malpractice she continues to animate the splinters of authoritarian sentiment in our province. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem about the apprentice, the young helper realizes he’s vastly out of his depth: “The spirits that I summoned / I now cannot rid myself of again.” In Disney’s version the sorcerer rescues Mickey, saving him from having naively toyed with forces far beyond his abilities.

Albertans are living through their own version of this tale right now, and our premier thinks she’s the sorcerer, imbued with special magic and powers. Unfortunately, that’s not her role. Better late than never, now would be a good time for her to take off the sorcerer’s hat and go back to filling up some buckets the old-fashioned way, instead of playing with things she doesn’t understand and can’t control.

Curtis Gillespie is the author of five books. His magazine writing has won seven National Magazine Awards.

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Read more from the archive “Island Alberta” May 2025.

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Danielle Smith is Destroying My Kitchen

Jen Gerson — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:00:03 +0000

Published May 8, 2025, at The Line, a Canadian commentary website for “engaging, irreverent, non-partisan writing” based on Substack.

I want to talk for a minute about my kitchen. My family moved into a house in suburban Calgary a few years ago, and although it’s an older barn that needed a little polish around the edges, I wake up every day grateful to be here. Literally, every day. In a country beset by exorbitant housing costs, living in a comparatively affordable place like Calgary, on a calm street, where my kids can run around, in a home large enough to accommodate bedrooms and offices—these are blessings. So, yeah, I’m settled in. And I’m grateful.

But like all older houses, nothing is perfect. One of the items of nagging imperfection sits in my otherwise warm and bright kitchen.

Our white MDF cabinets are starting to disintegrate. It’s not terrible just yet, but the plywood behind the veneer is bubbling up and breaking through the edges, and once that glue starts to go, you know you’re on borrowed time with these things.

I like my kitchen otherwise, and the cabinet boxes are still in good shape, so there’s no need for a full renovation. If you’re a fellow homeowner, you know that the cheapest way to go about fixing these things is to opt for a cabinet refacing—simply switching out the cabinet faces.

I say “cheaper” here, but even refacing isn’t cheap. I’m still looking at thousands of dollars—more than I could comfortably afford on a journalist’s salary alone. Fortunately, I don’t live alone, so we’re looking at options—debt, pulling cash out of savings—all the ordinary things that middle-aged couples living in suburban homes consider at this time of life.

It’s not going to kill us or anything, but home improvement is an investment, and not one we take lightly.

And there’s one factor we now have to add to the decision. As I watch the passage of time slowly unravel the mid-tier shaker cabinet under my kitchen sink, debating between white and walnut, and trying to persuade my Scots husband to spend money, I am dealing with another problem: “What if we have to move?”

We were content to die in this home, but if Alberta goes forward with an independence referendum—as our premier is now suggesting could happen in 2026—and on the small chance that this vote is successful, well, we have no desire to live in a landlocked Hermit Kingdom of five million people, separated from our family by a border, and potentially unable to live or work anywhere else on the continent. This isn’t a better future for ourselves or our kids.

We have even less interest in becoming American, especially at a time when that country appears to be Orbánizing.

So, what do we do with our kitchen cabinets Do we spring for the good-quality facing that we’d be happy to live with for the next 15–20 years Do we slap some Home Depot-grade versions onto them Or do we sand the puffed up MDF and slap some cabinet paint on the damage with an understanding that the house’s future owner will probably want to rip them out anyway?

Does this matter in the greater scheme of things?

Well, no.

But also yes, because this in-depth conversation about cabinets is going to be replicated across thousands of kitchens and thousands of offices and thousands of boardrooms over the course of the next year. Any family or company that is looking to move to Alberta, anyone looking to invest here, or expand their operations, is going to have to ask some version of this question.

“What if we have to move?” “Can we move?” and if yes: “Well, should we invest now, or hold off until we have a better sense of what’s going to happen with this vote drama?”

I think this gets to the heart of what irks me so deeply about separatist movements—and I lump Quebec’s corrosive addiction to parties like the Bloc in with Alberta’s attempts to ape it. These politics are built on stoking grievances about real issues and never solving them. They’re about getting a plurality of constituents constantly amped up and angry in order to win elections for people who blame the federal government for the province’s failings.

