Every day, we’re assailed with dozens of facts and figures about energy issues in Canada: how many jobs or royalties will come from a new pipeline, the annual growth rate of renewables, our per-person energy consumption.

But it’s often tricky to decipher truth from fiction.

That’s where the new 176-page encyclopedic report by veteran earth scientist and expert in coal and unconventional fuels David Hughes is meant to come in.

“Hopefully what it does is it provides the foundation of facts,” Hughes said in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “There’s a lot of rhetoric when it comes to energy. I wanted to make that quantitative so we actually had that bottom line of facts, rather than conjecture. I’m not trying to be prescriptive. I don’t have a magic answer. But I think we need to start with the facts.”

Over the course of 132 graphs and another 34 tables, Hughes — who worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for more than three decades as a scientist and research manager — meticulously chronicles and illustrates close to every imaginable part of Canada’s energy system.

There are four components to the report: 1) Canada’s actual energy production and consumption compared to the rest of the world, broken down into all the different sources; 2) the supplies and money from fossil fuel production; 3) electricity sources and trends; 4) emissions trajectories and targets.

Sounds like a few metric tonnes of info, right?

Well, while we highly recommend perusing through the report in its entirety, we’ve broken down some the 10 most noteworthy facts Hughes highlights in the report.

1. Canada uses a massive amount of energy

It might not come as a surprise to many, but Canada uses a lot of energy: more than five times the world’s average on a per-capita basis.

Hydroelectricity makes up a bigger proportion of our energy mix than other countries, but we have the exact average of dependence on oil and gas as everyone else.

When it comes to natural gas — used for heating and electricity generation — Canada uses 5.8 times the global average.

On the bright side, Canada’s coal consumption has been on the steady decline since the phase-out in Ontario. We’re already using half as much on a per-capita basis as the United States — and that trend will continue as Alberta shuts down its 18 coal-fired power plants in the coming years, with massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

2. There’s an incredible amount of hydro power in this country

Canada is the second largest hydropower producer in the world, trailing only China with its colossal Three Gorges Dam.

On a per-capita basis, Canada harnesses 20 times the power from dams as the global average — only beat out by Norway, which somehow generates 51 times the per-capita average (you’ll start to notice that Scandinavia excels at a lot of these things).

Plenty of forecasts of low-carbon futures predict that Canada will have to add a lot more hydro to the grid in the coming decades. But Hughes isn’t convinced, based on recent precedent.

“I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to build all those Site C sized dams and nuclear reactors [modelled in various reports],” he said. “Economics, ecology and public protest would be off the rails.”

3. But we kind of suck at non-hydro renewables

Unfortunately, that dam-building habit has meant Canada isn’t nearly as good at non-hydro renewables: sources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Compared to Denmark (23.7 per cent of energy from non-hydro renewables), Portugal (15.5 per cent) and Germany (12.7 per cent), Canada only generated a tiny 3.1 per cent of its energy from such sources in 2016.

That’s slightly below the world average.

This is expected to change in the coming years as provinces and territories shift towards renewables.

4. Industry uses most of the energy in Canada

While we’ve been talking about per-capita consumption, it’s not really that accurate because 51 per cent of Canada’s energy is used by industry for things like oil and gas, refining, mining, pulp and paper and chemicals. Another 23 per cent is used in transportation: freight trucks, passenger cars, airplanes.

That leaves only 14 per cent for residential and 12 per cent for commercial. In other words, it’s the big factories, mines and refineries that are using most of our energy — yet they’re often the same entities which receive exemptions or subsidies for emissions.

Given the industrial sector’s large dependence on fossil fuels to make or extract stuff, this has meant that Canada has an extremely high amount of energy required per dollar of GDP — higher than even China.

While Canada’s GDP is being slowly “decoupled” from emissions, we’re still a long ways from the lower carbon likes of Denmark or the UK.

5. Western Canada is littered with an unbelievable number of old wells

Most people will understandably picture the oilsands when they think about the Canadian oil industry. But the massive growth in extracting bitumen from Alberta’s northern boreal forest is actually a fairly new phenomenon, really kicking off around 2007.

Up until that point, conventional oil — the stuff you drill for in wells — had reigned. But production from that method peaked in 1973. That’s meant that steadily rising production has required more and more wells, as declining well productivity means that companies have to keep finding and drilling more.

