WS EXCLUSIVE： Cory Morgan sits down with Alberta Environment Minister Nixon
Episode Stats
Words per minute
205.69527
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Summary
Environment Minister Jason Nixon sits down with Environment Minister Jody gondek to discuss the federal government's new environmental policy, C-10, and how Alberta can work with them to protect the environment and the economy.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilboll is doing a cross-country tour right now.
00:00:05.700
He's doing his due diligence. He's consulting with apparently Indigenous leaders,
00:00:11.280
mayors of major cities. He sat down with Jody Gondek today in Calgary,
00:00:16.560
and he's speaking with environment ministers in different provinces.
00:00:20.040
So this afternoon, Gilboll sat down with Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon.
00:00:25.920
You know, it's good to see Gilboll doing the groundwork, getting out there,
00:00:29.980
talking to people about his environmental policy, which now has been deferred by three more months.
00:00:33.800
So it's going to come out at the end of March. But it does make one worry a little bit.
00:00:37.780
How big and intrusive is Gilboll's policy going to be?
00:00:41.940
I mean, he didn't consult anybody when he tried to push ahead with C-10,
00:00:46.060
which was going to basically choke free speech on the Internet.
00:00:49.800
And the Liberals aren't done with that yet either.
00:00:51.280
So when he's going to this much trouble, laying groundwork for a policy that's coming,
00:00:57.540
I had an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Environment Minister Jason Nixon
00:01:02.520
about his discussion with his federal counterpart in environment
00:01:07.340
and how Minister Nixon plans to try and at least stand up for responsible development
00:01:12.860
of Alberta resources while still protecting our environment
00:01:16.500
in the face of a hostile federal government that's always saying we aren't doing enough.
00:01:23.960
Thank you very much for sitting down with us today.
00:01:27.080
We're going into, I think you're going to be more prominent than ever, I suspect,
00:01:31.800
going into 2022 with such grand climate plans coming in.
00:01:36.120
So I'm looking forward to the opportunity to talk a little bit about that.
00:01:39.700
Well, thanks, first of all, for having me on, Corey.
00:01:42.900
And I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season,
00:01:51.540
I think there's a lot taking place on the climate side of politics, I guess,
00:01:57.560
that's going to have a real impact on our province and our country in the months to come.
00:02:01.560
And unfortunately, I think some of it is very troubling for our province.
00:02:07.660
But I also think we're going to see some opportunities where Alberta is going to be able to thrive in some of the circumstances that we find ourselves in,
00:02:15.340
particularly if we can continue to push towards what we actually see work when it comes to meet our environmental obligations in our province,
00:02:23.780
which is focusing on innovation, technology, empowering our great industries,
00:02:29.040
including the energy industry, which has accomplished so much by using those tools.
00:02:32.640
I mean, if you look at what's taken place over the last several decades, go back to when Ralph Klein was Environment Minister in our province.
00:02:40.560
And he did some amazing things actually to protect the environment that he doesn't get a lot of credit for,
00:02:45.340
because, of course, he would go on to be the premier and accomplish so much financially.
00:02:49.720
But that is the way that he took to manage the environmental obligations that he knew was coming,
00:02:55.720
and that was to focus on working with our industries and recognize that Albertans are the best at figuring out their ways out of technical problems.
00:03:02.820
And our focus is on doing that, not what the federal government is doing,
00:03:07.740
which is essentially trying to shut down the largest industry, not only in this province, Corey, but in this country.
00:03:12.920
And we're not going to allow that to happen here in Alberta.
00:03:16.680
So you met with Minister Gilboa today, and he's touring the country.
00:03:21.160
Perhaps it's a good sign that he's meeting with ministers.
00:03:24.480
They've put off their environmental plan until the end of March now,
00:03:28.000
but it gives me a feeling that they're really looking to go big.
00:03:31.440
I mean, something is coming down the pipes, and unfortunately, you know, we all do want to protect the environment,
00:03:37.980
but the liberal vision of it federally may be quite different than our provincial vision.
00:03:42.960
How did your meeting go, and how do you feel about where we might be going forward?
00:03:47.220
First of all, I'll give the federal minister credit for being here.
00:03:49.960
One of the things that we've seen the last couple of months is the federal government
00:03:53.260
focusing on spending their time in Europe and talking to European elites, which I found very disappointing.
