Western Standard - SPECIAL INTERVIEW： Schulz says all of Canada — not just Alberta — is best served by pro-energy gvm't

00:00:00.000 Hi, we're here with Environment and Special Places Minister Rebecca Schultz for a quick

00:00:21.100 rundown of some of the things that the RC's been up to. You're just back from Japan and

00:00:26.240 There's lots of developments that are happening here in the world of energy and environment.

00:00:33.520 Yeah.

00:00:34.060 Thanks so much for having me today.

00:00:35.500 Thank you.

00:00:36.520 Domo arigato.

00:00:39.220 You know, I learned a little bit of Japanese, mostly just in the terms of readings, but

00:00:43.360 people sure appreciate when you try.

00:00:46.180 So I started our speeches with konnichiwa and arigato gozaimasu.

00:00:50.960 Excellent.

00:00:51.600 Yeah.

00:00:52.180 Somebody told me that when you're traveling, two most important words to learn in any language.

00:00:56.240 please and thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So why don't you tell us about your trip to Japan

00:01:01.860 and, you know, knowing that there is no market for Alberta LNG, no business case for LNG.

00:01:09.720 Well, I can tell you, I do think people in Japan see a business case, despite what our federal

00:01:14.480 government has said over the last couple of years. It was a really productive couple of days. So part

00:01:19.760 of our mission was coordinated through Energy for a Secure Future. And so they've been doing a lot

00:01:25.620 of work to connect with Japan, folks in policy and in business, and help make the case for

00:01:33.520 Canadian natural gas. And so we had a number of meetings. We had a tour of an LNG offtake

00:01:38.080 facility. And then there was one day, almost like a symposium style, full of panels and

00:01:45.620 conversations about, first of all, what we have to offer in terms of Canadian energy,

00:01:50.920 and address some of the concerns that Japan has had, especially given the last couple

00:01:54.980 of years and how they see us as a reliable trading partner. And a lot of that does really

00:02:01.200 come down to having a federal government that has not supported market access, not supported

00:02:05.340 pipelines. I know some had also raised the British Columbia government and their lack

00:02:12.420 of willingness to push for market access and pipeline projects. So, you know, for example,

00:02:16.800 when we toured the LNG offtake facility, they're still not receiving Canadian natural gas. They

00:02:22.460 a tanker in from Mongolia that morning. And they said they're pretty excited actually to bring in

00:02:28.380 Canadian natural gas with the completion of LNG Canada. But you know, they also have a very,

00:02:35.740 I would say a pretty lofty set of environmental goals. They're not an energy producer, but it

00:02:41.100 really does matter to them that the energy that they are bringing in is responsibly produced so

00:02:47.340 that they can also be part of the environmental solution globally by bringing in responsible

00:02:54.220 energy and displacing less responsibly produced energy, not just in Japan, but throughout Southeast

00:03:00.940 Asia. Russia, China, the usual suspects, Middle East. I read that actually Japan is reliant on

00:03:10.700 on a rack for a lot of oil.

00:03:14.560 Yeah, so they really do see us

00:03:16.320 as a potential trading partner.

00:03:18.680 They understand the abundance of natural gas that we have.

00:03:23.040 Of course, part of my message was, you know,

00:03:25.380 first of all, our premier has committed

00:03:27.060 to doubling energy production,

00:03:28.920 which means we will have that natural gas

00:03:32.280 and that we are pushing for pipelines.

00:03:34.740 I do think, you know, there was a lot of conversation

00:03:36.860 about tariffs and the impact that that has had.

00:03:39.080 And, you know, I think a positive there is it's maybe shifted some of the narrative from provinces across the country that maybe had been opposed to energy provinces or projects now saying, you know what, we actually need this for the overall Canadian economy.

00:03:54.320 But now we actually have to turn that into action.

00:03:56.640 We need to see those pipeline projects completed, which will allow us to then take our natural gas to other areas of the world.

00:04:04.820 And so, you know, a lot of our conversation was about our environmental record, the work that our industry has done on methane.

