WS EXCLUSIVE： Cory Morgan sits down with Alberta Environment Minister Nixon
Episode Stats
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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
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Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilboll is doing a cross-country tour right now.
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He's doing his due diligence. He's consulting with apparently Indigenous leaders,
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mayors of major cities. He sat down with Jody Gondek today in Calgary,
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and he's speaking with environment ministers in different provinces.
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So this afternoon, Gilboll sat down with Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon.
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You know, it's good to see Gilboll doing the groundwork, getting out there,
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talking to people about his environmental policy, which now has been deferred by three more months.
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So it's going to come out at the end of March. But it does make one worry a little bit.
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How big and intrusive is Gilboll's policy going to be?
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I mean, he didn't consult anybody when he tried to push ahead with C-10,
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which was going to basically choke free speech on the Internet.
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And the Liberals aren't done with that yet either.
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So when he's going to this much trouble, laying groundwork for a policy that's coming,
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I had an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Environment Minister Jason Nixon
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about his discussion with his federal counterpart in environment
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and how Minister Nixon plans to try and at least stand up for responsible development
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of Alberta resources while still protecting our environment
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in the face of a hostile federal government that's always saying we aren't doing enough.
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Thank you very much for sitting down with us today.
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We're going into, I think you're going to be more prominent than ever, I suspect,
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going into 2022 with such grand climate plans coming in.
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So I'm looking forward to the opportunity to talk a little bit about that.
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Well, thanks, first of all, for having me on, Corey.
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And I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season,
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I think there's a lot taking place on the climate side of politics, I guess,
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that's going to have a real impact on our province and our country in the months to come.
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And unfortunately, I think some of it is very troubling for our province.
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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,
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particularly if we can continue to push towards what we actually see work when it comes to meet our environmental obligations in our province,
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which is focusing on innovation, technology, empowering our great industries,
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including the energy industry, which has accomplished so much by using those tools.
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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.
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And he did some amazing things actually to protect the environment that he doesn't get a lot of credit for,
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because, of course, he would go on to be the premier and accomplish so much financially.
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But that is the way that he took to manage the environmental obligations that he knew was coming,
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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.
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And our focus is on doing that, not what the federal government is doing,
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which is essentially trying to shut down the largest industry, not only in this province, Corey, but in this country.
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And we're not going to allow that to happen here in Alberta.
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So you met with Minister Gilboa today, and he's touring the country.
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Perhaps it's a good sign that he's meeting with ministers.
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They've put off their environmental plan until the end of March now,
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but it gives me a feeling that they're really looking to go big.
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I mean, something is coming down the pipes, and unfortunately, you know, we all do want to protect the environment,
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but the liberal vision of it federally may be quite different than our provincial vision.
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How did your meeting go, and how do you feel about where we might be going forward?
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First of all, I'll give the federal minister credit for being here.
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One of the things that we've seen the last couple of months is the federal government
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focusing on spending their time in Europe and talking to European elites, which I found very disappointing.
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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,
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but also understand the positive impact of the oil and gas industry and our other industries.
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You know, I was clear with the federal minister when I met with him by phone a couple of weeks ago
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and invited him to come to Alberta that we will accept no plan that does not have a future for our largest industry.
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You know, we are clear that the consultation has been inadequate to date,
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and I am happy to see the commitment to extend that to give us some more opportunity to have conversations.
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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,
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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.
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So, you know, hopefully he gets an opportunity to learn some of that while he's here.
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My other message to him, though, was that we're concerned that they continue to only focus on one environmental issue.
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In Alberta, we're proud of the beautiful landscapes that we call home.
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We have some of the most amazing wildlife on the planet, our waterways, things that matter to us as Albertans.
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And it's sad to see that we've continued to have federal environment ministers that only want to talk about one issue,
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emissions management, and have no interest in even meeting their own environmental obligations.
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And so I called the federal minister out on several issues that I think the feds have been messing up on the environment side,
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on species management, the mismanagement of things inside their national park,
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and made clear to them that if they want to go around and try to tell everybody how to manage the environment,
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they better make sure they're managing their environment appropriately.
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So it was an interesting conversation, but I think we have a long way to go between the province and the federal government.
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Yeah, well, and you're caught in a position in the middle between two levels of government.
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We have the newly elected mayor, Jody Gondek, who has made the climate emergency a top priority in coming in as mayor.
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Though what that means is a municipal government is still to be determined, I guess you could say, but that's a high priority.
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Have you been in communication with Mayor Gondek and trying to figure out where governments could work together on things
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and find a level rather than chilling investment in the city?
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So I haven't had a chance to speak to the mayor myself yet, though we are working on hopefully arranging a meeting soon.
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My staff have been in contact with the mayor's staff.
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You know, what I really would tell the city of Calgary and all Albertans and the federal government
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is what we've already done here as a province over the last several decades when it comes to emission management following our process.
