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Alberta

‘Canada should be bold and more intentional…and respond to a world thirsty for more Canadian-made energy, food and critical minerals’

Published

4 days ago

4 minute read

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

Bare minimum amendments to Impact Assessment Act ‘do little’ to address Supreme Court’s concerns

One year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada found the federal government’s law to assess major projects like pipelines and highways breaks the rules of the Canadian constitution.

There’s a good chance it still does, despite amendments enacted this spring.

Lawyers with firms including Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, Bennett Jones and Fasken have warned  that Ottawa’s changes to the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) leave it open to further constitutional challenges.

One could come from Alberta as soon as November 1, following a four-week deadline set by Premier Danielle Smith for the federal government to address the province’s concerns.

“I don’t think that the amendments have responded adequately to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision,” says Brad Gilmour, a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt who co-argued Alberta’s successful 2023 reference case to the Supreme Court.

The governments of Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Manitoba supported Alberta’s case, arguing that the IAA had exceeded federal jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court largely agreed, while allowing that there is a place for federal assessment of major projects.

“The court had some significant concerns about federal overreach into areas of provincial jurisdiction, and I think that the amendments have done really little to address that broad concern,” Gilmour says.

“They’ve made very minor changes to the sections that the courts found to be unconstitutional, and the wording they use lacks clarity and lacks certainty.”

Components of the IAA that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional include the decision that starts the process – whether a project requires a federal impact assessment and the decision at its conclusion – whether or not a project should receive final approval to proceed.

“It appears the government has done the minimum possible to address the Supreme Court’s concerns, adding qualifiers to its areas of authority, but failing to correct the legislation’s negative impacts on the pace, cost and efficiency of project approvals,” wrote the Business Council of Canada’s Michael Gullo and Heather Exner-Pirot.

“Canada can’t wait and should be bold and more intentional in its effort to grow market share and respond to a world thirsty for more Canadian-made energy, food and critical minerals.”

According to Gullo and Exner-Pirot, the negative impact of the IAA legislation, which came into effect in 2019, can be seen in Canada’s national inventory of major resource projects.

In 2015, there were 88 energy projects completed with a value of $53 billion. In 2023, that figure halved to 56 completed projects with a value of $26 billion.

Alberta’s government says it has “made repeated requests” for the federal government to consult with the province on the amendments, to no effect.

“Alberta is not taking their foot off the pedal in pushing back,” Exner-Pirot told CEC.

“Our country’s energy and natural resources cannot be developed in a timely and economic manner under the current federal regulatory regime. This is affecting not only the economy, but also our security and our efforts to move to lower emitting energy sources.”

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Alberta

Ottawa’s emissions policies will impose huge costs on Albertans

Published on October 25, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Elmira Aliakbari

The path Trudeau is forcing us down leads to a much poorer economy (completely cratering Canada’s energy industry while making everything more expensive) and negative environmental benefit (that’s right, it’s worse as developing nations use the energy that’s cheapest). So maybe it’s time to scrap the tax.

The federal NDP recently ended its support for the consumer carbon tax citing its significant cost to everyday Canadians. But Canada’s costly climate change policies extend beyond the carbon tax. Indeed, the Trudeau government has introduced numerous policies in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which impose major costs on Albertans.

The consumer carbon tax is perhaps the most widely known GHG reduction policy, which places a price on carbon (currently at $80 per tonne) and is set to rise to $170 per tonne by 2030. However, the Trudeau government has also imposed other regulations and mandates, including clean fuel regulations, electric vehicle mandates, the phase-out of coal-based electrical generation and building efficiency mandates.

The costs? According to a recent study, these GHG policies will shrink the Alberta economy (as measured by GDP) by an estimated 6.0 per cent by 2030. And employment in the province is expected to decline by 0.9 per cent. To put these figures into perspective, a 6.0 per cent contraction in 2024 would have shrunk the provincial economy by $27.7 billion, while a 0.9 per cent decrease in employment would have meant a loss of approximately 22,837 jobs (based on data for August 2024).

While these policies are expected to reduce GHG emissions, they fall short of meeting the government’s national GHG reduction targets. As a result, further economic pain will be required if the federal government implements additional measures to further reduce GHGs emissions.

These findings echo other studies that measure the effects of various climate change policies. According to a report by Deloitte, for instance, Trudeau’s policy to cap GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector (to 35 to 38 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030) will lead to less investment, nearly 70,000 fewer jobs, and a 4.5 per cent decrease in economic output (i.e. GDP) among the provinces by 2040. Unsurprisingly, Alberta is projected to be the hardest hit province.

