Oil insider hired to help shape Alberta's climate policy

A career oil and gas insider will soon be shaping climate policy in Alberta’s department of Environment and Protected Areas.

After a decade working in various roles for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Patrick McDonald has been hired by Alberta Environment and Protected Areas to serve as assistant deputy minister of air, climate and clean technology.

CAPP is one of Canada’s biggest and most aggressive fossil fuel lobby groups; it held 91 meetings with government officials in 2023, second only to the Pathways Alliance with 104, according to a recent report by Environmental Defence. CAPP’s member companies are responsible for nearly three quarters of Canada’s annual oil and natural gas production.

“You've got an industry personnel embedded at the center of the decision-making structure on climate change. And what we really need is somebody embedded at the center of the decision- making structure who is looking out for the best interest of all Albertans, not just the oil and gas companies,” said Stephen Legault, senior manager of Alberta energy transition at Environmental Defence.

Civil servants, Legault said, are meant to be in a position to “question their political masters” — pushing back against bad decisions and grounding policy in factual, practical reality.

McDonald got his start as an executive advisor with the Alberta Energy Regulator in 2009. He moved to CAPP in August 2014 and spent 10 years there as manager of oilsands and then as director of climate change and innovation, before becoming assistant vice president of sustainability this March. Less than six months later, he made the jump from oil lobbyist to the senior ranks of government.

“The role of an assistant deputy minister is pretty damn important,” according to Legault. He described the position as “the front line of the government decision-making body” whose job is to ensure departments are implementing government policy.

“If you put somebody from CAPP in this position, they're not going to question the government's anti-climate change policy; they're going to reinforce it,” he said. 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been waging war against federal policies that aim to decarbonize Canada’s electricity grid and limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions companies can generate while producing oil and gas, to name just two. Fossil fuel lobby groups, including CAPP, have tried to kill or weaken these policies. 

Legault says industry groups already call the shots on Alberta's climate policy, and hiring McDonald merely removes some of the sense of separation between fossil fuel interests and government.

Canada’s National Observer emailed McDonald and multiple CAPP contacts early on Friday but did not receive a response by deadline. Both CAPP’s media and general phone lines are out of order. 

McDonald “will do an exemplary job of helping the department continue reducing emissions while supporting a strong economy,” reads a statement Tom McMillan, director of communications for Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, emailed to Canada’s National Observer. “As with all members of the Alberta Public Service, he is expected to provide non-partisan advice and support to help the government meet the needs of Albertans.”

McDonald did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. This article will be updated if and when that changes.

Political science professor Alex Marland said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer that McDonald’s appointment to this role on the climate “may signal the direction of the government”  — but equally, it may just be a matter of who they trust and think is competent.

Marland pointed out that McDonald will be just one of many civil servants working to shape and implement policy and having a certain background does not necessarily signal big policy changes. 

While assistant deputy ministers do have some authority, they don’t call the shots, Marland said.

It’s a hierarchy of command, he said. Public servants have to act on the directives of those above them, “sending information back and forth, up the line and then down.”

It’s a lot like a game of “broken telephone,” Marland said. The reality is that there's a lot of frustration among politicians, because a lot of the time what ministers want to happen is not exactly how public servants ultimately decide to implement their directives, he noted.

McDonald’s hiring “probably reflects that this individual has the trust of the governing party and, specifically, of the Premier's office,” Marland said. 

“Even though a senior member of the public service is effectively non-partisan, the reality is they have to have the confidence of the government, so it reflects some sense that they have an awareness of priorities aligning,” he explained.

Often, minister’s don’t have a say in these things; “It's really, usually, a reflection of priorities coming out of the premier's office,” Marland said. “There are lots of instances where ministers can't even choose their own chief of staff … the Premier's office wants to make sure that they put their own people in the minister's office, because they want to check in and make sure they have control over what the minister is doing.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been criticized for a reluctance to address climate change. The United Conservative Party government’s climate plan is more of a plan to make a plan, and an April analysis by clean energy think-tank Pembina Institute suggests very little progress has been made since it was announced over a year ago. Smith also has yet to connect the wildfires that set Jasper ablaze with climate change, despite ample scientific research that climate change — driven by humans burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas — is contributing to more frequent and intense wildfires.

Earlier this year, Alberta’s United Conservative Party placed restrictions on the development of renewables such as wind and solar in the province. This move was heavily criticized by environmental groups, think-tanks and clean energy associations for stalling investment in renewables when Alberta is a prime market for wind and solar.

“This is the exact kind of decision we're going to end up with when somebody from CAPP is helping guide them; they're going to be making these decisions in favor of the legacy industries like oil and gas, and not looking at ‘How do we diversify our energy structure in Alberta and how do we diversify our economy?’” Legault said.

These staffing decisions are important; hiring McDonald “speaks volumes” to where the priorities of this government are, Legault said.

“The priority is to continue to perpetuate the oil and gas sector as the key economic driver of the province while just about every other jurisdiction in the world, including jurisdictions like Texas, which is a very comparable economic comparison, just race forward with diversification of the energy sector.”

The renewables restrictions are a glaring example of how policy — and staffing decisions on who gets to shape it — have consequences for the climate and economy, Legault said.

“Individuals, not some faceless bureaucracy, implement policies and that's why who's in these positions actually matters.”

Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer