Federal environment minister says Alberta and Ottawa can come to terms on climate policy

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault faces both a personal and political challenge as he seeks to push the government's climate change agenda forward in the face of intense opposition from a newly re-elected Alberta government.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she's been "very frustrated by the posture" Guilbeault has taken toward her province. In her election night victory speech, she said she would not allow the federal government to impose policies on Alberta she views as damaging to the province's energy sector.

In an interview with CBC's The House airing Saturday, Guilbeault insisted the federal government is working successfully with Alberta on a number of issues, including biodiversity and tailings pond remediation.

Asked about Smith's comments, Guilbeault struck a conciliatory tone.

"I wouldn't say things are great," he said. "I'm saying we have our differences, but we have also the capacity to work them out."

Smith has been especially critical of the federal government's planned emissions cap for the oil and gas industry, which is expected to be in place by the end of the year. Smith has called it a "de facto production cap" and has claimed it would devastate the Alberta economy.

"I'm very optimistic that with technology we'll solve the problem," Smith told CBC's Power & Politics earlier this week. "But if you short-circuit that and try to achieve an unachievable target too early, you end up chasing investment away."

Guilbeault said it's government regulation that helped to guide that technological development.

"I mean, what will drive technological investment in de-carbonization is regulation," he said. "By putting in place smart regulations, we are ensuring in fact that those investments will be made so that we have jobs in Alberta in the energy sector 20 years, 25 years, 30 years down the road."

Guilbeault added that the coming draft regulations on an emissions cap will be open for comment and conversation.

"But we need [the emissions cap] for a number of different reasons," he said. "In a carbon constrained world, we will still need some oil even all the way to 2050. But what those people who still buy oil and gas will be looking for is oil that has a very low carbon footprint."

Guilbeault also implied that, outside of the public eye, there's room for cooperation with outwardly confrontational governments.

"I think we have to make a distinction between what is being said publicly and and when we sit down, when there's no camera, when there's no journalist[s]," he said. "People usually tend to be very reasonable and get down to business."

Hanging over the climate change policy debate is the Alberta Sovereignty Act, passed by the Smith government late last year. The legislation was billed as enabling Alberta to ignore federal laws.

Guilbeault said the idea of forcing Alberta to comply with new pieces of policy like the emissions cap is "not a conversation I want to have," adding that his government is still undertaking consultations.

The environment minister said that despite initial opposition from provinces to the federal carbon tax, each jurisdiction has since complied with that policy — either by creating their own systems or by adhering to the federal backstop.

"I'm not saying everybody's happy, I'm saying everyone's doing it," Guilbeault said.

Green tech hopes for cross-party commitment

The debate between the federal government and some conservative premiers over climate policy comes at a time when governments across the country are spending billions of dollars on clean energy investments in an increasingly competitive international climate.

A group of industry executives met in Ottawa this week to tell politicians that support for green technologies needs to be ramped up even further. The gathering included a concerted effort to reach out to the federal Conservative opposition.

Speaking to The House, Jeff Cyr, CEO of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, said a multi-party approach is the most sensible one, given the fact that governments come and go on shorter timescales than many major investment projects.

"The issue of the energy transition is a long term one. It's for decades and decades … So why would you limit that to the governing party of the day? It's strategically not sensible to me to do that. So you talk to all parties. To me, it's a non-partisan issue in that context," he said.

"At the end of the day, we're making hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in multi-decade projects. And so we need to know that there's a sense of durability in this country so that it's a place that can attract our capital, as opposed to other parts of the world," said Colleen Giroux-Schmidt, a vice-president at Innergex Renewable Energy.

"The opportunity is there if we choose to seize it, but we have to choose to seize it and we have to be intentional about it as a country."