By Chris Brown

Alberta premier warns prime minister about Just Transition legislation

Feb 9, 2023 | 3:04 PM

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s opening the door asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to work collaboratively with the province on energy plans and what she says is probably the most important economic issue facing this country in a generation.

Then issued a warning to him.

“If the prime minister chooses to slam this door in our face and moves unilaterally forward with Just Transition or other impossible and arbitrary emissions targets or policies without Alberta’s involvement and agreement, Alberta will be relentless in our opposition and we will use every tool at our disposal to protect Albertans their jobs and their future.”

Smith was addressing reporters in Calgary to give an update on talks this week in Ottawa with Trudeau. She said the meeting was positive overall and laid out the requests she made to the prime minister.

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Those include halting the introduction of the proposed Just Transition legislation, its emissions reduction cap and its ban on electricity from natural gas.

She also said the province and Ottawa must work together to attract energy investment and workers and reduce Alberta’s and Canada’s net emissions. Smith said Trudeau seemed to express a willingness to explore such a strategy.

She also said Alberta expects future legislation to abandon Just Transition or other policies that signal a phase-out of Alberta’s conventional or non-conventional energy sector or workforce. As well, Smith wants the federal government to formally consult and collaborate with Alberta before announcing or implementing legislation, targets or policies that materially impact the energy sector and commit to joint initiatives on finding investment for carbon capture utilization and storage as well as nuclear, hydrogen and other emerging technologies.

Smith said thus far, Trudeau has not shown himself to be a friend to Alberta and has imposed policies that have been “exceptionally harmful to economy and investment climate and that have cost Albertans tens of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of investment and projects.”

Health money

Smith and other provincial and territorial premiers were in Ottawa to strike a new health-care deal with the federal government. The Trudeau government’s offer increased federal health-care transfers to the provinces by $196 billion over the next 10 years.

Of that, $46 billion is new spending which includes an immediate and unconditional $2 billion top-up to the Canada Health Transfer.

Smith said she’ll be meeting with other premiers shortly to discuss the offer, adding there’s a great amount of disappointment among the provincial leaders, who were anticipating more.

Alberta will get about $518 million in new dollars, said Smith.

She said Alberta will use the new dollars to accelerate health reforms already started to decrease emergency room wait times, decrease ambulance response times and to decrease surgery backlogs and recruit more frontline workers, especially in primary care.

The handshake

Weighing in on her limp hand clasp with Trudeau that went viral, Smith sad she wasn’t expecting the handshake.

She says she and Trudeau shook hands Tuesday moments before media were allowed into the room for a photo opportunity in Ottawa.

She says she was caught by surprise when he reached out again in front of the cameras, which captured a smiling Trudeau reaching down, clutching and pinning with his thumb Smith’s palm-down hand.

The premier says it was an awkward image and they “kind of missed the landing.”

–with files from The Canadian Press