“With conventional oil and gas, you’ve just got to keep drilling and pouring capital into it all the time, otherwise it goes down,” Hughes said. “Companies always drill their best land first. You always got for the sweet spots, where the best economics are.”

It’s something made even more frantic with fracking. At last count, fracking now accounts for three-quarters of all oil production from wells in Western Canada. Such wells result in high initial production but decline at an even more rapid pace than conventionals — up to 83 per cent over three years.

As a result, Western Canada is just littered with wells: more than 820,000 in total, including gas, oil and bitumen. Only 235,000 are still active. A full 38 per cent of the wells are listed as inactive, with another 11 per cent as suspended. That means companies haven’t actually dealt with the environmental liabilities — which may cost billions to reclaim in the future.

6. The oilsands still produces some of the highest carbon oil in the world

Politicians and industry often brag about Alberta’s world-class environmental regulations and claim that’s a reason to justify more oilsands expansion.

But the unfortunate reality is that Alberta oilsands crude remains incredibly carbon-intensive, with Suncor’s Synthetic H blend emitting 297 per cent as much pollution as the best-performing oil in the world (in Kazakhstan) and 161 per cent as much as conventional oil in Saskatchewan. Many other oils around the world produce cleaner barrels: Iraq, Kuwait, Brazil, Russia, UK and Norway.

It’s an incredibly energy intensive process, with an energy return on energy investment of 4:1 for in-situ and 8:1 for mining, compared to 17:1 for average global oil.

7. Alberta is receiving astonishingly little return on its oil

Another resounding narrative is that Alberta needs pipelines and oilsands expansion in order to generate massive revenues for government coffers, allowing it to build schools, hospitals and roads. But Alberta is actually receiving decreasing revenues on a per-barrel basis.

Since 1980, oil and gas production in Alberta has doubled. But royalty revenues are down by 90 per cent from that level.

Currently, non-renewable resource revenue makes up a mere 3.3 per cent of the government’s income. The same has happened in B.C., with gas royalties collapsing as production skyrockets. Corporate income taxes from fossil fuel producers have also collapsed by 51 per cent since 2006.

“The concept of high-grading and selling the best of our resources off for declining revenues to governments and people who own the resource doesn’t seem to be very smart,” Hughes quipped.

8. Fossil fuel jobs are also surprisingly low

You’d never know it from listening to Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but long-term fossil fuel jobs have effectively flatlined since 2006. Meanwhile, construction jobs now constitute 52 per cent of all jobs in the sector — but they’re short-term jobs and usually evaporate as soon as a project is completed.

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment.

Hughes was also intentional not to include so-called “spin-off” jobs in his reporting.

“What the politicians do is say ‘we’ve got to count all of the store owners and money that these workers put into the economy,’ ” he explained. “That sort of assumes the store owners would otherwise be unemployed, which is not accurate. A lot of the jobs numbers that are quoted are huge numbers of spin-off jobs.”

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment. https://t.co/5uaACUKV81

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 1, 2018

9. Meeting climate targets is going to be nearly impossible with oilsands expansion

Thanks to rapidly rising oilsands emissions, scheduled to hit 115 megatonnes by 2030, it’s appearing unlikely that Canada will hit its Paris Agreement target. Currently, we’re overshooting the mark by a full 66 megatonnes — meaning costly emissions credits will have to be bought.

It’s going to get way harder heading towards 2050. By then, oil and gas emissions will require the remainder of the economy to contract by more than 100 per cent. That will require a tremendous amount of low-carbon electricity to pull off, costing anywhere between $30 billion and $70 billion per year from 2017 to 2050.

Hughes is seriously doubtful this will happen — and instead calls for finding efficiencies and reductions from existing systems.

“Investing in reducing consumption will be a very big deal,” he said.

“To me, we have to do as much of that as we can first before spending a lot of money trying to replace business as usual. I don’t think it’s possible. Fossil fuels are just too useful, energy dense and convenient. All of our infrastructure is built based on them. But I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit for reducing consumption.”

10. We need to rely on facts to guide us forward

Hughes spent years chipping away at this report, compiling decades worth of knowledge and sources into one place. He said he’s going to continue updating it now that he has a template.

For the rest of us, the mammoth work now exists as an excellent reference and fact-checking resource for when something a politician or industry exec says sounds a bit off.

“I just want to provide a solid factual basis to go forward,” he concluded. “I’m a grandfather. I have a concern for future generations. I’m a little put off by some of the rhetoric I see on TV. We need to start with the facts and go from there. ”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Alberta is a province renown for its political dynasties.

