Savage Move: One Alberta cabinet Minister might finally change Canada’s east-west gridlock on climate and energy policy

As Smith’s new cabinet is sworn in, one Minister is about to give the federal Liberals a real run for their money on their own turf - climate policy.

On the whole, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has benefited from a lack of significant scrutiny on his government’s approach to addressing climate change. 

He implemented a carbon tax, yes. But that price on carbon hasn’t put Canada on track to meet emissions targets. It has however, come at an enormous cost - failures with energy security, energy affordability, and the loss of natural resource jobs. 

For the most part, Trudeau has escaped any significant political damage on this issue, particularly from the left. Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), seem to be content to give him a pass by the simple virtue of him not being former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The New Democrats, now in coalition with the Liberals, can’t really vigorously criticize the environmental policy of the government they are propping up.

Trudeau’s ability to surf the wave of piss-poor action on climate is that his climate policy has never really suffered scrutiny from within his own voter coalition. His embrace of a carbon tax satisfied left-leaning members of civil society, including the media, who have to date refused to acknowledge that carbon energy is relatively price inelastic in Canada. 

So it goes without saying that Trudeau hasn’t ever had to really think about providing a major strategy on the provision of readily available, low cost alternatives to high carbon consumer products and practices. 

This has meant that until very recently, Trudeau has been able to get away with measures that really only have had negative impacts on workers in the energy sector, that is, Albertans that don’t traditionally vote Liberal. In short, no one in left-leaning civil society has seen fit to take significant issue with Trudeau’s climate policy which has both seen greenhouse gas emissions increase while killing off jobs in the energy sector, and raising fuel prices with no real alternative in place.

And it is in this context we find our first player in what might be the biggest federal-provincial ministerial mismatch in Canadian history; Steven Guilbeault. 

Never having been accused of being a moderate, Canada’s current federal environment minister likely wouldn’t shy away from being described as arch-priest in the nation’s leftist radical activist community. Most noted for getting arrested for scaling a piece of public infrastructure during his pre-political tenure at Greenpeace, Guilbeault hasn’t ever developed or implemented policy that’s based on consensus building, or economic or technological reality.

He’s also not known for his ability to make smart, cool decisions under pressure. His stint as Heritage Minister saw him suggest that the federal government should license media outlets. His communications during the fallout of that debacle were decidedly less than excellent. 

If rapid inflation, fuel shortages, and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine hadn’t dramatically altered the world’s view of climate policy that didn’t factor in energy security, Guilbeault would likely have been able to comfortably skate by in his posting without changing course.

However, all these factors have made the cost of living and the ethics of continuing to be reliant on carbon energy supplied by autocrats problematic for even the most ardent leftist. Guilbeault has not demonstrated the policy or communications range to explain or fix the Liberal’s utter failure to construct rapid transit, beef up our electric grid, secure critical minerals for battery production - all things which would have mitigated Canada’s reliance on foriegn oil. But most importantly, Guilbeault’s dogmatic adherence to outdated far left talking points renders him useless in working with industry to formulate a plan to reduce the emissions of Canada’s energy sector while allowing it to provide stable, secure, and lower cost energy for Canadian while affordable substitute goods for carbon are developed.

Now enter the second contestant of our match-up, newly appointed Alberta Environment Minister Sonya Savage.

Having had six leaders in seven years while in opposition, successive leadership races have disrupted the federal Conservatives post-Harper runway to set a long-term policy direction on climate. While Alberta’s provincial conservatives have seen their share of tumult over the last year, they’ve had to get their act together on climate and energy policy, by virtue of how critical the energy sector is to the province’s economy and being in government while Trudeau imposed related policy on provincial operations. The energy industry and the provincial government have had to do a lot of work, quickly, to show that they are adopting methods to reduce emissions during the production process; to show a different yet viable approach to what Trudeau was ramming down their throats. Now this is not the climate policy of the left - there’s an acknowledgement that we need a stable source of carbon energy as alternatives to carbon are developed and deployed - but it is climate policy. 

