Guilbeault is the wrong federal minister to oppose Smith. Time for Trudeau to tap the bullpen
Steven Guilbeault tore a strip off Danielle Smith on X/Twitter yesterday. A federal cabinet minister publicly pummelling the Alberta premier is a rare thing. It shouldn’t be. But reacting to Smith is a mistake. The Liberals need a clearer vision for the country’s energy system and a communications plan that puts Canada in the driver’s seat, not Alberta.
The country’s environment minister was responding to a four-minute video Smith posted Wednesday on her X/Twitter account. The Alberta premier has jumped on the “Canada is broken” bandwagon so beloved of Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Why is Canada broken, according to Smith? Because the Trudeau Government supposedly continues to persecute Alberta’s oil and gas industry with climate policies designed to help decarbonize the country’s highest-emitting sector (26% of national greenhouse emissions) by far.
In his 10-tweet thread, Guilbeault accuses Smith of spreading “fear & misinformation,” then goes on to correct her with “facts.” He points out, for example, that Alberta’s 7-month renewable energy moratorium has already chased away billions in investment and that Albertans will soon be receiving their carbon tax rebate cheques (an average of $1,544 for a family of four).
As a journalist, I like facts as much as the next person, but Guilbeault made a big strategic mistake, one that the Liberals make over and over: they focus too much on climate change and not enough on the global energy transition.
That argument may seem heretical just weeks after COP28 concluded in Dubai. Hear me out.
The climate crisis and the energy transition are two sides of the same coin. Global warming is the problem, clean energy displacing fossil fuels is the solution, or most of it, anyway. Polls consistently show that voters accept the scientific consensus that emissions from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas are responsible for climate change and they want governments to do something about it, they just don’t want that something to cost them much. Or anything, if at all possible.
A perfect example is the plunge in support for the Canadian carbon tax despite 80 per cent of families receiving more in rebates than they pay. In this case, voters can’t even recognize their own financial self-interest. Craven sloganeering by conservative politicians combined with legitimate concerns about inflation and affordability to torpedo political support for market-based policy that actually works.
Even though Guilbeault makes a perfectly good argument, his thread illustrates the tenor of Canadian debate over energy and climate policies.
Conservatives: “Your policies suck!”
Liberals: “Our policies don’t suck!”
Majority of Canadians: “Yawn.”
Know what gets Canadians to stop yawning? The prospect of losing their job. Or getting a better one. Business opportunities created by new investments or destroyed by declining capital expenditures. A better or worse economic future for their kids. Tax revenue to fix beleaguered public services like healthcare or more of the current nightmare.
The global energy transition poses an existential risk to several important Canadian industries, most notably auto manufacturing and oil and gas extraction. The very same transition is also creating incredible opportunities to diversify the Canadian economy as new clean energy industries and their global supply chains are created to displace the old fossil fuels-based industries.
Canada has a dog in this fight.
Canada is an energy superpower – fourth largest oil producer in the world and fifth largest natural gas producer. Hydrocarbon exports are about $120 billion per year, almost twice that of automobiles and parts, the mainstay of the Ontario economy. The energy transition will lay waste to both those industries.
Either Canada pivots to manufacturing clean energy technologies (e.g. batteries, electric vehicles, mining critical minerals) and adopting those technologies (e.g. wind and solar power generation, electric transportation) or there will be serious economic consequences. At best, remaining hewers of wood and drawers of water. At worst, losing important industries like oil and gas that are economic mainstays.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a conservative ally of Smith’s, couldn’t be bothered with the energy transition until federal initiatives led to tens of billions invested in battery and EV plants. Ford is begrudgingly getting with the program.
As Bill Clinton’s political strategist James Carville famously said over 30 years ago, “it’s the economy, stupid.” That should be the Government of Canada’s overarching message. Well, maybe not the impolite “stupid” part. We are Canadians after all.
That the Canadian environment minister leads the political pushback against Alberta is telling. Where is Natural Resources Minister (the federal energy minister) Jonathan Wilkinson? Or Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry of Canada François-Philippe Champagne? Even Labour Minister Seamus O’Reagan would be an improvement.
Asking Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace activist, to lead the charge is political folly. Smith is wiping the floor with him. She has emerged as the Canadian champion of OPEC’s “slow energy transition” narrative and proven to a formidable political opponent for the Liberals, far stronger than was expected when she became Alberta premier in late 2022.
Smith’s strategy, as I’ve explained many times, is to shield Alberta energy incumbents – primarily oil and gas producers, electric utilities – from the wrenching disruption of the energy transition for as long as possible. Climate policies cost those companies money. As long as federal policies can be abandoned, postponed, or diluted, Alberta incumbents and their shareholders win.
The Government of Canada needs to explain to Canadians how victories for Alberta incumbents are losses for the country’s businesses, workers, and consumers. Including Albertans.
The starter has floundered. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should take the ball from Guilbeault and call on the bullpen. The game isn’t lost yet, but it will be if the country doesn’t up its energy transition performance.
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