Since its founding in 1905, only five parties have ruled, with the Progressive Conservatives reigning for a staggering 44 years between 1971 and 2015.

But when it comes to oilsands policy, the province’s compass has been set by two premiers: Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein. Both took distinct approaches, with Lougheed emphasizing managed development assisted by public funding, while Klein allowed industry to largely set the terms of engagement (including far lower royalties and the fast tracking of environmental reviews).

It might seem like ancient history. But it arguably matters more than ever given the complex politics of the current Alberta NDP government, which is juggling a cap on oilsands emissions while also advocating for increased production.

Enter “Betting on Bitumen: Alberta’s Energy Policies from Lougheed to Klein.” It’s a brief 36-page report written by Gillian Steward, a Calgary-based columnist for the Toronto Star, and published via the Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). In it, Steward explores the distinct approaches to oilsands development of Lougheed and Klein, helping to contextualize the ongoing actions by the Alberta NDP government.

DeSmog Canada talked to Steward about the report and her findings.

What compelled you to write this report?

I think there’s a lot out there about the current situation regarding energy policy, the NDP government, what they have to do or what they shouldn’t do. But I think people, in many ways, have lost track of how we got where we are. It’s kind of a long and windy road, but it’s really interesting and I just think it’s part of the history and it puts into context what’s happening now.

A key part of the report concerns Peter Lougheed’s legacy, something which many Albertan politicians will harken back to. Do you sense that politicians who talk about Lougheed necessarily recognize the true legacy of Lougheed?

I don’t think people recognize how much government intervention there was in terms of really kickstarting the development of the oilsands. The government put in a lot of public money, a lot of organization, and not just a one-shot deal: it went on for a long time. I think the fact the oilsands then became so valuable and so much of the technology became so important, particularly the in-situ, is really because of all the public money that was spent during the Lougheed era. That was basically all money that the corporate sector didn’t have to pay. Not that they didn’t pay anything, but they were in many ways subsidized by the government of the time.

With that in mind, do you still think it’s fair to characterize Lougheed’s legacy compared to later premiers as more adversarial — or at least not quite as friendly — with the oil and gas industry?

I think that’s true. He was certainly not an enemy of the industry or anything like that, but I think he knew how to assert his authority over the sector. He raised royalties significantly early on in his tenure and he basically said ‘this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do it.’ It wasn’t that he didn’t cooperate with the industry, but he certainly let them know who was in charge. At one point, the industry was so mad with him that they revoked his membership in the Calgary Petroleum Club. They were not necessarily happy, particularly with his position on royalties.

I think because he came from that world, he understood it and was in a better position to advocate for the people of Alberta as opposed to always advocating for the industry.

Do you have any sense of why Lougheed was able to do that? Was it because of really firm convictions or economic conditions? Is there something you attribute his decisions to?

I think there’s a couple of things there. One is I think he was actually quite visionary. I think he thought in terms of the big picture, as well as being someone who was pragmatic enough to know how to get to the big picture. Also, it was a different time in the sense where government intervention in various programs was more accepted than it is now: that really fell off in the ’80s. It was a more accepted economic or public policy practice then than it is now.

One of Ralph Klein’s first moves was to sell off the Alberta Energy Company, which was a big part of Lougheed’s legacy. What motivated that decision?

Again, I think there were a couple of things there. One is that compared to Lougheed, the Klein government had really swung more to the right. They saw Lougheed as almost being too pink for them, too socialist, in the sense that he did use government money to subsidize business. They believed that government should get out of the business of business.

The other reason was they needed the money. Klein was faced with debt and they didn’t want to raise taxes. They were looking to raise revenues. That was one way to do it.

Is it strange to you that companies and associations don’t acknowledge the role that government intervention has played over the years?

There’s no question that through the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority, which was funded by the Lougheed government, really pushed the technology along in many ways. In-situ development was one of the main products of that: what it meant was that corporations didn’t have to spend all that money developing it. Public money went into developing it.

We don’t ever hear much about them acknowledging public money for that. When the report from the National Task Force on Oil Sands Strategies was released, they used the in-situ technology as a reason to really move ahead fast. But they don’t acknowledge where it came from or why it had become so important.

You point to the National Task Force and its final report as a watershed moment for the direction of how oilsands was managed by the government. Yet we rarely hear about it. Why do you think that specific task force and report was so significant in Alberta’s history?

