Truth, lies and emissions caps

He might be trailing in the polls and on his way to an epic electoral defeat, but Justin Trudeau isn’t done fighting just yet. During his Wednesday interview on Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen, the prime minister threw a few well-placed jabs in the direction of Alberta’s perpetually pugilistic provincial government. “The world is changing,” he said, “and it’s not a plot by eastern bastards. The world is looking at net zero right now, and Alberta can be part of that. But right-wing ideology is getting in the way of Alberta’s success.”

The provincial government, in other words, needs to get out of the way of Alberta’s businesses. If this was intended to provoke Premier Danielle Smith, well, mission accomplished. She fired back with a rant on social media that accused Trudeau of describing Albertans as “fools” (he didn’t) and whined about him not contacting her before visiting the province (he did). At no point did she even attempt to engage with the points he actually made in his interview.

And no wonder: they’re really good ones. “Canada can and should be the reliable provider of net-zero energy in a net-zero world by 2050,” Trudeau said. “If we’re going to be that, we need Albertans to be thinking and working on that every single day. And having a government in Alberta that won’t even talk about the reality of climate change is putting the brakes on making sure there are good jobs for Albertans in the energy sector for decades to come.”

Amen. Whether it’s the moratorium on all renewable energy development, the continued mismanagement of the oil and gas industry’s environmental liabilities or the steadfast refusal to acknowledge the imperatives of climate change, the Smith government is actively running interference on behalf of the status quo.

There’s no better proof here than its handling of the proposed federal cap on oil and gas emissions that essentially calls the industry’s bluff on targets and technologies it has been talking up for years. Rather than registering factual disagreements about the policy, Smith and her senior ministers choose to portray it as a conspiracy by eastern elites to frustrate Alberta’s oil and gas industry. That’s an industry, it bears repeating, that has benefited enormously from federal largesse over the last eight years, whether in the form of pipelines or piles of cash for the cleanup of oil wells.

In a recent video shared by the premier, Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz suggested that “the real goal isn’t to reduce emissions. It is to cap production. And when these technologies fail to be in place by 2030, they are banking on being able to shut down … production as an alternative.” Why? Because, Schulz (who is, once again, the environment minister) says, “It’s never been about reducing emissions.”

Instead, she says, it’s about Steven Guilbeault’s lifelong quest to kill off Alberta’s oil and gas industry. “The oil and gas [emissions] cap may not be achievable and this federal government may even lose the next election before it can be implemented. But by then, the damage will already be done. Investors will look at Canada and decide to take their money and their investments elsewhere.”

Here, at least, she manages to say something accurate, even if it’s by accident. The ongoing attempts by provincial and federal Conservatives to filibuster the Trudeau government’s climate policies are damaging investor sentiment and it will make them decide to take their money elsewhere. As a 2021 study done for Calgary Economic Development shows, the energy transition presents a $61-billion opportunity for the province by 2050 and could create 170,000 jobs in the clean tech sector.

That opportunity will be squandered if the provincial government keeps signalling to the world that it doesn’t believe in the importance of that transition, never mind its own role in reducing emissions from the oil and gas sector. Indeed, a new report from Clean Prosperity shows that without more certainty in the longer-term price of carbon — one that is constantly being undermined by Conservative politicians in Alberta — the necessary investments in industrial decarbonization won’t happen fast enough.

As I’ve said and written before, maybe that’s the whole point. By stalling for time and casting doubt on the future of carbon pricing in Canada, Conservatives are making it impossible for the federal government to achieve its climate targets. They are, in other words, deliberately getting in the way of the entrepreneurs and investors who could actually help decarbonize Alberta’s electricity grid and its oil and gas industry — and even meet the federal emissions cap while still growing production.

Calling out this behaviour probably won’t win Justin Trudeau any more seats in Alberta. It’s unlikely to do much for his electoral fortunes anywhere else in the country, either. But Albertans deserve to hear the truth about who’s actually trying to threaten their long-term prosperity, even if they’re not prepared to listen to it just yet. After all, they’re not going to get it here from their provincial government.