00:04:11.080 We had a number of industry folks join us on that mission as well, as well as Indigenous representation.

00:04:19.440 So Stephen Buffalo from the Indian Resource Council honestly just did such a fantastic job about talking about the importance of these projects, obviously, for First Nations communities and economic reconciliation.

00:04:30.820 We had Charlene Gale with the First Nations Projects Coalition so that she could really share the message about the work that they're doing to bring information, unbiased information, to First Nations communities so that they are able to make decisions at the speed of business to keep these projects moving forward quickly.

00:04:47.820 And of course, with Stephen's role in the AIOC, the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, you know, there was a huge amount of discussion there.

00:04:57.720 And Karen Ogun, again, with First Nations LNG Alliance, just bringing a message that First Nations communities across, especially B.C. and Alberta, but right across Canada, are seeing the benefits of these projects for their communities.

00:05:14.120 And then, you know, making the case for our environmental record and why we want to be one of their top trading partners.

00:05:23.820 Excellent. So you had mentioned tariffs.

00:05:27.720 And also the attitude of other governments, specifically British Columbia.

00:05:32.000 Have you seen a shift in attitude?

00:05:34.260 Just recently in the last, we had Mr. Abbey on CBC with the premiers in Washington here yesterday.

00:05:42.100 And there seemed to, I don't know, am I wrong, that there seems to be kind of more of a willingness.

00:05:47.460 Yeah, you know, and again, I haven't spoken to the premier myself,

00:05:50.860 but reading some of the comments and media stories about that it looks like British Columbia is

00:05:57.500 shifting. That was one of the jurisdictions that was raised to us by folks from Japan while we

00:06:04.100 were over there saying, you know, what are you doing to work with British Columbia to encourage

00:06:08.880 them to support pipeline projects? And so, you know, I do think, you know, I'm an optimist. So

00:06:14.000 if there's a benefit from these tariff conversations and the overall broader conversation about the

00:06:19.900 Canadian economy and the importance of energy. And our premier is doing such a great job

00:06:23.980 of articulating that both in Canada and the United States. I think that, you know, this is a really

00:06:31.540 important time for us to be having that conversation, but then we need to actually

00:06:34.960 put that into action. So, you know, with things like Bill C-69, obviously that slows down any

00:06:42.640 major projects that are going to be built in this country, obviously called the No More Pipelines

00:06:46.740 Act. We can't have regulations like that and then say, oh, but we're going to be pro-energy and we

00:06:53.380 need to export more of our natural gas. Same thing right now from the federal government. I mean,

00:06:58.500 you know, they're saying now, oh sure, you know, we need to support the energy industry,

00:07:02.580 but they have not taken the emissions cap off the table. They have not taken the clean

00:07:07.540 electricity regulations off the table. So they still have all of these very problematic pieces

00:07:13.140 of policy regulation legislation on the table creating uncertainty for investment in oil and

00:07:19.940 gas which then again to to people outside of canada and this is what we heard in japan is

00:07:25.700 that it does not tell the story that we are a stable reliable trading partner um and so i think

00:07:32.100 that that's an area where i mean you know i i hope that we also see an election i i've been pretty

00:07:36.980 vocal about that. We do need a pro-energy, pro-economy focused federal government. We really

00:07:45.540 do. And so I think that that's going to happen and I think that that will help. But that's what we

00:07:50.420 need when it comes to our image outside of Canada to ensure those jobs, strong economy inside of

00:07:57.220 Canada. And again, that is what's going to have an impact on global emissions and Japan's

00:08:04.980 environmental goals. Sure. And I was going to ask you about that as well, because on March 9th,

00:08:10.500 we are going to have a change of government regardless, right? Whether there's an election

00:08:15.080 or not. So what would you expect from, I guess, a liberal government or alternatively a conservative

00:08:24.240 government under Pierre Polyev? You know, I mean, I obviously do have concerns with this current

00:08:30.940 federal liberal government. And I don't think that any of the candidates who are running for

00:08:35.660 the future liberal leadership have really committed to changing course. You know, they say that our

00:08:42.620 economy matters and that we should look at marketing our energy like we haven't in the past.