And Sonya has been in the middle of it for years.

Full disclosure - I’ve known Sonya, a lawyer with a Master’s degree focusing on energy and climate policy,  for the better part of nearly two decades. I’ve worked with her well before I was elected when I was working with projects related to clean energy production at the University of Calgary and she was a senior voice at Enbridge (a Calgary based energy infrastructure company). Through all the ensuing roles we’ve each had over the time we’ve known each other, it’s been clear to me that her experience in finding solutions in the area of policy where energy production meets climate is probably one of the deepest in Canada.

With the world experiencing sustained energy insecurity and fuel unaffordability, a window now exists for someone with her knowledge and calm energy to make a big political impact. 

Sonya’s earned experience has come via both success and failure. She’s been through challenging scenarios in successive senior roles she’s held in Enbridge, the Canadian Energy Pipelines Association, and as Alberta’s most recent Energy Minister. But somehow, in all her work, Sonya has managed to never allow the same mistake to be made twice within a team she’s had a role in. The result is a woman who has developed a profound, first hand understanding of what happens if an environmental assessment process isn’t both clear and rigorous - or if Indigenous partnership and consultation isn’t baked into the entirety of any new natural resources project. But most importantly, Sonya has earned an understanding that collaboration and flexibility in ideology is critical to Canada both addressing climate change, and ensuring energy security and affordability. 

This hasn’t meant that she escaped her time in the energy portfolio totally unscathed. But it’s also fair to say that Sonya has built a reputation for caring less about the sausage-making of partisan politics and much more about climate and energy policy outcomes that benefit the country as a whole. In fact, if I had one criticism about her approach to politics, it would be that she’s allowed this characteristic to make her quick to forgive colleagues who have attempted to steal the spotlight for her work and slow to push back when they have left her holding the bag for their mistakes.

But I also think it’s that grace that has won Sonya quiet, if not grudging, admiration across the political spectrum, for her largely non-dogmatic, albeit right of centre, approach to energy and climate policy. Sonya grew up showing cows in a 4H club in rural Alberta. I often imagine her using the same gentling skills she learned there to earn the reputation she has for tempering the instincts of colleagues who were prone to making policy mistakes, admitting her own, and putting ego aside to come up with solutions.

And all this makes her the perfect foil to Steven Guilbeault.

You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who will argue that Guilbeault’s rigidly leftist, excitable, colleague-angering approach has been well suited to finding solutions that will address climate change, global energy security and affordability. However, at a time when federal-provincial relations have never been more heated, Sonya’s calm, fact and experience based approach to finding solutions will be a stark political contrast to Guilbeault’s history of bumbling bombast. 

Promoting Sonya into this role at this time was a smart choice. Smith was able to award the energy portfolio to a key supporter after an expert (read: Sonya) has already addressed most of the major policy hurdles this government will see prior to next spring’s election. By moving Sonya to Environment, the Premier also is putting one of the surest, most wiley, pair of hands on one of the most important files in the Alberta-Canada public policy debate just as these issues are approaching a critical nexus.

So, Sonya’s appointment just might force the federal Liberals (and NDP) out of their reverie on desperate action that simultaneously addresses energy security, affordability, and climate. This is a good thing. If Canada can’t overcome the theatrically rigid postures that have plagued our energy and climate policy over the last three decades, we will never meet our climate targets, we will continue to make foriegn policy decisions while being beholden to expansionist dictators for energy, life will become increasingly unaffordable, and regional tensions will continue to rise.

That is not a road we should travel.

I hope that rather than trying to “beat” Sonya at politicking (he won’t be able to) by attempting to bait her into engaging in rote partisan bullshit (she won’t take said bait), that Guilbeault instead attempts to build a bridge with a woman with deep expertise to do something bigger for our country than our current political path has set us upon.

That would be excellent news for both Alberta and all of Canada.

Game on.