We’ve had a busy week in the Alberta Legislature.

We’ve had a busy week in the Alberta Legislature. On Tuesday, our Government introduced a motion under the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act. If passed, it will allow us to take a variety of measures to shield our oil and gas industry from Justin Trudeau’s job-killing production cap.

We would be prepared, if and when the regulations become law, to immediately proceed with a court challenge. We could prohibit provincial entities from enforcing the cap. We could declare oil and gas production facilities to be critical infrastructure and prevent people – including federal agents – from entering those properties without permission.

We will make it a condition of the licenses we grant to have greenhouse gas emissions reported to us, and we – as the owner of the resource – will take responsibility for reporting this information publicly.

And we will use our royalty in kind programs and our Alberta Petroleum Marketing Agency to market our products directly so that consumers around the world – like Japan and Germany and maybe even the US Department of Defense – can benefit from our lower emissions and ethically produced oil and gas products. Alberta can and must help ensure global energy security and this would help us be part of that solution.

And while we’d rather not go to these lengths, we’ll do what needs to be done to counter Ottawa’s job-killing emissions and production cap.
This is more important than ever before – given the very serious threat of tariffs potentially being imposed by the incoming U.S. administration.

Although Alberta’s government opposes any tariffs on Canadian or U.S. products, it is our view that President-Elect Donald Trump, and the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him, have valid concerns related to illegal migrants and drug smuggling at our shared border.

The federal government and every province bordering the United States must take immediate steps to crack down heavily on these illegal border activities.

Doing so is good for both the United States and Canada.

We should not discount the incoming administration’s commitment to energy security, and we must recognize that Alberta is uniquely positioned in all of the world as the perfect partner to the United States in achieving that objective.

We want to be part of Team Canada as we navigate these decisions and policies with the U.S. – but we need Team Canada to also be Team Alberta – and that means scrapping the damaging energy production cap immediately – as a show of commitment to North American energy security and partnership.

As always, please reach out with your questions or feedback to Chestermere.Strathmore@assembly.ab.ca.