This is cut and paste from Edmonton Journal.
Smith targets ‘unconstitutional federal overreach' with new Alberta legislation
“These amendments we're introducing today would include denying federal workers access to our facilities and the information they contain."
New legislation will set the province as gatekeeper of emissions information about Alberta’s energy industry, banning federal workers’ “interference” from collecting Alberta emissions data.
Premier Danielle Smith on Wednesday pushed back against the federal emissions cap and what she called “unconstitutional federal overreach.”
Since the province owns the resources it licenses to companies to extract, it’s the only source that counts, Smith said.
Bill 45’s changes to the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act were tabled Wednesday.
“These amendments we’re introducing today would include denying federal workers access to our facilities and the information they contain,” she said.
The legislation designates oil and gas production sites and facilities where emissions data and records are held as “essential infrastructure.”
“This amendment to the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act provides an extra tool to safeguard essential infrastructure from interference, and that includes interference from Ottawa,” Smith said, referencing Section 92 of the Canadian constitution, “which gives the province, not the federal government, the exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development.”
No ‘single source truth for emissions data’
Conflicting conclusions between federal and provincial numbers has been a problem, Smith said, citing methane emission calculations by the province versus the federal government.
“Well, this is part of the issue is that we don’t have a single source of truth for emissions data,” she said.
“If we’re going to have these kinds of disputes, we know that there needs to be a single source of truth when it comes to actual on-site data, and we’re going to collect that, and then we’ll make sure that it is shared,” she said.
“We believe that, because the federal government has come up with different numbers at different times for their own purposes, we think that we actually need to get real data, and because we’re the ones on the ground, we’ll be the ones able to do that work. This bill doesn’t explicitly ban initial data reporting by private companies to the federal government. They will report to us, it’s our data, and then we will report to the federal government. Remember the energy companies, especially since we own the resource and we permit the resource, they develop the resource on our behalf. And so in doing so, we have an obligation to collect the data, and we’ll report it to the to the federal government,” she said.
Hiking production and pipelines
In the same announcement, Smith reinforced prior commitments to upping oil and gas extraction, and pipeline construction east, west and north.
“Alberta will continue in its pursuit of doubling our oil and gas production to meet the growing global demand for energy, and we will not let Ottawa stand in our way. We will not tolerate the continuous unconstitutional overreaches made by the Federal Liberal government measures like the emissions cap, the net zero electricity regs, the net zero electric vehicle mandate. And the energy industry advertising ban must be stopped now,” Smith said.
The legislation comes at a time of transition as Prime Minister Mark Carney assumed leadership last week after Justin Trudeau resigned.
Smith invoked the recent escalating tariff wars started by U.S. President Donald Trump as proof that “now more than ever that Canada must build big and build fast to reach new global markets for export.”
“Canadians and politicians from across the country are calling for new pipelines to be built east, west and north to secure our future and end our reliance upon our southern trading partner,” she said.
Her comments came with shades of warning for the newly sworn-in Carney.
“However, if the new prime minister wants to resume an old fight, well, we will. We’ll fight tooth and nail, because if we can’t make these decisions and build when it’s so obvious and it’s so obviously in the national interest, then what kind of an economic future does Canada have? Today’s amendments are a warning, but they’re also an invitation to Ottawa. Let’s talk. Let’s rise to the occasion. Let’s use Canada’s riches to protect our nation,” she said.
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