Olivia Woods
The Premier of Alberta has requested a meeting with the Prime Minister in light of pending federal legislation meant to ease the process of shifting away from polluting industries.
Premier Danielle Smith has requested a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February in order to establish a resolution on proposed pieces of federal “just transition” legislation, as detailed in a letter to Trudeau released on Thursday.
According to the Liberal government, the measure will provide a roadmap for high-income employees in emissions-intensive industries like oil and gas to transition into similar, greener positions.
“It would be premature and ill-advised to signal the end of a vibrant, thriving industry that has the ability to reduce Canada’s and the world’s emissions through technological innovation and increased exports of LNG (liquefied natural gas) and other clean-burning fuels the world so desperately needs,” wrote Smith in the letter.
She asks Trudeau to show good faith to Albertans in five different ways, including promising to encourage job growth in traditional oil and gas along with greener companies and carbon capture, utilization, and storage projects.
Smith also wants Trudeau to rebrand the bill from “just transition” to “Sustainable Jobs Act,” a reference to Canada’s participation in the international Paris agreement to lower global emissions.
According to Smith, no part of the law should be interpreted to reduce the oil and gas workforce in Alberta. She also expects Trudeau to assist the province in increasing LNG exports to Asian and European markets.
She said that Alberta should be included in the process of establishing “reasonable and meaningful” objectives for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Her request to Trudeau is that he guarantees no industry-specific targets.
In a previous letter this month, Smith claimed the just transition bill would remove hundreds of thousands of jobs based on a seven-month-old federal ministerial briefing note.
There was a “pit in her stomach,” Smith claimed, because the proposal was even worse than she had expected.
The federal government claims that the premier misunderstood the paper since the employment figures it contains refer to the number of people now employed in various industries.
Original source material for this article taken from here
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