Braid: Alberta’s ‘most provocative’ anti-Ottawa action coming Tuesday to block emissions cap

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The big showdown finally starts Tuesday, with a fierce counterattack on the federal oil and gas emissions cap from Premier Danielle Smith.

The premier will announce details of a Sovereignty Act motion at a news conference.

Government sources say the motion will “make it virtually impossible for Ottawa to impose the cap in Alberta.”

The motion is said to allow increased production as well as easier access to U.S. and world markets.

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There will be a “diversification strategy that puts more power into Alberta government hands” to make sure exports are unimpeded.

The government will also challenge the emissions cap in court, but can’t do that officially until the legislation passes Parliament.

Last Friday, Smith’s cabinet also issued an order-in-council to start legal action against the revised Impact Assessment Act, which Smith says is still unconstitutional.

Last Dec. 1, the UCP passed its first Sovereignty Act motion, countering Ottawa’s demand for net-zero electricity in Alberta by 2035.

None of that has slowed Ottawa’s drive to control Alberta’s industry, despite the province’s constitutional authority over energy and electricity.

Smith is moving defiantly toward more direct, practical action. The source says the measures now coming will be the “most provocative” Alberta has used yet.

The UCP argues that the disputes and legal cases often take years to resolve. Even when the province wins, the Trudeau government makes minor changes that don’t respect the court rulings.

At a news conference Monday, Smith said the Liberals “haven’t worked toward wanting to find a compromise.”

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“So we’re kind of at the end of the negotiation, compromise phase, and we’re now in protection of our jurisdiction and protection of our industry phase.”

It’s been obvious for months that the UCP has abandoned any hope of agreement and is acting entirely outside federal rules and plans for oil and gas, and electricity.

She and her ministers are fed up with unilateral federal measures. They relish the thought of Ottawa, for once, being faced with unilateral provincial actions.

Smith had strong backing from UCP members at a recent party convention, although some delegates say she’s not going far enough. They voted for “abandoning net-zero targets.”

Smith says her own position on emissions hasn’t changed — she always agreed to achieve net zero in oil and gas production by 2050.

If she didn’t, she’d lose the support of industry players who have to deal with the outside world.

But the problem, she says, is a federal government that keeps imposing impossible conditions on the province.

“They want to bring through policies that are unachievable in the short term, which will result in a shut-in of our production, and we’re just simply not going to allow for that.

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“They can’t invade our constitutional jurisdiction to develop our resources, and they can’t invade our constitutional jurisdiction to manage our electricity grid . . . so we’re going to have to assert our rights to make sure that we can maintain control over our resources.”

Monday’s announcement of an Alberta Drilling Accelerator (a new $50-million site to test advanced drilling techniques) was a statement that Alberta oil will be drilled and sold, well into the future.

The announcement in Leduc, the site of the first big Alberta oil strike in 1947, was billed as “a major step forward to help grow Alberta’s energy sector while reducing emissions.”

Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz talked about how Germany went too fast with emissions measures and must resort to using more natural gas, and even coal.

Industry leaders also pointed out that new drilling techniques can be used to exploit geothermal energy, as well as oil and gas.

Through all this, one message is clear. For Smith and the UCP it’s all-out political warfare with Liberal Ottawa, right into the federal election next October.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X: @DonBraid

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