And they bother me because they presume there are simple solutions to complicated problems. That a referendum or a vote or a new political allegiance is going to solve all of a polity’s complaints—without introducing new ones.

That’s not how life works though, is it?

There are never simple solutions to hard problems, there are just choices and trade-offs.

Take Danielle Smith’s announcement that the province will hold a referendum if separatists garner enough names on a petition to trigger a vote through a Citizens Initiative motion. Even if we take the most charitable interpretation of her words, and the kindest inference from her plans to introduce legislation to make it easier for a citizens initiative to succeed; even if we assume that she’s doing this not because she wants to become the first El Presidente of the Republic of Alberta, but rather because she believes this is the best way to leverage the federal government to get a pipeline built or an emissions cap lifted, the leverage she’s acquired here isn’t free.

We—as Albertans—pay for that leverage. I don’t mean that in an ephemeral or even moral sense, I mean this gamesmanship costs us money. Cash that Trevor Tombe will be able to track on spreadsheets of stalled growth or capital outflows. This is true even if a citizens initiative goes nowhere. It’s true even if a referendum dies on first contact with the will of the voter.

Should we spend now or hold off until we have a better sense of what’s going to happen?

The business uncertainty that all of this introduces means deferred or delayed investment; it means lost opportunity. It means painting over the cabinets instead of replacing them, but at an industrial scale.

And our premier doesn’t seem to care. She’s quite happy to expound on the glories of direct democracy in theory, as if she were presenting a PowerPoint argument to a not particularly inspiring University of Calgary political science class.

Smith is justifying herself with an appeal for those Albertans riled up to declare a border—riled up, I’ll note, in part because she’s tacitly encouraged them to be so.

“The vast majority of these individuals are not fringe voices to be marginalized or vilified. They are loyal Albertans. They are quite literally our friends and neighbours who’ve just had enough of their livelihoods and prosperity attacked by a hostile federal government.

“They’re frustrated, and they have every right to be.”

And what about the vast majority of loyal Canadians who live here and have no interest in suffering the consequences of even a failed referendum: do these friends and neighbours, people who are having their livelihoods and prosperity attacked by a hostile provincial government, not also have a right to be frustrated?

This isn’t a question of empathy. It’s a matter of which loyal Albertans Smith is choosing to listen to, and which ones she’s preferring to ignore.

Look, I have friends who run the gamut from hard separatist to soft sovereigntist and I don’t hold any ill will toward a single one of them. I think they’re wrong, but I don’t lack the emotional capacity to understand where they’re coming from.

But that doesn’t mean their beliefs aren’t minority positions—statistically, objectively, they are measurably borderline—at least for the moment. Smith isn’t reluctantly reacting to a genuine groundswell of support for an independent Alberta; she’s pandering to, and stoking the anger of, the approximately 25 per cent of the electorate that’s extremely pissed off about Mark Carney’s win after a decade of terrible Liberal rule.

Statements like this from Smith are a deflection from her own culpability, her compulsion to follow her base rather than to lead sincerely angry people toward constructive outcomes. She’s conflating ideas that are fringe with people who are not and can never be so, thus presenting herself as a champion of the self-anointed persecuted while actively normalizing minority policy positions.

A separation referendum will impose real consequences on our lives. And for what

It’s one thing to listen to frustrated Albertans. That’s perfectly sound. It’s another thing entirely to propose legislation that eases the path for a minority to hijack our political discourse, conveniently giving the premier cover on other issues like healthcare privatization scandals and tanking oil futures.

Smith is using Rorschach political rhetoric to all but champion a referendum that will impose real consequences on our lives. This isn’t a uni debate club at the quad. It’s not a book club gabfest on Plato’s Republic. It’s my house. It’s my kids’ school networks that Smith is gambling with now.

And for what So the oil sands can emit 150 MT of carbon annually rather than 100 MT So we can force the federal government to run a pipeline to Kitimat Are we risking this incredible gamble to pressure the federal government to rejig the equalization formula to take the wealth generated from Quebec’s hydroelectric power into account when considering how federal funds ought to be allocated annually?

Personally, I think the federal government shouldn’t be imposing an emissions cap on the provinces. I think we do need more east–west pipelines, and I don’t think the current equalization formula is particularly fair—but am I willing to risk my home and my citizenship on a wish list of accords compiled by junior oil and gas executives?