And here’s the kicker—these huge economic costs come with little to no actual environmental benefit. Even if Canada shut down its entire oil and gas sector by 2030, thus eliminating all GHG emissions from the sector, the resulting reduction would equal four-tenths of 1 per cent of global emissions, which would have an undetectable impact on the climate. Meanwhile, as demand for fossil fuels continues to increase, constraining oil and gas production and exports in Canada merely shifts production to other countries, which have lower environmental and human rights standards such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

The Trudeau government’s climate change regulations are imposing huge costs on Albertans with little to no actual environmental benefit. While support for some of these policies—particularly the consumer carbon tax—is waning, federal policymakers should seriously rethink numerous other regulations.

Authors:

Tegan Hill
Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
Elmira Aliakbari
Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Premier Smith hammers Liberal government for ‘slightly’ reducing immigration

Published on October 24, 2024

By

As so often happens these days the headlines from major news outlets all look like they were written by the same people.  All the major news outlets repeated the government talking point that immigration would be reduced significantly.  In his news release, Immigration Minister Marc Miller spoke of “controlled targets” and even “marginal” declines in Canada’s population. Minister Miller made it sound like the feds are pulling way back on the number of immigrants being allowed into the country.

A few hours later, Premier Danielle Smith explained how Alberta sees things.  According to Premier Smith, immigrants will still be pouring into the country at near record levels.  Smith says this new immigration plan will offer almost no relief whatsoever to provinces buckling under the pressure of so many newcomers.

Premier Smith is right.  When you take out all the adjectives and the self back-patting, the 2025 – 2027 Immigration Levels Plan shows the number of new immigrants will still hover near record levels.

From the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan.

The levels plan includes controlled targets for temporary residents, specifically international students and foreign workers, as well as for permanent residents.

We are:

  • reducing from 500,000 permanent residents to 395,000 in 2025
  • reducing from 500,000 permanent residents to 380,000 in 2026
  • setting a target of 365,000 permanent residents in 2027

Quick facts:

  • Canada’s population has grown in recent years, reaching 41 million in April 2024. Immigration accounted for almost 98% of this growth in 2023, 60% of which can be attributed to temporary residents.
  • Francophone immigration will represent
    • 8.5% in 2025
    • 9.5% in 2026
    • 10% in 2027

The Levels Plan also supports efforts to reduce temporary resident volumes to 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2026.  Canada’s temporary population will decrease over the next few years as significantly more temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents or leave Canada compared to new ones arriving. Specifically, compared to each previous year, we will see Canada’s temporary population decline by

  • 445,901 in 2025
  • 445,662 in 2026
  • a modest increase of 17,439 in 2027

It’s interesting how the feds explain the situation with “temporary residents”.  This group includes foreign students and temporary workers.  Most Canadians would probably be shocked to know just how many people are “temporarily” here.

Minister Miller says this population will decline by 445,901 people in 2025.  What he leaves out is that this still allows for just over 2,000,000 foreign students and temporary workers! (5% of 41,000,000 Canadians is 2,050,000)

It’s also very interesting that in the explanation for how the feds plan to cut the number of temporary residents down from about 2.6 million to just over 2 million, is by recognizing that many of the temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents.  It’s not clear how that will reduce the number of people in the country.  I guess we’ll have to see how that all turns out.

Meanwhile Alberta Premier Danelle Smith and Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism Muhammad Yaseen issued this joint statement on today’s federal government immigration announcement:

“Alberta has a long history of welcoming newcomers, and we plan to maintain that reputation.

“However, the federal government’s reckless and irresponsible open-border immigration policies, permitting almost 2 million newcomers to enter Canada last year alone, have led to unsustainable financial pressures on all provinces.

“With the cost of food, energy, housing and everything else in this country increasing, and with tens of thousands of new people moving to Alberta monthly, our hospitals and schools are at or above capacity.

“As a province, we need a reprieve from this explosive population growth so we can catch up with these pressures. So do all provinces.

“The federal government’s plan to cut a mere 105,000 new permanent residents will not solve these pressures when they are bringing in almost 2 million additional people annually.

“We call on the government to cut the number of newcomers to Canada from almost 2 million to well under 500,000 annually until further notice.

“Ottawa’s priority should be on reducing the number of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers—not on reducing provincially selected economic migrants.”

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