{"id":358374,"date":"2021-10-27T02:22:28","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T23:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/trudeau-sends-a-signal-to-alberta-cue-the-squirming\/"},"modified":"2021-10-27T02:22:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T23:22:28","slug":"trudeau-sends-a-signal-to-alberta-cue-the-squirming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/trudeau-sends-a-signal-to-alberta-cue-the-squirming\/","title":{"rendered":"#Trudeau sends a signal to Alberta. Cue the squirming."},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Trudeau sends a signal to Alberta. Cue the squirming.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Alberta got its cabinet minister, but the real focus will be on the new names at environment and natural resources, and how they app<\/a>ly the government’s ‘just transition’\n <\/div>\n
\n Justin Trudeau has appointed a minister for Alberta, and a minister for preoccupied Alberta.<\/p>\n

Randy Boissonnnault ends the fourth-largest province\u2019s cabinet drought, which coincided with the two years of Alberta having no MPs for Justin Trudeau to choose from.<\/p>\n

The Edmonton Centre MP will be the tourism minister, a junior portfolio tucked within the Innvoation, Science<\/a> and Economic Development Canada. Every Alberta politician should be lucky enough to have regular trip<\/a>s to Banff and Jasper within their mandate.<\/p>\n

But as with any modern cabinet, the picks that truly matter to Alberta are the ones governing the oil and gas sector and the carbon it emits by the megatonne. Enter the preoccupation. Enter, quite literally, the activist environment minister. And cue the Alberta squirming.<\/p>\n

Steven Guilbeault\u2019s resume is quite well known in the oil-producing province: his extensive experience with environmentalist group \u00c9quiterre and campaigning against pipelines and the oil sands, even reported lobbying within Trudeau\u2019s cabinet last year against the doomed Teck Resources bitumen mine. Just as there was relief from Alberta industry when Guilbeault didn\u2019t get his coveted Environment and Climate Change file in 2019, there\u2019s high anxiety that he got it this time.<\/p>\n

Premier Jason Kenney, whose moribund approval ratings have suggested he could use an external enemy to rally Albertans against, said Guilbeault\u2019s activist past \u201csuggests somebody who is more of an absolutist than a pragmatist\u201d and forecasts that Ottawa may pursue a \u201cradical agenda that would lead to mass unemployment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trudeau\u2019s appointment of Guilbeault definitely sends a signal, and perhaps anticipates this initial shock and concern from the energy sector and its political boosters. The message may be the same for the crowd gathering next week at the climate conference in Glasgow and the crowd huddling for coffee daily in oil project trailers near Grande Prairie, Alta.\u2014this government itself wants to move further and faster on curbing emissions. Perhaps taking more of an activist tilt. Not a get-arrested-for-scaling-the-CN-Tower-to-label-Canada-climate-killers tilt, as Guilbeault himself did 20 years ago, but there is a directional shift at work here. Trudeau nudged toward a more assertive approach before the election with tougher emissions targets, and with election promises to demand more action from the oil and gas sector, toward lowering its overall carbon pollution rather than merely per-barrel emissions as production expands.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t a government that\u2019s going to suddenly go the full Guilbeault and abandon the federally owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, and the new environment minister himself will have to concede this point, too. To parts of the activist world Guilbeault comes from\u2014one U.S. green campaigner fondly tweeted about the 2001 CN Tower stunt Tuesday and called expectations on the minister sky high\u2014the moderate and pragmatic tack Trudeau binds him to will be frustration.<\/p>\n

Moderation will also come from new Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, the Vancouver-area MP who has held Environment for the last two years, and hailed from the tech sector. Even Kenney praised him as a \u201cgood-faith partner\u201d for the Alberta government and industry. Ottawa and the business world increasingly see those Natural Resources and Environment ministries as tandem files in the climate change and regulatory fronts\u2014and with Wilkinson\u2019s move, it further lays waste to the old days of those two ministers being at odds with each other as cheerleader and foe of fossil fuel development. Carbon emissions become their common foe.<\/p>\n

Alberta tends to get tetchier over rhetoric than it does over actual policy\u2014witness the long memories of a 2017 town-hall remark by Trudeau that he\u2019d \u201cphase out\u201d the oil sands\u2014and this is where Guilbeault\u2019s appointment may remain as incendiary as it seemed Tuesday. Environment and Climate Change can require a diplomat\u2019s deft touch with affected industry leaders, and there\u2019s little to inspire confidence on this front, both because of Guilbeault\u2019s \u201ctar sands campaign\u201d history and his struggles to communicate whatever it was Bill C-10 would actually change. Expect Wilkinson and Trudeau to have to do a fair bit of mop-up, and for Kenney to be summoned regularly to thunder with great, great umbrage.<\/p>\n

A major test, past Glasgow, will be how Wilkinson and Guilbeault handle their government\u2019s buzzy term: \u201cjust transition.\u201d Natural Resources Canada quietly held a public consultation period this summer on this plan to support the fossil fuel sector through a decarbonizing future without massive disruption and job loss. Like the term \u201cphase out\u201d that got Trudeau into such hot water previously, a \u201cjust transition\u201d is notionally supposed to signal a gradual and measured shift. The usual critics have overlooked any such intended nuance, and forecast a rapid and bumpy government-mandated end to Alberta\u2019s most vital and generationally lucrative industry. It will fall in large part to Steven Guilbeault to maintain a steady and reassuring tone that this isn\u2019t the case. His past doesn\u2019t suggest he\u2019s perfectly suited for this task, but it\u2019s the task he now has.
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