Umm. No. Sit down, Bob.

Our province is more than just an oil and gas plant, and I would love a government that didn’t run the province—wasn’t literally willing to risk the entire population’s security—for the benefit of one sector at the expense of all the others. Right now, Alberta is the richest province per capita by far, and oil and gas plays a huge role in raising wages across the board. But the vast majority of Albertans don’t work in this sector, and adopting the tactical politics of Quebec, one of the poorer provinces in Confederation, won’t make us wealthier.

In case anyone hasn’t yet pointed this out, the fastest way to make equalization “fair” would be for Albertans to earn less income than Quebecers. If we too were a have-not province, then we could also enjoy becoming overly dependent on the federal government for cash transfers to fund our services.

Is that… better?

For what it’s worth, I think Alberta has been disrespected by the rest of Canada; other provincial and federal leaders have been perfectly willing to use the oil and gas sector as a political wedge with their own voters while happily cashing the cheques that this province’s success has cut for the wealth of the Confederation. This has had the effect of turning provinces and constituencies against one another, of incentivizing them to put their narrow self-interest ahead of the less satisfying compromises inherent to national co-operation. All of this has been made worse under the last 10 years of Liberal government, to such an extent that I am not sure the “Confederation” can stand united if we continue in this direction.

My position on these issues hasn’t changed, but I’m also going to own up to some of my emotions, because they’ve shifted in recent months. I am anxious about what is happening right now, and it’s altering the way I look at politics.

I’ve grown tired to the point of despondency by the politics of grievance. It’s a calculated and manipulative game played on all sides of the political spectrum, an attempt to gin up apocalyptic emotional responses to comparatively minor disagreements. This is a tactic that has only one end—to secure power at the expense of civic unity.

And in an era of genuine existential trouble, our leaders—all of them—have to stop trying to win this way.

I’ve gone from being highly sympathetic to Alberta’s challenges in Confederation, to recognizing that every play now being considered by her leaders presents significant downside risks. Now that the door to a referendum is open, nobody, nobody at all, can control who or what will march through. This is a poorly managed controlled burn in a forest infected by a decade of deadfall. Maybe it will work. Maybe we’ll be lucky. But it’s risky as all hell, and it threatens to destroy the forest and sterilize the earth beneath it. (This is just a metaphor, and on a not-minor point of dispute, lest anyone accuse me of being apocalyptic.)

Meanwhile, watching what’s happening south of the border unfold, I’ve gone from being open to considering, say, an economic union with the US, to an emotion akin to “Absolutely not. Build the wall and hunker down until that political fever breaks.”

I can’t rationalize these emotions. Good or bad, my feelings are what they are. My intellectual opinions haven’t shifted so much as my emotions on these matters have hardened as the impacts of these trends are starting to be felt, literally, in my own kitchen.

Jen Gerson is a freelance writer and co-founder of The Line. She formerly worked at The Globe and Mail and the National Post.

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August 25-29, 2025

Alberta Views — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 20:57:48 +0000

Monday, August 25: The UCP government announces it will survey the public about the potential for nuclear energy to meet Alberta’s “growing energy needs while supporting decarbonization goals.”

Wednesday, August 27: The Alberta Party votes “overwhelmingly” to change its name to the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. The decision is pending Elections Alberta approval.

Ground Truths

Bob Weber — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:00:11 +0000

In May 15, 2020, the government of Alberta issued a document called Information Letter 2020–23, titled “Rescission of a Coal Development Policy for Alberta.” Note the careful bureaucratic obscurity of the title. Before I read it, I had no idea “rescission” was even a word. Note also the date—the Friday before the May long weekend. There’s this theory in government that possibly troublesome releases stand a better chance of being overlooked on Friday afternoon as reporters gear down for the weekend. The move is sometimes referred to as “taking out the trash,” and sometimes it even works. This particular piece of trash was one page long. It was accompanied by no backgrounders, no analysis, no explanation. Then-energy minister Sonya Savage appeared at no advance press conferences to discuss it. No technical briefings were held, nor was it debated in the legislature. Nevertheless it threw out 44 years of precedent and opened vast areas of the Rockies and surrounding foothills to open-pit coal mining. The most profound change in land-use policy Alberta had seen in more than a decade was simply slipped onto a government website.

