00:04:18.860I want to start by saying that our government is aware
00:04:21.700and watching events taking place across the world today.
00:04:24.880We're monitoring the situation in Alberta closely, following the terrorist group Hamas and their calls for acts of violence around the world today.
00:04:34.620And we ask for peace and safety in these very troubling times.0.54
00:04:43.160If you believe in fairness, common sense, and the sanctity of the Canadian Constitution, today is a great day.
00:04:50.220We are extremely pleased with the Supreme Court of Canada's decision confirming the unconstitutionality of the federal government's Destructive Impact Assessment Act.
00:05:00.600This legislation, also known as the No More Pipelines Act, but I've been calling it the Don't Build Anything Anywhere Act, is an existential threat to Alberta's economy.
00:05:10.860It is already responsible for the loss of tens of billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs across the country in many economic sectors.
00:05:19.400Today's ruling represents an opportunity for all provinces to stop that bleeding,
00:05:24.080rebuild investor confidence, and attract those jobs back into our economies.
00:05:27.980And today, I am pleased to say that Alberta is once again open for business.
00:05:35.560The court ruled that the act and regulations are unconstitutional and reaffirmed
00:05:40.400that the primary jurisdiction of non-renewable natural resource development is the sole jurisdiction of the provinces.
00:05:47.640And the court also ruled that they do not apply to activities that primarily fall under provincial jurisdiction, including conventional oil and gas, oil sands, hard rock mining, and other similar non-renewable resource development.
00:06:02.140These are substantial wins for the protection of provincial rights in our Constitution.
00:06:06.520The legislation gives the federal government almost unlimited power to intervene in the approval of virtually any major project or in any part of the country and for any reason.
00:11:40.940governments aren't known for moving super quickly sometimes.
00:11:43.800Are you concerned as a government at all that in resulting possible delays because they are going to have to rejig some things here and what that might mean for Alberta's economy and what can you do as a provincial government to try and limit the impacts there on potential developments in Alberta?
00:11:58.240As I said, we're open for business. We'll ask for people who have been delayed in making project approvals or project submissions. Start now because we're going to approve them.
00:12:07.700we have the constitutional authority to do it and they can um they can bring their laws into
00:12:12.580alignment with what the supreme court has decided but we have always contended that the constitution
00:12:17.060matters that our jurisdiction matters and we're going to proceed full steam ahead
00:12:21.780thank you and we'll go to next with the mic go ahead sean
00:12:26.180sean polzer western standard uh you're obviously listening to the
00:12:30.420presser with wilkinson and uh ministers you both this morning um mr wilkinson made a comment that
00:12:37.220uh the federal government had been acting in good faith and he pointed to the energy round
00:12:42.180tables as an example and i'm just wondering um how that would apply to the clean electricity
00:12:49.220regulations and also the impending uh emissions cap we have a table with the federal government
00:12:57.140to align their interests with the 2050 emissions reduction target to achieve carbon neutrality by
00:13:03.6202050 and they have not been acting in good faith because every other week we hear an announcement
00:13:09.700from Stephen Guibault that he wants to go outside that table discussion, wants to have more aggressive
00:13:14.760emissions reduction caps on methane, wants to have a cap on oil and gas emissions, wants to bring
00:13:20.100through a net zero electricity grid by 2035. All of those are unconstitutional. They need to align
00:13:26.520themselves with our 2050 targets and we're quite happy to work with them on that and I think that
00:13:30.480this Supreme Court decision gives us the power to exert that at the table. So I'm hopeful that we
00:13:36.600can actually get back to the table in good faith, that they will rescind any public declaration that
00:13:42.800they want to proceed with those caps or the electricity grid changes, and then we can get
00:13:47.120back to working towards our shared goals. But I don't think that they, if they are trying to
00:13:52.260pretend that they somehow still have the right to proceed with those offensive pieces of legislation
00:13:56.720that are clearly in our jurisdiction they're fooling themselves it's illegal and we're just
00:14:00.880not going to stand for it uh mr jibble also made a comment about um the moratorium on renewable
00:14:08.560and 30 billion dollar backlog of projects in the book and that somehow without mentioning
00:14:14.560you specifically that you should more or less be glad that they were providing some certainty