00:08:48.380 But again, you know, we have Mark Carney, who, you know, very much has supported that pro-carbon

00:08:55.660 tax pro-activist agenda, you know, wanted to increase the carbon tax, quite frankly.

00:09:02.780 And so we're not seeing anything from them that will essentially move our country in

00:09:07.980 a different direction. So I firmly believe we need a federal conservative government.

00:09:12.700 You know, obviously we need to get rid of these barriers. Bill C-69, we need to move quickly

00:09:17.500 on market access and building pipelines across our country. I would say multiple

00:09:22.860 directions that our premier has been a champion for that. But then of course, you know, we do,

00:09:27.600 we need to get rid of the emissions. We need to take that off the table. We can't have policies

00:09:33.460 that are going to curtail production and essentially then curtail our ability to meet

00:09:38.820 the demands of our major trading partners. What about the carbon tax specifically? All they have

00:09:46.420 has um you know campaigned on max the tax but there's still some uncertainty whether or not

00:09:53.060 that applies to the industrial portion of the tax and i know that we have the tier program and we've

00:09:57.940 been putting it into r d essentially um but it almost seems to be kind of a compromise solution

00:10:03.780 in a way it's you know either if we didn't have that then those dollars would flow out of alberta

00:10:11.380 what would be an ideal solution as far as a carbon tax goes okay so it sounds like everybody's going

00:10:16.020 to get rid of the consumer tax but what about what about the industrial portion which is you know

00:10:20.660 much larger that's a great question and i think our hope would be that that responsibility would

00:10:26.660 be transitioned back to provinces to make those decisions before this federal liberal government

00:10:32.740 alberta did have the tier system in place or previous iterations of that system there are

00:10:40.260 though changes that i think uh could be made to that system i mean we want to remain competitive

00:10:46.580 industry has been bringing forward a number of different ideas on things that we could change

00:10:51.220 within that tier structure because of course it's up for review in 2026 so this is a great time to

00:10:56.900 start gathering their feedback and looking at what that system could look like but again that would

00:11:02.180 depend on a federal government you know essentially saying we're going to vacate that space and we're

00:11:06.740 we're going to give that back to provinces to make those decisions. But competitiveness has to

00:11:12.020 be part of that, right? Not putting unrealistic carbon taxes on our industry that drive investment

00:11:18.500 out and hamper their ability to invest here. But, you know, I think that, you know, certainly what

00:11:25.560 I heard in Japan and what I heard from industry was it was great to have industry telling their

00:11:29.960 own story about the great work that they've done. Because that that is something that whether it is

00:11:36.600 uh japan or the eu uh that environmental record and the work done on emissions reduction and

00:11:42.360 methane and things like that the great work our industry has done even before governments came in

00:11:47.240 uh to set that up especially in our natural gas industry companies have been doing such a great

00:11:51.080 job of this uh for years before before the alberta government ever asked them to sure uh and so you

00:11:57.640 know that means a lot to our trading partners and uh you know i think it's important for them

00:12:02.120 um but i do think that there are things that we could definitely change moving forward to make

00:12:06.120 make sure that we're maximizing competitiveness. And of course, we always want to do the right

00:12:09.780 thing for the environment to make sure that we can continue to produce energy for generations

00:12:13.360 to come. Sure. Who's in favor of pollution? Well, that's exactly it. We want to make sure that,

00:12:18.940 you know, we maintain our high air quality, our high water quality, that we are using as little

00:12:25.120 footprint as we can. An industry, obviously, with technology and innovation has done that.

00:12:31.040 And now our companies here, technology innovation that has been generated here in Alberta, we're now seeing them operating all over the world to help them meet their environmental goals, which is also...

00:12:43.560 I was just going to make the point because I've been covering this for a long time.

00:12:47.220 You know, U.S. emissions have been going down for quite a lot of years and it's basically all market drip and it's substituting natural gas for coal.