A few days later I got a panicked phone call from a member of an environmental group I was in touch with. Was I aware that the United Conservative Party government had just opened up one of Alberta’s most beloved landscapes to coal mining I was not. It seemed newsworthy and I started writing about it. Others joined in, and you all know what happened next. Probably the greatest environmental backlash this province has ever seen eventually forced the government to back down. At least for a little while.

But let’s compare the rollout of the coal policy rescission with another major Alberta land-use move, the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan. That plan governs energy development, water use, farming and ranching, recreation, forest management and nature-based tourism over a huge part of southern Alberta. It was released in 2014 after five years of study. Thousands of Albertans made themselves heard during three rounds—three rounds!—of public consultation. The legally binding plan remains in place and is relied on for guidance by everyone from municipalities to NGOs.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the distance we’ve travelled. We once made policy using the classic conservative virtues of careful thought and consultation. We now have top-down fiats delivered from on high.

You are not about to listen to a research paper. I’m going to speak from personal memory and experience, as someone who has travelled this distance I speak of. That journey has led me to a few conclusions. What I’ve seen is that at a time of environmental crisis, when cities are literally burning and major watersheds drying, our governments are denying us the conversations we need to have. They’re drawing the blinds on our window into policy, they’re closing the shutters on our view into decision-making and they’re bricking up our doorways into understanding.

I came to the Edmonton bureau of the Canadian Press in 1994 and worked there until I retired in September 2024. I arrived back in the days of Ralph Klein. I didn’t agree with a lot of what that government did, but I will say this for Ralph: when the legislature was in session, he would show up regularly in the press gallery media theatre at 1:30 and take questions. And not just a few, for there were a lot of us back then. Ralph would stand there and field everything we threw at him. We’d shout out questions from the floor and he’d take them on. Some of those press conferences went on for over an hour. It got to be a bit of a press gallery joke—keep Ralph talking and eventually he’d say something newsworthy. Nor was Ralph the only open-access politician back then. Ministers were buttonholed daily in freewheeling scrums. Often they granted personal interviews, in person or on the phone. And after the hurly-burly of a big day, a throne speech or a budget, reporters and politicians would gather at a bar across 109th St. from the legislature for beers. Those were the days.

Compare that to a Danielle Smith presser. First, they’re rare. Smith prefers to address Albertans through social media or her radio show. Second, they’re short—in my experience, rarely more than 20 minutes or so. Many times I was still in the question queue when things wrapped up. Third, they’re highly managed. Government communications staff choose the questioners, putting control in their hands. Chosen reporters are then limited to two questions each. If a politician can’t bat aside two questions with message-track responses, they’re in the wrong job. Almost all UCP press conferences follow this pattern. So do those of many other politicians, Liberal and Conservative. They all do it that way now because it works. It keeps things under control.

If that were my only complaint, I wouldn’t be speaking with you here today. No doubt some form of order needed to be imposed on us unruly reporters, especially as more and more of us dial in rather than show up. Press conferences have always been part theatre, and are not a reporter’s most important source of information. But the noose on access has been pulled much tighter than just that.

Part of a reporter’s job is to collect as many different sides to a story as can be crammed into the copy. It was routine for me, after I’d listened to someone’s concerns or read some new research, to go to the government for its side. Back in the day, I could usually get someone on the phone who understood and could actually explain the policy in question. Sometimes I could get the minister. Even press secretaries would answer a verbal back-and-forth with on-the-record responses.

By the end of my career, explanation and response had deteriorated into “comment.” If I wanted “comment” I had to email a question or two to the requisite press sec and wait for a response. It normally came right on my deadline, generally three or four sentences of motherhood statements that a colleague of mine used to call “banana mumble chicken.” There was little chance for follow-ups or clarification. Take what you get and be grateful for it. Often, the responses didn’t even address the questions I’d raised and were simply partisan jabs—government good, opponents bad. It was often a challenge to find something actually usable for my story. Again, this is not unique to Alberta. It started with Stephen Harper in Ottawa, and they all do it now. But Alberta seems uniquely enthusiastic about emailed “comment.” For example, the head of communications at the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) once told me bluntly that the institution’s policy is that all communications are conducted through email. Nobody is allowed to talk to anyone, under any circumstances, lest they say something.

