The heartbreaking destruction of more than a third of the town of Jasper, that iconic symbol of the Canadian wilderness and internationally renowned tourist destination, has served to highlight the very real perils of climate change. Yet Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s tearful press conference – thanking those who bravely fought the huge blaze and promising provincial aid to rebuild – never once made the connection. Indeed, the term ‘climate change’ never crossed the premier’s lips. Apparently it was either fate, bad luck, or some other uncontrollable factors that led to this disaster.
The premier may be one of the few people left in Alberta, never mind the rest of Canada, who still harbours that view. (With the notable exception, of course, of the federal Conservative Party in convention.[i]) Anyone who does not have their head firmly planted in the sand, and recognizes that climate change is real, could hardly have failed to notice the dramatic increase in heat domes, wildfires and floods that have been afflicting Canada in recent years, many of which have hit Alberta particularly hard. (Who could forget Fort McMurray?)
Nevertheless the premier has spent much of her time in office fighting tooth and nail against virtually every effort by the federal government to rein in the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. She has declared the various federal plans and legislation to be either unconstitutional, ineffective, and/or an assault on Alberta’s economy and its residents. She has even threatened to invoke her highly problematic Sovereignty Act to avoid having to comply with any of these federal measures.
This is particularly crucial since, as countless studies have demonstrated, Alberta is “one of the few places in North America with rising greenhouse gas emissions, and by far Canada’s largest emitter.”[ii] (Astonishingly, this is more than Ontario and Quebec combined.) To be precise, the oil and gas production industry of Alberta represents 31% of all emissions in Canada. Worse still, this output is actually increasing. From 1990 to 2022 emissions from the conventional oil and gas industry increased by 24% while oilsands emissions increased by a staggering 467%.[iii] As the Calgary Herald put it, “Alberta is still Canada’s runaway emissions leader.”[iv] A report by the Alberta-based Pembina Institute provides depressing details supporting that claim, stressing that “Alberta is on this opposite trajectory from the rest of the country…Canada’s emissions have decreased overall by 7% from 2005 levels… but the oil and gas slice of the pie is growing.”[v]
Not surprisingly, then, for someone so willfully blind to reality, the premier lambasted a recently announced plan by the federal government to introduce a regulatory framework for capping emissions in the oil and gas sector, and particularly the oilsands. Going on the offensive, she called it “an intentional attack by the federal government on the economy of Alberta and the financial well-being of millions of Albertans and Canadians… Justin Trudeau and his eco-extremist Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, are risking hundreds of billions in Alberta’s and Canada’s economy.”[vi]
Environmentalists, however, were quick to note that the federal plan is actually less ambitious than originally proposed. As the federal Environment Minister stressed, this was done deliberately, in order to try to avoid provincial conflicts and moderate the impact on the industry. For example, the original target of a 42% reduction from 2019 levels by 2030 was lowered to between 35 to 38%. Similarly, the framework has been designed to work with other federal emissions-reduction policies, so that “emission-reductions in the oil and gas sector will count towards the sector’s obligations under multiple government policies.” [vii] As Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson put it, there were widespread consultations before the plan was announced and this was a serious attempt to work with the oil and gas sector to produce a realistic plan of action. “It was important that you found this (plan) on what actually can be done and not simply what you might like to see done.”[viii]
Nevertheless the official response to the plan by Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government was adamantly hostile. It even declared that the federal plan would “undermine” efforts the province has undertaken itself to reduce emissions. University of Alberta environmental economist Andrew Leach dismissed that claim outright. While there may be a provincial emissions reduction commitment on paper, Leach noted, in reality the province has even opposed measures such as clean fuel standards and electricity grid regulations. “There’s a simultaneous commitment to emissions reduction and opposition to any policy that might actually reduce emissions”, he said. [ix]
Perhaps the most egregious example of this hypocrisy has been the province’s seven-month moratorium on renewable energy project approvals. As a recently released report documented, this has led to the cancellation of 53 wind and solar projects to date, with another 42 forced to delay their in-service deadlines by more than 15 months. According to the report, the capacity of the cancelled projects combined would have been sufficient to “power every home in Alberta.”[x] The financial consequences have been substantial as well. The province, once known as the “hotbed” of renewable resource projects, has now become a pariah for investors in that industry.
Despite this abysmal record on the climate change file, some supporters of the UCP government have argued that the Jasper fire would have occurred no matter what action had been taken to reduce emissions. Others, including some staunch believers in climate change, have argued that it is now far too late to hope that measures to reduce emissions will be sufficient to avoid further dramatic climate change, and the best approach now is for governments to promote climate adaptation measures.
In the case of wildfires, this adaptation approach would include both firefighting and fire prevention measures. But here, too, the Alberta government has been woefully inactive. Worse still, in some cases it has actually reduced its capacity to meet this growing challenge. Take, for example, the decimation of the provincial government’s firefighting program, Wildfire Alberta, which at one point was described as “one of the best wildfire programs in the world.”[xi] In November 2019, despite a severe fire season that summer and fall, the UCP government (led at the time by premier Jason Kenney) slashed the highly regarded Rappel Attack Program (RAP)and decommissioned 26 fire towers, or one fifth of the province’s lookout detection program. From 2020 to 2021, the UCP reduced the number of permanent staff at Wildfire Alberta, including rangers and regional information officers, and in 2022 they cut the number of firefighters, dispatchers and lookouts by 10% and reduced the term length of contractual workers despite the ever-expanding wildfire season.