00:04:00.120
You know, coming here is where they should be, and we can give them an opportunity to actually see the great things that are taking place in Alberta,
00:04:06.260
but also understand the positive impact of the oil and gas industry and our other industries.
00:04:11.260
You know, I was clear with the federal minister when I met with him by phone a couple of weeks ago
00:04:15.840
and invited him to come to Alberta that we will accept no plan that does not have a future for our largest industry.
00:04:24.800
You know, we are clear that the consultation has been inadequate to date,
00:04:28.600
and I am happy to see the commitment to extend that to give us some more opportunity to have conversations.
00:04:34.220
But today we made clear to him that the only way forward is where there's a way forward for the oil and gas industry,
00:04:41.600
And he needs to take some time to understand the impact on the Canadian economy of some of the policies that they're looking at.
00:04:49.280
So, you know, hopefully he gets an opportunity to learn some of that while he's here.
00:04:54.400
My other message to him, though, was that we're concerned that they continue to only focus on one environmental issue.
00:05:00.400
In Alberta, we're proud of the beautiful landscapes that we call home.
00:05:03.280
We have some of the most amazing wildlife on the planet, our waterways, things that matter to us as Albertans.
00:05:09.360
And it's sad to see that we've continued to have federal environment ministers that only want to talk about one issue,
00:05:14.400
emissions management, and have no interest in even meeting their own environmental obligations.
00:05:18.460
And so I called the federal minister out on several issues that I think the feds have been messing up on the environment side,
00:05:25.060
on species management, the mismanagement of things inside their national park,
00:05:29.040
and made clear to them that if they want to go around and try to tell everybody how to manage the environment,
00:05:34.740
they better make sure they're managing their environment appropriately.
00:05:37.020
So it was an interesting conversation, but I think we have a long way to go between the province and the federal government.
00:05:43.280
Yeah, well, and you're caught in a position in the middle between two levels of government.
00:05:46.760
We have the newly elected mayor, Jody Gondek, who has made the climate emergency a top priority in coming in as mayor.
00:05:53.040
Though what that means is a municipal government is still to be determined, I guess you could say, but that's a high priority.
00:05:58.780
Have you been in communication with Mayor Gondek and trying to figure out where governments could work together on things
00:06:04.760
and find a level rather than chilling investment in the city?
00:06:07.780
So I haven't had a chance to speak to the mayor myself yet, though we are working on hopefully arranging a meeting soon.
00:06:12.940
My staff have been in contact with the mayor's staff.
00:06:16.360
You know, what I really would tell the city of Calgary and all Albertans and the federal government
00:06:21.160
is what we've already done here as a province over the last several decades when it comes to emission management following our process.
00:06:28.060
We are the only jurisdiction in the country that's ever met a target when it comes to emissions management.
00:06:32.240
The federal government sets a new target every week when they haven't even met the last one.
00:06:35.380
And the reason that we're the only jurisdiction that's done that is because we focused on innovation, technology,
00:06:40.780
empowering our industry players, some of the smartest engineers and people on the planet
00:06:44.620
to be able to find positive ways forward that create jobs, not cost jobs, and that meet environmental obligations.
00:06:53.120
And I really hope for any politician that they'll take the time to understand that
00:06:57.320
because that's the model that we should be following if we want to have success.
00:07:00.940
And directly to the mayor, I will say this when I meet with her,
00:07:04.120
I hope she takes some time to actually go and understand what the largest industry in our province,
00:07:09.020
which is the largest industry inside the city she's responsible for,
0.97
00:07:12.000
is doing when it comes to managing the environment because it's pretty impressive.
00:07:16.980
And we should always remember that that's the industry that's paying the bills for this province.
00:07:21.060
And hopefully she takes the time to do that.
0.81
00:07:22.620
But we'll have some dialogue with Calgary to try to educate them on some of the good things that's happening in Alberta.
00:07:29.380
I mean, and I know from being in the petrochemical industry,
00:07:31.940
I mean, the advancements in hydrocarbon companies with carbon capture
00:07:39.840
I was speaking with Colin Craig the other day, and they've made a vodka out of captured carbon.
00:07:44.460
I mean, the industry's doing the work, but the problem is the government keeps moving the goalposts.
00:07:49.160
I mean, we reached the targets, and then the target moves.
00:07:52.900
How can we, I mean, what can we do to push back if Ottawa moves the targets on us again?
00:07:58.600
We can talk, like we won't accept it, but what will we do then if it happens?