Cabinet ministers Forget about it. Over my career, I interviewed, repeatedly, every single environment minister from Ralph Klein onward. Some of them I was on pretty good terms with. The UCP have had two environment ministers—Jason Nixon and Rebecca Schulz. I once got five minutes on the phone with Nixon. Despite dozens of requests, Schulz never spoke with me. Not once.

Nor is the clampdown limited to politicians and political staff. I used to be on a first-name basis with some of the Alberta government’s top scientists, and we have had some really good ones working for us. If I needed information on say, caribou populations, or chronic wasting disease in deer, I could go straight to the expert right away. By the time I left the Canadian Press, it took elaborate, secretive machinations on the level of a spy novel to talk to actual scientists. For good reason. One researcher refused to speak to me at all about a published paper he had co-authored, for fear of repercussions from Alberta, even though he no longer worked for the government and lived in the US.

And then there’s FOIP. It’s supposed to stand for freedom of information but may have been better summed up by a Klein-era cabinet minister as “Fuck off, it’s private.” FOIP searches used to be extremely useful to me. I got all kinds of stuff—draft reports on sour gas releases written before the bureaucrats had had a chance to water them down, for example. Some of my first oil sands stories, back in the late 1990s, were based on internal environmental impact studies I’d gotten through FOIP. I understand that not everything can or should be released. But over the years, the redactions just kept getting bigger. I think peak redaction was achieved the day I got a FOIP response consisting of 300 completely blank pages. Yes, I did write a story about it.

There are still reporters doing excellent FOIP work, God love ’em, but it’s getting harder. The Globe and Mail has declared Alberta the most secretive jurisdiction in a secretive country, and recently things have gotten worse. The UCP has introduced legislation that would extend exemptions from the law to political staff, keeping more people nice and warm under a blanket of secrecy.

The flipside of ignoring troublesome questions is cherry-picking whom to listen to. This also happens. Look at the recent study on reforms to the AER, written by a pair of long-time insiders and containing no input from civil society. Look who has standing before the regulator’s hearings—unless you are literally next door to a project, you have no voice. Look at the Siksika First Nation, forced into court over broken government consultation promises. And if I may leave purely environmental concerns for a moment, consider the government’s recent report into its COVID response, headed by a former UCP nomination candidate and dismissed by medical professionals as misinformation.

Maybe you’re saying “So what. Governments are elected to govern, and that means making choices that not everyone’s going to be happy about. Majority rules, and if you don’t like it, try again in the next election.” I would suggest that’s a grade-school understanding of democracy. Governments are entitled to act on their agendas, but they are not entitled to pretend those who don’t agree don’t exist. Mature administrations try to find some compromise, to bring everyone along and to govern for everyone. It’s the difference between parliamentary democracy and an elected monarchy.

I would argue further that broad discussion among an informed public is particularly crucial in environmental issues. Decisions about the health of a river or a forest, the integrity of a landscape or the abundance of wildlife last for generations. A law on tax policy can be changed after the next election if it doesn’t work out. A law that allows the removal of a mountaintop alters Alberta forever.

As well, you may have noticed that the world is changing. Climate change will eventually force a worldwide shift away from high-carbon energy, the kind of energy our province produces. We will not have a choice in this. It will happen, for the alternative does not bear thinking about. We all know the extent to which this province depends on oil and gas. But for the first time we can see that this industry that has powered our province for so long is vulnerable. We desperately need to have honest conversations about where we’re going, how long it will take to get there and what this place will look like when we arrive. Instead, it’s an information-free zone. Instead, we get “ethical oil,” as if the jet stream or the oceans cared about our human rights laws. Instead, we get bromides about “world-class” regulatory systems, as if unreclaimed wells and tailings ponds don’t dot our landscape.

Instead, we get what happened to Alberta’s renewables industry. Some said the developments would use too much farmland, or that wind turbines are too hard to reclaim. Those objections were all pretty much refuted, some by researchers at this school [U of C]. But reality-based information didn’t matter. The decisions were made behind closed doors on the advice of nobody knows who. The most promising parts of the province are now shut off to the renewables industry, and money is fleeing elsewhere.