Basically, it coincided with Klein’s first years in power and it outlined a way to move forward on oilsands development that allowed for the government to pump up the economy, which meant they could increase government revenues. That’s what they were looking for. They were looking for some kind of plan where they could increase government revenues but not through taxes. By heating up the economy, they were assuming they get more taxpayers even though they hadn’t raised taxes.

It just came at the right time for them. They were in debt, we’d just come out of a recession, all that kind of thing. By accepting what the task force recommended, which is basically ‘let us push ahead, don’t put too many obstacles in front of us, there will be lots and lots of investments’ and then at the same time the oil price started to go up. I don’t think anybody could have predicted it at the time that it would go as high as it did. But it was a nice coincidence given they had really unleashed the development in the sense that they allowed the industry to do it the way they wanted to do it. By taking away a lot of environmental regulations, by making a lot of the oilsands royalties so low, they encouraged development. But then at the same time, the price went up.

You also identified how the news media helped spread the findings of that, especially the legitimization of the panel even though it was very industry-stacked. Why did that happen? And do you sense that has changed since in terms of how the media reports on oilsands?

I was really surprised when we did that survey of the coverage at how rarely the news reports explained what this task force even was. It was called a government-industry task force, which lent it credibility which to my mind it didn’t really have because it was 85 per cent industry. And only a few reporters bothered to examine what the source of this report was and where it came from and who put it together. It just gave it a credibility by saying it’s a government-industry task force. It just sounded like they got together and agreed on this.

I think so much of the reporting on the oilsands today is basically business reporting. Industry would argue that it’s mostly about the environment, and there’s so much coverage about environmental issues. But really, it’s mostly business reporting about the oilsands. Even when you look at the sources that reporters are relying on, they’re very often industry sources like CAPP or the various companies. Even with environmental stories, the sources inside them are still very often industry or government sources.

I was involved with doing some research a few years ago on journalists that were covering the oilsands: we were looking at their use of sources. And the most trusted sources were academic sources. But it was also clear that reporters depended on the industry a lot. And CAPP is organized to provide a whole bunch of data. That’s what they do.

This is obviously written within the context of the new Alberta NDP government. You conclude the report by identifying that Premier Rachel Notley has an outlook that is closer to Lougheed than it is to Klein. She had the chance to raise royalties, which she effectively passed on and has publicly pushed for new pipelines and oilsands expansion. Why did you conclude that Lougheed was more of her muse than Klein?

I think in some ways because she’s trying to separate herself out from the industry. Not completely, for sure. I think the fact she’s using revenue from the carbon tax and putting it into renewable energy projects is a way to subsidize the start-up of an industry, much as Lougheed did with the oilsands. She doesn’t have the kind of revenue that he was dealing with in those days. But she is trying to use public money for that.

She also has a working relationship with the industry to a certain extent in that she had them on the stage when she announced the Climate Leadership Plan, and they were mostly Canadian companies. They were homegrown companies, except for Shell. Which is something that Lougheed also tried to do: he really wanted to make oilsands development Alberta-centric. I think she’s trying to do that too.

I think the other thing she is doing that he didn’t do is she’s consulting much more in a general way with a wide variety of stakeholders, which Lougheed didn’t really do at all and Klein only consulted the industry stakeholders. She’s trying to widen that, I think, and make it more diverse.

Is there anything you wanted to add?

I just think it’s important to know the history and context so people understand why we are where we are. That it didn’t just spring up overnight, that it’s complicated and the politics of it are really complicated. In many ways, you can’t expect a new government to undo everything that’s been done in the last four decades when it comes to energy policy.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The recent shelving of the Joslyn mine oilsands project in Alberta is a reminder of the fragile economics of the oilsands. No economic formula could be found to make the $11 billion project work and it has been put on hold indefinitely.           

Oil major Total E&P, the biggest partner in the project, said the Joslyn mine project “cannot be (financially) sustainable in the long term.” Interestingly, Total did not blame lack of new pipelines for squeezing profit margins either.

“You run the risk in developing fossil fuels that one day will either become fully depleted or too expensive to extract,” Philip Gass, a policy analyst at the International Institute of Sustainable Development, said from Winnipeg.

It would be difficult to deny Canada has economically benefited from developing the oilsands, a particularly difficult and expensive fossil fuel to mine and refine into light fuels — but failing to diversify the Canadian economy beyond an oil and gas ‘energy superpower’ makes for a very uncertain economic future for Canada.

