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Alberta NDP have their own Just Transition plan – Project Confederation

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From Josh Andrus, Executive Director of Project Confederation

Look what we discovered about the “Just Transition”…

You might remember, not so long ago, that federal Natural Resources Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, announced that the federal Liberal government would soon be rolling out its plan for a “Just Transition.”

This is the “Just Transition” plan that the federal NDP insisted be included in the “confidence and supply agreement” that is currently propping up Justin Trudeau’s minority government.

Then, an internal government memo was made public, suggesting that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost in this “transition” – particularly in western Canada.

Project Confederation immediately sprung to action, investigating the proposed policies and launching a petition against the plan, which has now received more than 13,000 signatures.

(If you haven’t signed the petition yet, you can do so here)

As news spread, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe spoke out strongly against the plan.

But one politician was suspiciously quiet – the Alberta NDP leader, Rachel Notley.

We thought Albertans, and Canadians, deserved to know whether someone running to be Premier of Alberta supported the shutting down of Alberta and western Canada’s largest industry.

And so we pushed hard for Rachel Notley to answer the question – does she support the “Just Transition” idea?

But, as time went on, Notley’s silence became more and more deafening.

Eventually, her silence became so deafening that even some in the media began to question whether or not she truly disagreed with the plan.

Hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks – literally!

Two full weeks after Wilkinson’s announcement, Rachel Notley finally broke her silence, calling on Ottawa to “put the brakes on” the “Just Transition”.

But, “put the brakes on” sounded a lot more like “wait until after the Alberta election” than “ditch it entirely” to us.

So we decided to do some more digging.

Well, after some excellent work by our research team, we think we now know why it took so long for Rachel Notley to oppose the “Just Transition.”

It turns out that, rather than just being some federal NDP idea that she’s now distanced her provincial party from, the “Just Transition” was actually a huge part of her NDP government’s plans.

Insert flashback music here.

It’s November 2015, the newly minted NDP government are celebrating a big election win, and are moving forward with their climate change strategy.

(You know, the one they accidentally forgot to mention that they were going to implement if they won).

New Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks, Shannon Phillips, commissions a blue-ribbon report by a team of high-profile academics, to help the NDP figure out exactly how to fulfil their campaign promise (sorry, their campaign omission).

Several months later, the “Climate Leadership Report” is released, setting out the government’s vision for climate policy and – guess what?

The “Just Transition” is a key part of the NDP’s Climate Leadership Report!

Yep, that’s right – forget not knowing what the “Just Transition” is, and claiming not to support the federal government’s plan.

In reality, it was Rachel Notley’s government who wrote the policy in the first place, and then made it a critical part of their entire environmental policy agenda.

Here are some extracts from the report…

In a section discussing mitigating the impacts of carbon pricing on low- and middle-income Albertans, the NDP said they would “support a sound and just transition for labour and communities…”

Later in the report, the authors highlight a quote from their friends at the Alberta Federation of Labour.

This quote is really just one gigantic contradiction, given the government is literally legislating their employment out of existence:

Next, the report talks about what the workers who lose their jobs might need to do as part of this “transition” – it notes that they may need assistance with “relocation”:

Oh, sorry, did the government legislate away your job?

Not to worry, we’ll “fix” it for you by helping you walk away from your entire life and move somewhere else.

Remember how Rachel Notley said Albertans might have to move to BC to find work while she was Premier?

Yeah, we’d prefer Albertans could find work here in Alberta, thanks.

*****

Here’s the thing…

Not only did the Alberta NDP support the concept of a federal “Just Transition” when they were in government, they were also actively implementing their own “Just Transition” – 8 years earlier than the federal government!

And yet now they claim to not support the idea at all?

No wonder it took so long for Rachel Notley to answer the question.

She was probably just surprised that no one in the media had dug up her own support of “Just Transition” legislation from years before, and was wondering if she could get away with pretending she hadn’t.

Well, we’re not surprised no one in the media bothered looking.

But, we did look, and thank goodness we did!

Thank you to our researchers who dug up this document, which I’m sure the NDP would have preferred we’d not found.

If you’d like to help us do even more research like this, please click here to make a donation to our work.

Otherwise, if you haven’t signed the No Unjust Transition petition yet, please click here to do so now.

Rachel Notley’s claim to now be opposed to the exact thing that she herself implemented is not credible.

She can run from it, but she can’t hide.

Her environmental policies put Alberta into one of its deepest recessions ever.

And we can’t afford to repeat those mistakes.

Sincerely,

Josh Andrus
Executive Director
Project Confederation

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Alberta

Alberta ban on men in women’s sports doesn’t apply to athletes from other provinces

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act bans transgender males from women’s sports within the province but cannot regulate out-of-province transgender athletes.

Alberta’s ban on gender-confused males competing in women’s sports will not apply to out-of-province athletes.

In an interview posted July 12 by the Canadian Press, Alberta Tourism and Sport Minister Andrew Boitchenko revealed that Alberta does not have the jurisdiction to regulate out-of-province, gender-confused males from competing against female athletes.

“We don’t have authority to regulate athletes from different jurisdictions,” he said in an interview.

Ministry spokeswoman Vanessa Gomez further explained that while Alberta passed legislation to protect women within their province, outside sporting organizations are bound by federal or international guidelines.

As a result, Albertan female athletes will be spared from competing against men during provincial competition but must face male competitors during inter-provincial events.

In December, Alberta passed the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act to prevent biological men who claim to be women from competing in women’s sports. The legislation will take effect on September 1 and will apply to all school boards, universities, as well as provincial sports organizations.

The move comes after studies have repeatedly revealed what almost everyone already knew was true, namely, that males have a considerable advantage over women in athletics.

Indeed, a recent study published in Sports Medicine found that a year of “transgender” hormone drugs results in “very modest changes” in the inherent strength advantages of men.

Additionally, male athletes competing in women’s sports are known to be violent, especially toward female athletes who oppose their dominance in women’s sports.

In February, Andres ranted about why men should be able to compete in women’s competitions, calling for “the Ontario lifter” who opposes this, apparently referring to powerlifter April Hutchinson, to “die painfully.”

Interestingly, while Andres was suspended for six months for issuing death threats, Hutchinson was suspended for two years after publicly condemning him for stealing victories from women and then mocking his female competitors on social media. Her suspension was later reduced to a year.

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Alberta

Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

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