00:14:21.040and clarity around those rules oh boy they just don't stop do they that's a joke um minister
00:14:27.600guibo has done more damage to our investment climate in this province than probably any single
00:14:33.360federal minister i've ever seen um i can tell you that the moratorium um it's just a pause
00:14:39.760we're we're only a few months away from announcing the new rules and we've been very clear about what
00:14:43.920it is that we're looking for we're looking for some certainty that these projects are not going
00:14:47.760to be built on prime agricultural land or interfere with our beautiful viewscapes we've also been
00:14:53.280clear that there has to be a plan for how they're going to be reclaimed at the end because each one
00:14:57.200of those turbines will cost an estimated 1 million dollars to remove and we want to make sure that a
00:15:02.080landowner isn't left putting the bill for that we want to make sure that we're putting them in a
00:15:07.360place where we have existing transmission and distribution lines so that we're not
00:15:10.880unnecessarily adding additional cost and we have to make sure that there is backup
00:15:15.280like reliable natural gas in order to be able to bring on and back up unreliable wind and solar so
00:15:22.080we are going to continue with a framework that allows for investment in solar and wind and quite
00:15:26.240frankly when we announced the pause we had 23 billion dollars worth of projects in the queue
00:15:31.280we now have 41 billion dollars of soil solar and wind projects in the queue so that looks to me
00:15:36.880like people are still looking at alberta they're still excited about the opportunity they're waiting
00:15:40.640for some clarity they'll get that clarity from us because it's under our constitutional
00:15:45.360responsibility we have the exclusive right as the supreme court determined today to exercise under
00:15:50.400section 92 and that includes electricity and that's what we'll do thank you thanks so much sean
00:15:56.080and jason go ahead uh good still still morning good morning premier hi um i know it's not your
00:16:04.800name but why do you call it the no more pipelines act um the you know this ruling and you what you
00:16:12.160were talking about was things that are exclusively on provincial jurisdiction pipelines generally
00:16:17.600speaking are not i mean there are some surely but why do you use that term no more pipelines act as
00:16:22.960you saw i said that it has been called the no more pipelines act that's how the former premier used to
00:16:27.200refer to it i i called it the don't build anything anywhere anytime act because i was i was very
00:16:32.880concerned about the ways in which they were interfering in provincial jurisdiction the
00:16:37.760intra boundary projects they never had any constitutional authority over and that includes
00:16:42.960transmission lines and pipelines that are solely within the boundaries of alberta and we do a lot
00:16:48.480of pipeline construction but it was the major projects that i was most concerned they wanted
00:16:52.560to interfere inside d they wanted to prevent us from building highways they wanted to prevent us
00:16:56.480from building power generation plants that were larger than 200 megawatts and those are the sections
00:17:02.000that have now been rendered unconstitutional so i'm i'm glad to see that they found the right
00:17:07.600balance they recognize that we have two orders of government with sovereign powers and exclusive
00:17:12.480jurisdiction and acknowledge that exclusive jurisdiction on resource development and on
00:17:17.760electricity belongs to us and when you talk about you talk about exclusivity sovereignty there are
00:17:26.160the supreme court ruling was pretty emphatic that exclusive domain is not really a thing
00:17:30.960in these projects because we're talking about navigable waters migratory birds species at risk
00:17:36.640what to you would make what to you constitutes a sovereign project that alberta has exclusive
00:17:42.400jurisdiction over that cannot be scrutinized by the federal government well i can tell you
00:17:47.360we need to build more baseload power more natural gas baseload power and those projects have been
00:17:53.200in the order of 800 megawatts to a thousand megawatts that's our exclusive right to be
00:17:57.840be able to make decisions on being able to permit and approve those types of projects i would say
00:18:02.960that if i want to build the highway between grand prairie and fort mcmurray which is 70 more than
00:18:08.08075 kilometers of new road that's within our exclusive jurisdiction in order to be able to
00:18:12.640develop and i would say that if tech frontier mind wants to put in another application that's also
00:18:17.760within our exclusive jurisdiction to approve those are just three examples that i would give if
00:18:21.360they're completely within our borders and we have the ability through our regulatory process to go
00:18:27.120through our own environmental reviews then those are the ones that should stay with us thank you