“Canada could find itself an energy superpower overspecialized in the ‘old economy’ (resource extraction) in a world rapidly trying to cut carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change,” Andrew Jackson, a senior policy advisor with the Broadbent Institute, told DeSmog Canada.

“Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good economic strategy,” Jackson said.

Benefits of Energy Development Remain Largely Locked in the Sector

The idea that all Canadians benefit from a surging oil and gas industry is slowly turning into a farce. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) report earlier this year finds every dollar invested in the energy sector in Alberta grows Canadian gross domestic product — an economic vitality indicator — by 90 cents. Of this growth, 82 cents remains in Alberta, mostly in the energy sector (67 cents).

IMF‘s breakdown of $1 investment in the energy sector scenario.

“There appears to be an important scope to increase inter-industry linkages across Canada that would lead to wider sharing of benefits from the energy sector,” concludes the IMF report released in January.

Increasing inter-industry linkages or value-added jobs does not appear to be priority of the federal government. New oil pipeline projects are almost all geared to shipping Canadian oil and oilsands bitumen to refineries in the U.S. or overseas, not in Canada. Most of the heavy equipment for oilsands extraction comes from the U.S.

“The spin-off effects of the energy boom are not being felt in Ontario and Quebec, where most Canadians are,” Jackson says.

The federal government’s low corporate tax rate and the exemption of provincial resource royalties from the Canadian system of wealth redistribution (which ensures all Canadians receive the same public services) further locks the economic benefits of the energy sector within the sector and resource-rich provinces.

Energy Sector Is Not A Big Jobs Creator

“The oil and gas sector is capital intensive, not labour intensive. Manufacturing could employ more people,” David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says.

The same IMF report on the Canadian energy sector indicates that of the 752,000 jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2012, the oil and gas sector can only take credit for less than 13,000, or 1.7 per cent, of them.

Job creation is not exactly Canada’s strong suit at the moment.

“The employment rate in Canada, that is the percentage of Canadians over fifteen years of age who are working, is sixty one per cent. This is the same level the employment rate was at during the worst of the recent financial crisis,” Macdonald told DeSmog Canada.

Employment rate (blue) and unemployment rate (black) from 2003 to 2013. SOURCE: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 

The official unemployment rate (seven per cent) in Canada has returned to pre-recession levels, but Macdonald points out that Statistics Canada does not count Canadians who are not actively searching for employment as unemployed.

“Eighty per cent of the so-called ‘recovered jobs’ since the recession are Canadians who have simply given up looking for work,” Macdonald says from Ottawa.

Part-time/Temporary Job Creation On The Rise

Ninety-five percent of all net jobs created in Canada in 2013 were part-time according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Part-time workers and the self-employed, who earn on average 20 per cent less than their employed counterparts according to CIBC, now make up 30 per cent of the Canadian work force.

Canada has created more full-time than part-time jobs since the recession but the rate of part-time job creation has grown faster than full-time. Fifty-three per cent of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44 who found work since the recession could only find temporary jobs. The rate of Canadian part-time workers who want full-time work but cannot find it has grown 37 per cent during the same period.

“Since 2011 the number of underemployed workers has exceeded the number of unemployed workers — in 2013 there were 1.35 million unemployed workers and 1.43 million additional underemployed workers. And that is before we even begin to take into account skills-related underemployment. This is an issue that needs to be taken seriously,” a Canadian Labour Congress report concludes.

SOURCE: Canadian Labour Congress

Fourteen per cent of working Canadians are underemployed or unable to get enough work to meet their financial needs, a 28 per cent increase since 2008.

Canada Needs to Create Well-Paying, Long-Lasting Jobs

“Whether you are talking about green jobs or brown jobs (fossil fuels extraction) you want to create jobs that are fair, well-paying and long lasting,” Gass of the International Institute of Sustainable Development told DeSmog Canada.

“We would like to see federal policy facilitate the creation of more specialized manufacturing jobs and encourage unionization in the work place. Unions tend to create better paying full time jobs,” Macdonald says.

A report released last month by the Parkland Institute examining unions in Alberta (the province most hostile to unions) found in terms of economic performance, wage growth is lower in Alberta compared to other provinces with higher unionization rates, despite Alberta’s oilsands boom.

“There is $600 billion sitting on companies shelves in Canada that is not being reinvested in the economy. Companies only invest where there is an expectation for growth. At the moment it appears the expectations are low,” Jackson says from Ottawa.