00:12:55.380 You know, it was nothing that Obama did.

00:12:56.860 It was nothing that Biden did or anybody else.

00:12:59.500 It was just actual market driven and the company's, like you said, taking advantage of it.

00:13:06.140 Um, it seems to me that there's a lot of intersection in, in the, in the government

00:13:12.700 in between energy environment.

00:13:15.500 Um, I, when I'm not talking with Ryan, I'm spending a lot of time with, uh, minister

00:13:21.640 Jean and the premier is actually very involved in this file as well.

00:13:26.260 And, and like you said, she's, she's very up on it.

00:13:28.860 she's very sharp she takes a lot of notes absolutely so how does that work in the government

00:13:33.960 in between the three of you in terms of the intersection and maybe coordinating some of the

00:13:39.840 you know the power play i honestly think that's one of the great strengths of premier smith is

00:13:45.820 that she is very much a team player and so you know even when you look at what's been happening

00:13:51.480 uh with all of the delegations uh going down to to washington and to dc and to the u.s over the last

00:13:57.480 couple of months. She sees this as an all hands on deck opportunity. Same thing with Japan. It 0.97

00:14:04.320 really means a lot to have a long, ongoing, consistent relationship with your trading

00:14:11.120 partners. And so, you know, when I was in Japan, I would hear from companies and I would just say

00:14:18.280 also, we met with some economic agencies, companies, we met with the Clean Fields

00:14:24.320 Association. And it really meant a lot that Minister Jean had traveled to Japan, Minister

00:14:30.880 Jones had traveled to Japan, Minister Scow, Minister Horner, that there is this ongoing

00:14:36.920 commitment to building a long term relationship. And that we're in this for the long term.

00:14:42.780 And same thing in the United States. I mean, seeing so many of my colleagues taking our

00:14:47.340 message down to policymakers and making those connections and bringing forward, I think

00:14:52.440 primers doing such an exceptional job of bringing forward the facts on our trading relationship with

00:14:56.660 the United States, the impacts that tariffs would have on American citizens, and those would not

00:15:02.220 also be positive, right? That would likely increase costs for Americans as well.

00:15:07.260 Well, they're paying the tariff.

00:15:08.640 Well, exactly.

00:15:09.720 You can't really get the oil from anywhere else when you're in Ohio or Illinois.

00:15:13.500 You're exactly right, but still making the case to say, look, we should look at

00:15:17.440 the Americans' concerns with what's happening at our border. And I think her approach, you know,

00:15:23.860 to diplomacy has been really effective. And so, you know, I think that's a great strength. And

00:15:29.040 certainly on this trip, it was one of the messages that when Energy for a Secure Future

00:15:32.960 had first been working with Japan and setting up this mission, they had just released their

00:15:39.840 environmental strategy over the next couple of decades. And so environment was really important,

00:15:45.960 ensuring Indigenous communities support and engagement was really important.

00:15:51.060 And then hearing from industry was also really important.

00:15:54.120 So, you know, again, having the head of the Clean Fuels Association,

00:15:59.580 as well as the person who's running the LNG project, the Rockies LNG project,

00:16:06.040 as well as Indigenous leadership, it was really an effective mission from that perspective.

00:16:12.620 But it was really based on the concerns that a number of Japanese groups had raised.

00:16:17.700 So it was targeted.

00:16:18.820 And that's where the intersection, I think, comes in.

00:16:22.380 Excellent.

00:16:23.160 I know we're a little bit limited on time here.

00:16:25.260 So I'm going to shift gears a little bit into maybe one of your more traditional roles, which is water in southern Alberta.

00:16:33.020 The government has undergone, I think, quite a dramatic rethink on water strategy and some long-term planning.