00:18:31.920and we'll head over to the phones now operator could you please put through the first caller
00:18:37.120don braid calgary herald premier um could i ask you if you are today declaring
00:18:44.480that the 2005 35 rather electricity uh net zero and the coming uh card cap on emissions are simply
00:18:53.520null and void invalid you're not going to go with them and that you perhaps will bring in a
00:18:58.480sovereignty act declaration uh well i've heard jonathan wilkinson doesn't want to go to court
00:19:03.200so um it seems to me that they've got to withdraw them because they don't have the
00:19:07.280the constitutional authority to impose them and i have already said that they won't work in our
00:19:12.400province and that we are are not going to to be implementing them we are we are in alignment on
00:19:17.840getting to carbon neutrality by 2050 i've talked with our electricity producers and uh talked to
00:19:23.200pathways group, they both believe that those targets of 2050 are achievable. That's what we've
00:19:29.480got to work towards. It's the federal government who keeps on interfering, intervening and setting
00:19:34.040unrealistic, unachievable and now patently unconstitutional provisions that we've been
00:19:40.780fighting against. And so I hope that they read this judgment in the spirit in which I believe
00:19:45.280the Supreme Court intended it and come to the table and work with us so that we can align on 2050
00:20:18.520Should they immediately stop all work on approving projects on private provincial land or by private companies and just release them from all these obligations?
00:20:31.360I mean, they don't just turn the lights out in Ottawa because of a court ruling.
00:20:34.820So what practically speaking does it mean or should it mean for people who've got projects in the works?
00:20:40.040Well, I think they need to remove the sections of the act that are unconstitutional, that fall within provincial jurisdiction.
00:20:45.860and they can continue on the project's approval
00:22:37.140Well, hi. Thanks for taking my question, Premier. You've pointed out and you've
00:22:43.460argued here that this ruling essentially sets up these projects as being exclusively under
00:22:52.500provincial jurisdiction, but in the decision the Chief Justice said very explicitly, and I'm going
00:22:59.300to quote here, he said, the fact that a project involves activities primarily regulated by the
00:23:04.740provincial legislature does not create an enclave of exclusivity end quote in other words while
00:23:11.780he said that he wrote that the legislation was over broad it doesn't the ruling doesn't give
00:23:17.620immunity to the province from federal law can you respond to that well look i mean i have responded
00:23:23.620to that with our 2050 target to get to carbon neutral but that's my acknowledgement that the
00:23:29.780the federal government does have a right to set an overarching framework for the entire country
00:23:34.940as we try to reduce emissions. I'm being very proactive. I'm being very collaborative. They're
00:23:41.720the ones who are going too far. And I guess if we can keep on battling this out in the Supreme
00:23:46.920Court to find out exactly where the line is, but I'm asking for the federal government to accept
00:23:53.340that there is exclusive provincial jurisdiction under the Constitution, accept that that's what
00:23:58.660the language of the constitution says and to work with us on on those areas of shared priority they
00:24:03.960cannot just drop new policy on our head and make us spend another six years going through the court
00:24:11.240to be told once again that they've been acting illegally so um that's what i hope does not
00:24:16.060happen i think that it's pretty clear what the court has said they want to see us work
00:24:20.060collaboratively and that is not acting in the way that steven steven gibault has been so if there's
00:24:25.280new spirit of coming together in cooperation to align our goals around a 2050 emissions target
00:24:30.720then i think we i think we'll be able to get somewhere but if they think that they're going
00:24:34.480to tinker with this and keep us tied up for the next six years well i can tell you we we're just
00:24:39.760not going to put up with that and did you have a follow-up lisa thanks yeah you you also mentioned
00:24:46.160today that the legislation you suggested the legislation is already responsible for the loss
00:24:51.200of tens of billions of dollars in investment um all right and you brought up the tech frontier
00:24:56.960mine which is an interesting example to me are you aware of any project that has been
00:25:01.760explicitly stymied or held up for campo because of impact assessments under this legislation rather
00:25:08.800than just simple economic considerations well of course it's only been a couple of hours since we
00:25:14.160got the ruling down so we can uh we can follow up with you on identifying uh projects there
00:25:19.840There have been many companies who have said that because they don't know if they can navigate through the regulatory process, that they've pulled the plug.