Corporations operating in Canada are not the only ones with low expectations for growth. When polled earlier this year by the Broadbent Institute, Canadians between 20 and 30 believed they will face a future of precarious employment and the income gap will grow during their lifetimes despite Canada’s energy boom. Baby boomers (50 to 60 years of age) in the same poll stated they think their children are more likely to slip down an economic class than move up.

“With interest rates at all time lows I would like to see public investment into mass transit, passenger rail, etcetera ramped up. Public investment can pave the way for private investment,” Jackson said.

Unfortunately the current priorities of the federal government — tax cuts, tax breaks, battling unions and cuts to public spending — are taking Canada in just the opposite direction.

Image Credit: Cheryl via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The government of Alberta’s continued reliance on the tar sands as the province’s main economic driver has put Premier Alison Redford in a very awkward position recently. With the market for foreign oil drying up in the US, her government is facing a $6 billion budget shortfall. For the first time in many years, Alberta is being forced to reach out for a little help from its neighbours, but the reception has been chilly.

The trouble began last year, when British Columbia Premier Christy Clark discovered that putting her unqualified support behind Enbridge’s plan to run its Northern Gateway pipeline through the province would constitute political suicide in an election year.

Whatever Clark’s motivations may have been—environmental or political—the result is that now they are in the midst of a struggle that Maclean’s Magazine calls, “the greatest political rivalry since former Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams ordered the Canadian flag removed from every government building in a dispute with the feds over offshore energy royalties.”

Then late in January, Redford met with Ontario’s new Premier Kathleen Wynn and by all accounts, relations were similarly strained. Several municipalities in Ontario have expressed concerns over the environmental dangers involved in Line 9, which was constructed in the 1970s and may not be up to carrying the highly corrosive bitumen being put out by the tar sands.

To be fair, this mess isn’t all Redford’s doing. Given Alberta’s history, it’s not surprising that other provinces might be wary of her advances. As Parkland Institute director Trevor Harrison pointed out last year in an op-ed piece for the Winnipeg Free Press, Alberta’s energy policy has historically leaned towards isolation and contempt for the rest of the country’s wishes.

In 1982 while serving as mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein ran into a similar problem attracting investors to his city because of the open contempt he showed for the eastern workers seeking jobs in the province’s newly developing oil patch. With characteristic bluntness, he called them “bums" and "creeps” and blamed them for the rise in crime in his city. 

During his 14 years as Premier, the famously cantankerous Klein steered Alberta through much of the oil boom, but showed little interest in sharing or saving the wealth, preferring instead to spread it around in the form of “prosperity bonuses” of $400 to each Alberta resident in 2005. It’s sobering now to think that if that money had been saved, the interest alone might have gone a long way to digging Alberta out of its current financial hole. It’s even more frightening that, while the rest of the world was beginning to accept the hard lessons of climate change and oil dependence last year, the Alberta Wildrose Party promised a new round of bonuses beginning in 2015 should it have been elected.

Klein also had little interest in federal calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2002, as part of a campaign to keep then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien from ratifying the Kyoto Accord, he famously dismissed warnings about climate change by wondering whether the first ice age was caused by “dinosaur farts.”

The message from the Alberta government has always been, the oil is ours and how we mine it, refine it and sell it is no one’s business but our own. Now that position is simply no longer tenable. In a recent address to the Alberta people, Redford laid out the challenges before the province and promised to find a way out without crippling social programs or, magically, raising taxes.

What she didn't say was that Alberta can no longer afford to make policy as though it were cordoned off from the rest of the country. It needs the help of other provinces to export its oil and that means taking into account the concerns of those who have not been blinded by a couple of decades of short-sighted prosperity.

But it is not enough to simply look for new markets; if Alberta is to free itself from this uncomfortable cycle of boom and bust, Redford must begin to rethink this reliance on the tar sands and find ways to diversify the economy. The question is, can the province let go of decades of rhetoric and take a new road?

In her address, Redford said that oil and gas “are our assets.” I disagree. In the 15 years that I lived in Alberta I learned that, as well as being a province of extraordinary resource wealth, it is a province rich in industriousness. Redford’s constituents are willing to work hard to secure their future, so why does she, like her predecessors, insist upon leading them down a path that puts them at the whim of politics and world markets?

Why not skip that inevitable pain and redirect some of that skill and ingenuity into clean, renewable energy industries that we know have a future? 

Image Credit: Government of Alberta.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.