A few months ago, the Trudeau Liberal government released its “Just Transition” plan which aims at progressively shutting down Canada’s oil sector and transitioning employees towards other industries.
Alberta, the country’s largest oil-producing province, says it will not abide by Trudeau’s plan to shut down the sector and retrain employees.
“We are not going to be shutting down our oil and natural gas industry. We are not going to be transitioning our workers, who are in good, high-paying meaningful, important jobs, into installing solar panels, which is the idiocy (federal Green Party Leader) Elizabeth May was first proposing when this kind of thing came out,” Alberta’s PM Danielle Smith said on Saturday.
“It doesn’t help when (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) keeps on firing these shots across the bow at us without even picking up the phone and giving us a call to tell us what he has in mind,” she added.
“If that’s what the prime minister is talking about, is helping our oil and natural gas workers find other jobs in related industries, then we can work with him, but we are not going to be shutting this industry down.”
“That’s the mindset we’ve got to get into”, Smith said in reference to Carbon capture and new technologies that can drastically reduce the impacts of oil production. “That’s what we’re fighting back against in Ottawa. They think that the solution is shutting in, and they’re wrong.”
Shutting down Canada’s oil industry would be catastrophic for the country’s energy independence and economy. According to experts, Canada could be playing a key role in supplying LNG to Europe to make up for the Russian gas shortfall, but political leadership over the last few years had made it nearly impossible to get ressources projects approved.