As one former employee of Wildfire Alberta put it in a detailed analysis of the government’s folly, the consequences have been severe. For example, at the height of the 2023 wildfire season, former members of the RAP published a lengthy critique of the UCP government’s cuts, declaring that they “could have been difference makers” if they had still been in place.[xii] Also in 2023, a crew leader of actual firefighters engaged in combatting the unprecedented number of wildfires told reporters “We are a skeleton crew… We’re running at 50% capacity to contain these wildfires. We don’t have enough resources, period.” [xiii] In addition the various cuts to the provincial program have resulted in a serious lack of experienced firefighters and a dangerous number of inexperienced crews and crew leaders. “In four short years the UCP has created a firefighter retention crisis, or a “brain drain” of experienced firefighters leaving Alberta Wildfire…”[xiv]
As several commentators have noted, the growth in the number and severity of wildfires over the past few years was entirely predictable. What was not to be expected were the various cutbacks introduced by UCP governments. Not surprisingly, Alberta’s 2024 wildfire season has been even more severe, ultimately resulting in the destruction of much of the Jasper townsite and large swaths of Jasper National Park. As of the end of July, there were some 166 active wildfires in the province, 49 of which were deemed to be out of control.
Assistance has come from firefighting teams from several other countries, which the premier has been quick to recognize. However, the federal government has also been front and centre in providing assistance to the province, including through the services of the Canadian Armed Forces, as expressly requested by the premier. In addition, as the federal Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Harjit Saijan, outlined in a press conference on site, the federal government has been providing a wide range of non-military assistance to the province, including helicopters and instant command staff from the Canadian Coast Guard, and support for the municipality of Jasper from Canada Task Force 2, (a government disaster response team), while public servants from ESDC and Service Canada have been coordinating efforts to provide evacuees with Employment Insurance benefits, replacements for lost documents, and assistance to employers and individuals in the Temporary Foreign Worker program. [xv]
Yet despite this extensive federal support, the premier has been less than effusive in her praise or even appreciation of the assistance being provided. One reason for this reticence is no doubt her innate distrust of all things federal and her personal dislike of the prime minister. But another reason may well be her unwillingness to recognize the mistake she has made in failing to have Alberta follow the lead of other provinces in terms of emergency preparedness and the development of a civilian emergency response.
For example in October 2023, even before the end of a devastating wildfire season in his province, BC premier David Eby announced the establishment of a task force including members of municipal Emergency Management Organizations, indigenous community members, officials from several relevant provincial government departments and first responders. The objective was to develop guidelines, consolidate resources and build civilian emergency management capacity in advance of the expected 2024 wildfire season. Similar initiatives were undertaken by the Quebec government (Bill 50) and the Nova Scotia government (Bill 455) in early 2024, establishing additional emergency preparedness provisions and building civilian capacity in advance of future extreme weather events.
Meanwhile the Alberta government of Danielle Smith responded to the growing crisis by passing legislation in May 2024 that pushed back the fixed provincial election date from spring to fall in order to avoid wildfire season. In addition, the legislation transferred responsibility for emergency responses from municipal governments to the province. The transfer of responsibility is particularly significant, since it appears to conflict with the intent of the federal Humanitarian Workforce Program designed to aid municipalities directly with emergency responses by funding and coordinating the activities of four NGO’s: the Canadian Red Cross, St. John’s Ambulance Society, the Salvation Army and Search and Rescue Volunteers Canada (SARVAC). In May 2024, Public Safety Canada announced a pilot program during the 2024 weather hazards season would be introduced in B.C. and the NWT. No mention was made of Alberta.
Negotiations are continuing among federal, provincial and territorial governments concerning additional ways and means to enhance emergency preparedness and build civilian capacity. Whether Alberta will choose to be a proactive player in these negotiations is unclear, but past actions by the current UCP government would suggest that this is unlikely.
The upshot is that although Albertans live in the province most likely to suffer in future from wildfires, they are now governed by a party and premier whose response to climate change has been negligible, and whose approach to wildfire prevention and emergency preparedness has been pitifully inadequate. Residents of Banff especially might want to take notice.
[i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-delegates-reject-climate-change-is-real-1.5957739
[ii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/proposed-oilsands-emissions-cap-not-realistic-or-effective-alberta-says-in-formal-response-1.7105710
[iii] https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html#oil-gas
[iv] https://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/alberta-still-canadas-runaway-emissions-leader-despite-reductions
[v] https://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/alberta-still-canadas-runaway-emissions-leader-despite-reductions
[vi] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-government-unveils-oil-gas-cap-1.7051803
[vii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-government-unveils-oil-gas-cap-1.7051803
[viii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-government-unveils-oil-gas-cap-1.7051803
[ix] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/proposed-oilsands-emissions-cap-not-realistic-or-effective-alberta-says-in-formal-response-1.7105710
[x] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-renewable-energy-pause-cancelled-development-1.7283753
[xi] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-alberta-had-one-of-the-best-wildfire-programs-in-the-world-budget-cuts/
[xii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/a-history-of-cuts-to-alberta-s-firefighting-budget-explained-1.6838994
[xiii] https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-wildfire-ucp-cuts/
[xiv] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-alberta-had-one-of-the-best-wildfire-programs-in-the-world-budget-cuts/
[xv] https://ottawacitizen.com/news/co-ordinated-federal-agencies-join-response-to-alberta-wildfires
