Varcoe: Trudeau talks to Alberta business leaders, sticks to emissions cap

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Alberta’s enterprise neighborhood has insisted for weeks that the Trudeau authorities scrap its contentious plan to cap emissions from the nation’s oil and gasoline trade.

On Friday, they stunning a lot obtained their reply.

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It was delivered, in individual, by the nation’s prime minister — each in lengthy type, and far more succinctly.

“I requested if he was going to take the emissions cap off the desk,” stated Calgary Chamber of Commerce CEO Deborah Yedlin, who heard Prime Minister Justin Trudeau communicate to a gathering of enterprise leaders in downtown Calgary.

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“And he stated, ‘Not an opportunity.’”

Trudeau travelled to Calgary for a housing announcement as a part of a pre-budget tour that has seen the prime minister and his cupboard crisscross the nation just lately.

Later within the day, he sat down for a hearth chat with Calgary Financial Growth CEO Brad Parry in entrance of a crowd of about 90 enterprise executives.

A lot of Canada’s oilsands leaders have been within the viewers: Suncor Vitality CEO Wealthy Kruger, MEG Vitality CEO Derek Evans, Cenovus Vitality CEO Jon McKenzie, Canadian Pure Assets president Scott Stauth, and Pathways Alliance president Kendall Dilling.

Throughout a 45-minute dialogue, Trudeau fielded questions from Parry and spoke about Canada’s dismal productiveness ranges, housing affordability considerations, and Ottawa’s strained relationship with Danielle Smith’s authorities in Alberta.

One of the crucial intriguing moments got here when he was requested about his authorities’s plan to cap greenhouse gasoline emissions within the oil and gasoline trade.

In current months, the Alberta enterprise neighborhood has united to oppose the incoming cap, calling it unworkable.

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Final week, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce despatched an open letter to federal Surroundings Minister Steven Guilbeault, urging the Liberal authorities to withdraw the coverage, saying it might stifle funding.

Within the fireplace chat, Trudeau rejected their assertion that the emissions cap can be a manufacturing cap that can pressure the trade to throttle again output.

The prime minister burdened international traders want to put cash into decarbonization tasks and Canada must be well-positioned for the long run because the world calls for lower-carbon barrels.

The Alberta authorities can be on board for reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and to try this, “there’s nobody software that’s going to make that distinction,” he stated.

But, the oilpatch is the one sector in Canada dealing with such a measure.

What about different industries?

“We’re working with all sectors to cut back emissions,” Trudeau replied.

“However it stays that the oil and gasoline sector continues to be a big supply of emissions on this nation. And that’s why we’re speaking about placing a cap on emissions — one which we’ve labored carefully with the trade on, a cap on emissions, not a cap on manufacturing.”

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Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. It’s additionally the one main oil-exporting nation seeking to undertake such a coverage.

The federal plan will come on high of a nationwide carbon worth, guidelines to decrease trade methane emissions by 75 per cent, and new clear gasoline rules.

Enterprise Council of Alberta president Adam Legge stated the group stands agency in its perception the cap will restrict manufacturing, create uncertainty and make it harder for firms to speculate.

“He was very specific right this moment that the cap is staying,” Legge stated after the assembly.

“It’s disappointing in gentle of the suggestions from throughout the nation and from a complete host of various voices…He’s sticking to his weapons on this one.”

The cap goals to cut back emissions within the sector by as much as 38 per cent by the top of the last decade, however may drop to twenty per cent by way of varied flexibility measures.

Draft rules on the cap are anticipated later this 12 months.

Oilsands operators within the Pathways Alliance group are collaborating to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. They’ve been advancing a large $16.5 billion carbon seize community as a foundational a part of their plan, though a last funding determination is pending.

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The producers have welcomed Ottawa’s announcement of a federal funding tax credit score for carbon seize, utilization and storage (CCUS) tasks. However they oppose the cap, saying it provides new rules and complexity to the panorama, and won’t incent further emissions reductions.

“We stay very involved in regards to the emissions cap, as proposed. However I feel at a sure level, you must take the prime minister at his phrase,” Dilling stated in an interview after Friday’s assembly.

“He doesn’t intend it to be a manufacturing cap. And so we’ve obtained to determine…how all these items work collectively in order that it doesn’t unintentionally do this.”

On the opposite aspect of the talk, environmental teams have pressed Ottawa to implement the coverage. The oilpatch stays the biggest emitting sector within the nation.

“It’s affordable for a authorities to say, ‘OK, we’re going to carry you to the guarantees you’re making about internet zero and we’re going to place it in a regulation,’” stated Keith Stewart, Greenpeace Canada’s senior power strategist.

“(The prime minister) is aware of he’s not going to have a whole lot of associates in that room, however that is the best factor to do.”

Nonetheless, Ottawa doesn’t appear to grasp that the mandatory applied sciences aren’t in place but for the trade to achieve the federal authorities’s 2030 aim, Yedlin stated.

And meaning capping Canada’s oil and gasoline manufacturing.

“The prime minister is fairly clear that he’s not taking the emissions cap off the desk, which I feel is a giant disappointment,” she stated.

“I assumed there could be some moderation, however there wasn’t any indication of that.”

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.

cvarcoe@postmedia.com

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