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We are the only jurisdiction in the country that's ever met a target when it comes to emissions management.
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The federal government sets a new target every week when they haven't even met the last one.
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And the reason that we're the only jurisdiction that's done that is because we focused on innovation, technology,
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empowering our industry players, some of the smartest engineers and people on the planet
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to be able to find positive ways forward that create jobs, not cost jobs, and that meet environmental obligations.
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And I really hope for any politician that they'll take the time to understand that
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because that's the model that we should be following if we want to have success.
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And directly to the mayor, I will say this when I meet with her,
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I hope she takes some time to actually go and understand what the largest industry in our province,
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which is the largest industry inside the city she's responsible for,
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is doing when it comes to managing the environment because it's pretty impressive.
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And we should always remember that that's the industry that's paying the bills for this province.
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But we'll have some dialogue with Calgary to try to educate them on some of the good things that's happening in Alberta.
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I mean, and I know from being in the petrochemical industry,
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I mean, the advancements in hydrocarbon companies with carbon capture
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I was speaking with Colin Craig the other day, and they've made a vodka out of captured carbon.
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I mean, the industry's doing the work, but the problem is the government keeps moving the goalposts.
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I mean, we reached the targets, and then the target moves.
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How can we, I mean, what can we do to push back if Ottawa moves the targets on us again?
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We can talk, like we won't accept it, but what will we do then if it happens?
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I mean, it's challenging because we lost the carbon tax case to the Supreme Court.
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With that said, we're currently going through the court process when it comes to Bill C-69,
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which we've called the No More Pipelines Bill, which is essentially the assessment process
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that the federal government has tried to put on projects inside our province.
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We think we have an excellent chance of actually being successful in that litigation.
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Our assessments always showed that we had better chances, frankly, on that,
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than we did on the carbon tax, so we need to fight both.
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If we can get the federal government out of the assessment process on our projects,
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that will create some space, so that's very, very important.
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Second, we need to continue to do the investment that we have put into our own regulatory system.
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Right now, the federal government does not regulate our largest industry inside the province.
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We do the large emitter side of things, and we do that because it's protecting our trade-exposed industry,
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and it's making a path forward to actually have better environmental results
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while creating tens of thousands of jobs compared to the federal system,
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which basically costs us tens of thousands of jobs.
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And so we need to continue to be focused on basically doing everything we can to keep the feds out of our regulatory process.
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We will. That's my job as the minister in charge of that.
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And then at the end of the day, I think that what exactly the province will do if it comes to it,
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I can't speak to. I mean, we need all of government and, of course, the premier to speak to.
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But what I can tell you, and we've been clear with this on the federal government,
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if they do not stop and make sure whatever they're doing has a path forward for all of our industries,
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including oil and gas, there will be consequences for that.
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But at this point, we're happy to see that they've extended consultation,
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and we're going to see if we can get in there and get a path forward through the regulatory process,
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Okay. Maybe just to review back, it looks like we're still going to be a lot of people vacationing at home.
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It's going to be another – the pandemic drags on, and there's not much to be done for it.
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But it put a lot – that was an area that really landed in your lap, put a lot of pressure in the parks.
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I mean, it was great that Albertans were rediscovering, you know, how many fantastic areas we have to go out and use,
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but it turned into having to put a tax or a fee on access to Kananaskis and things like that,
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With parks management going into this year, what plans are there coming in ahead,
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and how have the past plans with the new management of parks been going?
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Well, there's some exciting stuff happening on the recreation of the park side.
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We've been able to stabilize the financial situation with the Kananaskis Conservation Pass.
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We had no choice. I mean, you've got 5.4 million people going to Kananaskis,
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a million more than Banff, which, of course, had the fees since the beginning.
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And you're seeing now, and you will see more investment in the coming months
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to be able to make sure we can stabilize our largest provincial park.
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But we're making investments all across the park system.
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More investment than B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba combined, I believe,
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here inside the province of Alberta on the recreation side.
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We've also just, right now inside the legislature, finishing up the Trails Act,
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which was a way to be able to help work with our nonprofit organizations
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who are out building trails for everything from off-highway vehicles,
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cross-country skiing, hiking inside our public areas inside the province.
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That's a sharp contrast to what the NDP tried to do.
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Their approach is actually just to shut access to all those trails.
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We, instead of creating legislation where we can support the conservation organizations
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So we've got a bunch of stuff like that coming primarily on the investment side.
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One of the biggest things that we've seen in years was a shortage of enforcement
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So that's the first investment in probably decades inside conservation officers
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So I think you'll continue to see a lot of positive investment,
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and you're certainly going to continue to see a lot of people use our backyard.
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Alberta's got one of the most beautiful backyards in the world.
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Yeah, well, we've got a lot of interesting things to look forward to going into 2022.
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Is there anything else you'd like to add before I let you get on with your afternoon?