Finally, I would argue environmental decisions reveal important things about Albertans as a people. Choosing what to exploit and what to preserve shows what we value and who we care about. This land is our home. And like a home long lived in, how it looks reflects its residents. When we allow one more bit of caribou habitat to wink out or one more trout stream in the foothills to silt up, we lessen ourselves. And we lessen following generations. I’m going to argue that what we do to our home, our province, we do to ourselves. Surely we should all be around the table to talk about that.

Again, I’d like to emphasize that this is my experience. I’m sure other reporters see things differently. I’m not arguing with them, I’m just telling you what it’s been like for me. And this is what I’ve seen in 25 or 30 years on the environment beat in Alberta—fewer chances for public input, fewer answers from government, and a gradual restriction of public space while decision-making concentrates in fewer and fewer hands.

So where does this leave us Fortunately, with a number of bright spots. While our country’s largest newspaper chain, Postmedia, is nowhere to be seen on this issue, good environmental journalism is being done by many mainstream news organizations. And independent media that take environmental issues seriously are a rising force. I’m thinking of the National Observer, The Tyee, Hakai magazine and of course The Narwhal—which is, astonishingly, only seven years old and already inflecting the national conversation.

Another hopeful sign is what I call the democratization of data. Our governments may be increasingly close-mouthed, but in a way that matters less and less. As I speak, dozens of satellites orbit overhead monitoring a whole range of environmental benchmarks, from greenhouse gas emissions to clear-cutting. And they’re doing it in real time at a level of precision that boggles the mind. Ten years ago, data like this was precious and rare. Now, it’s a commercial product you can go out and just buy, or acquire from sources like the European Space Agency or NASA. Environmental groups have become expert at using this data to ground-truth government claims. They use geomatics with impressive accuracy and speed. I remember that during the initial controversy about Alberta’s coal policy the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society made maps of all the coal exploration leases that were much more comprehensive and useful than anything released by the government. Similarly the late, lamented Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project carefully documented the size and extent of the lingering impacts of the energy industry, a great service to us all. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly outspoken about the consequences of our current path.

So despite government attempts to direct the environmental conversation, they are increasingly unable to. That’s good.

Still, environmental journalism is always going to be a tough row to hoe. Nobody likes the environmental reporter. In good times, you’re a buzzkill. In bad times, you’re a job-killer. You’re always kind of a scold. And it ain’t glamorous. You’re not out there with hip waders, shoulder-to-shoulder in the swamp with the intrepid field biologist. No, you’re back in the newsroom, going through court judgments and regulatory documents, because that’s where we really decide who gets to do what to whom. You’re adding up and staring at long columns of figures until a pattern emerges or your eyes cross, whichever comes first. And it takes resources to do this, the chief among them time. In a newsroom, time is the most precious commodity of all. As journalism resources shrink, there’s less of that precious commodity for everyone.

It takes a personal toll as well. There aren’t too many good-news stories on this beat and you always seem to be writing about loss. That weighs on you after awhile. It weighed on me.

But that’s the world we live in. What we make of it is up to us, reporters and members of an engaged public. And before I close, I’d like to remind you of what still can be made. I’d like to return to the event with which I started this talk—the coal policy rescission.

It didn’t take long for news of the government’s plan to spread. My colleagues and I got the information out as quickly as we could, and I have never seen anything like what happened next. It was clear Albertans felt a sacred trust had been breached and that their sense of themselves, who they were and where they lived, had been attacked. Within days, ranchers, big-city nature-lovers, small-town mayors, scientists and country music stars banded together and forced the UCP government to backtrack. We demanded, and got, a seat at the table and a forum for our voices. We demanded, and got, policy that protected what we loved and wanted for our children. It was maybe the most inspiring story I ever covered and made me realize how much, despite everything, I love this place.

Now, you may say the coal threat is back. Yes it is, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. As the writer Jane Rule tells us, politics is like housework: Just because you swept the dirt out last week doesn’t mean it doesn’t need doing again. The point is that it can be done. It can be done when the facts are on the table, and it can be done when people are heard. It can be done, and it must be done. It’s hard and disheartening and it never seems to end, I know. But in the words of the great Lyle Lovett, what would you be if you didn’t even try?

Bob Weber is a retired environment reporter formerly with the Canadian Press. The Edmonton-based Weber started at CP in 1996 and specialized in environmental coverage and Arctic issues

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