00:25:26.940I mean, that was the story that Energy East told us.
00:25:29.420They'd spent, I think, $10 billion on the project and couldn't see a way through to get to the, maybe $1 billion on the project, couldn't see a way through to get to the finish line.
00:25:37.020That's what happens when you have regulatory uncertainty.
00:25:39.700That's what happens when you just don't know if you're going to be able to get to a yes.
00:25:43.740And so I'll be happy to get our officials to follow up with you on projects that we think ended up either not going forward or got pulled because they couldn't figure out where the decision-making authority lay.
00:25:58.480But I can tell you this. We have almost zero projects in the queue for natural gas.
00:26:04.980And that, to me, is a direct result of the federal government interfering in our market and creating uncertainty about whether or not such projects would be able to go ahead.
00:26:15.020Under normal circumstances, we're a natural gas basin. We've got 12,000 megawatts of natural gas on our grid.
00:26:20.780Why in the world would I only have 41,000 megawatts of solar and wind in the queue and virtually no natural gas?
00:26:26.460That is absolutely underscoring why nobody wants to invest in natural gas in our province.
00:26:31.840That is 100% because of the uncertainty that the federal government created from this act.
00:26:36.560So how many of those projects, how many projects would be there if they hadn't created that uncertainty?
00:26:41.380I don't know if I can calculate that, but I know it would be a heck of a lot more than zero that we have right now.
00:26:47.840And thank you. We just have time for one more quick question from the room and then we'll be wrapping for today.
00:26:52.200you might want to bring in a motion in the house under the sovereignty act can you expand more on
00:26:58.620what that might look like what it might entail and what it incorporates yeah it'd be the uh given
00:27:03.060that the supreme court of canada has acknowledged our our jurisdiction to develop our resources and
00:27:09.080our electricity therefore and then it would go from there and it would be in direct response
00:27:14.300if the federal government decides to continue forward with their unconstitutional clean
00:27:18.840electricity regulations, their unconstitutional emissions cap, and their unconstitutional methane
00:27:23.100cap. So it falls in their court. Look, I don't want to do that. I would rather be collaborative.
00:27:27.160It's why when I spoke to the Prime Minister, my very first conversation, I said I was aligned
00:27:32.080with this 2050 target. It's why I asked him to wait until we did our own emissions reduction plan.
00:27:36.920We did. It's why I asked him to wait until we did abatement curves with S&P Global. We have that
00:27:41.240information. It's why I asked for us to have a joint table so that we could discuss these things,
00:27:45.340which we do. I've taken the initiative on all of this because I want to be collaborative.
00:27:49.760They want to be unilateral and they've now just been told you can't do that. So I'm hoping that
00:27:54.600they are mindful of this court decision, that they respect it, and that they'll come to the
00:27:58.340table and work with us on shared goals. What is it that there's something to
00:28:02.580force under the guise of the sovereignty act? I mean, the sovereignty act isn't just saying
00:28:06.800we will not, this will not occur in our lands. It's about enforcement provincially of the law.
00:28:12.000So how would that, in that respect, anything you say about sovereignty