00:16:40.480 um what are some of your thoughts on that and where it's yeah so if we go back i would say go

00:16:46.540 back a year and a half ago i would probably say a year ago november was when the phone really

00:16:52.640 started to ring and i was getting calls from the minister of agriculture as well as producers in

00:16:57.560 southern alberta saying you know we've had a couple dry years we're about to have another one

00:17:01.120 uh what are we going to do how are we going to get through this if we get the drought that we're

00:17:05.460 expecting what's that going to look like and so you know we were in a position where we didn't

00:17:10.260 want to create panic right it was still early on i mean we still get a lot of precipitation

00:17:15.220 in march and april and so it was the balance of not wanting to panic but wanting to be prepared

00:17:21.620 and so we pulled all of those water users together we had the main the biggest water

00:17:25.620 sharing agreements put in place in alberta's history um i know some of the media had said

00:17:30.100 well i think the alberta government should just come tell everybody what to do which is not the

00:17:33.460 the Alberta way. It is not what has worked in the past. What has worked in the past is bringing all

00:17:37.520 of our water users together to say, how do we fix this? And so coming out of that, and also coupled

00:17:44.060 with my mandate letter from the premier, which was to look at maximizing the water availability

00:17:48.400 that we have, not just in Southern Alberta, but across Alberta, there are always ways that you

00:17:52.800 can improve. We started that. Of course, you can imagine my department came to me with a couple

00:17:58.960 of specific things that they wanted to engage on. And I just said, I can already see that some of

00:18:03.800 the things we had been asked for, especially I use the example of wastewater effluent regulations,

00:18:10.700 and that's been raised by municipalities for the last couple of years. I heard it when I was in

00:18:16.640 municipal affairs and then continued to hear it in environment. There are things we could do better

00:18:21.200 to better serve Albertans and be probably more responsible with tax dollars, but look to other

00:18:27.840 jurisdictions to say, okay, so how have they improved their water systems? And so, you know,

00:18:34.820 wastewater effluent reuse, one of the things that kept coming up, and it wasn't on the list. And I

00:18:41.040 said to the department, you know what, let's broaden it a little bit. Before we come up with

00:18:44.340 a list of things that we want to look at changing, let's go talk to Albertans, not just in Southern

00:18:49.160 Alberta, but all across Alberta, in all of our major industries, whether that be power, whether

00:18:55.600 that be agriculture, irrigation, energy, municipal users. Let's get their feedback on things that

00:19:02.740 maybe they've had ideas that they've wanted certain regulations changed for the last number

00:19:07.880 of years. Well, this is their opportunity to raise it to us. So it's a very detailed engagement

00:19:12.820 process because we really wanted to go out, hear from them, and then take that feedback to come

00:19:17.240 back with very specific things and then do another round of engagement to make sure we're getting it

00:19:22.720 right. We do want to leave the first-in-time, first-in-right way of managing water in place.

00:19:29.260 That's something that we heard a lot from ag and irrigation, that we do need stability,

00:19:34.660 especially, I mean, ag is a huge part of our economy here in Alberta. And so we don't want

00:19:40.460 to create additional uncertainty, but we do want to say, look, there are probably things that we

00:19:44.700 could do better, that we could help encourage water conservation, look at licenses that maybe

00:19:50.760 aren't used is there red tape within my department i know there is uh i've heard about it already

00:19:55.880 um is there red tape that my department requires uh that makes us less effective at managing water

00:20:03.560 and so more to come on that but it's on it's honestly been such a great um process you know

00:20:09.080 i said to folks i was at a town hall in lethbridge in uh january and i said look tell me tell me what

00:20:15.720 you do want to see but also tell me what you don't want to see it doesn't offend me like we as

00:20:20.280 policymakers, we need your feedback to make sure we're on the right path. And so it's been,

00:20:24.920 I would say a lot of good conversations over the last couple of months, but more work to come over

00:20:29.400 the next few months as well. Excellent. Thank you very much. I see Ryan looking over at his watch

00:20:34.600 and I understand that you're pretty busy today. We do have an event today right away, but thank

00:20:39.880 you so much for the conversation and for your time. Thank you. Appreciate it very much. My pleasure.

00:20:50.280 Thank you.

Western Standard - February 15, 2025

SPECIAL INTERVIEW： Schulz says all of Canada — not just Alberta — is best served by pro-energy gvm't

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