00:08:04.360
I mean, it's challenging because we lost the carbon tax case to the Supreme Court.
00:08:09.280
With that said, we're currently going through the court process when it comes to Bill C-69,
00:08:13.940
which we've called the No More Pipelines Bill, which is essentially the assessment process
00:08:18.940
that the federal government has tried to put on projects inside our province.
00:08:22.760
We think we have an excellent chance of actually being successful in that litigation.
00:08:27.120
Our assessments always showed that we had better chances, frankly, on that,
00:08:30.780
than we did on the carbon tax, so we need to fight both.
00:08:33.500
If we can get the federal government out of the assessment process on our projects,
00:08:36.880
that will create some space, so that's very, very important.
00:08:39.940
Second, we need to continue to do the investment that we have put into our own regulatory system.
00:08:46.880
Right now, the federal government does not regulate our largest industry inside the province.
00:08:51.200
We do the large emitter side of things, and we do that because it's protecting our trade-exposed industry,
00:08:56.540
and it's making a path forward to actually have better environmental results
00:09:00.020
while creating tens of thousands of jobs compared to the federal system,
00:09:03.840
which basically costs us tens of thousands of jobs.
00:09:06.020
And so we need to continue to be focused on basically doing everything we can to keep the feds out of our regulatory process.
00:09:11.080
We will. That's my job as the minister in charge of that.
00:09:14.400
And then at the end of the day, I think that what exactly the province will do if it comes to it,
00:09:21.620
I can't speak to. I mean, we need all of government and, of course, the premier to speak to.
00:09:25.400
But what I can tell you, and we've been clear with this on the federal government,
00:09:28.040
if they do not stop and make sure whatever they're doing has a path forward for all of our industries,
00:09:34.420
including oil and gas, there will be consequences for that.
00:09:37.680
But at this point, we're happy to see that they've extended consultation,
00:09:41.220
and we're going to see if we can get in there and get a path forward through the regulatory process,
00:09:47.420
Okay. Maybe just to review back, it looks like we're still going to be a lot of people vacationing at home.
00:09:52.020
It's going to be another – the pandemic drags on, and there's not much to be done for it.
00:09:55.800
But it put a lot – that was an area that really landed in your lap, put a lot of pressure in the parks.
00:09:59.540
I mean, it was great that Albertans were rediscovering, you know, how many fantastic areas we have to go out and use,
00:10:04.980
but it turned into having to put a tax or a fee on access to Kananaskis and things like that,
00:10:13.320
With parks management going into this year, what plans are there coming in ahead,
00:10:18.140
and how have the past plans with the new management of parks been going?
00:10:21.260
Well, there's some exciting stuff happening on the recreation of the park side.
00:10:24.480
We've been able to stabilize the financial situation with the Kananaskis Conservation Pass.
00:10:28.700
We had no choice. I mean, you've got 5.4 million people going to Kananaskis,
00:10:32.480
a million more than Banff, which, of course, had the fees since the beginning.
00:10:36.580
And you're seeing now, and you will see more investment in the coming months
00:10:40.900
to be able to make sure we can stabilize our largest provincial park.
00:10:44.120
But we're making investments all across the park system.
00:10:47.180
More investment than B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba combined, I believe,
00:10:52.160
here inside the province of Alberta on the recreation side.
00:10:55.820
We've also just, right now inside the legislature, finishing up the Trails Act,
00:10:59.620
which was a way to be able to help work with our nonprofit organizations
00:11:03.320
who are out building trails for everything from off-highway vehicles,
00:11:07.600
cross-country skiing, hiking inside our public areas inside the province.
00:11:12.780
That's a sharp contrast to what the NDP tried to do.
00:11:15.280
Their approach is actually just to shut access to all those trails.
00:11:18.160
We, instead of creating legislation where we can support the conservation organizations
00:11:23.680
So we've got a bunch of stuff like that coming primarily on the investment side.
00:11:29.440
One of the biggest things that we've seen in years was a shortage of enforcement
00:11:34.740
So that's the first investment in probably decades inside conservation officers
00:11:40.800
So I think you'll continue to see a lot of positive investment,
00:11:44.260
and you're certainly going to continue to see a lot of people use our backyard.
00:11:48.120
Alberta's got one of the most beautiful backyards in the world.
00:11:50.620
Yeah, well, we've got a lot of interesting things to look forward to going into 2022.
00:11:56.080
Is there anything else you'd like to add before I let you get on with your afternoon?