Environment Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2025

[Danielle Smith]

It certainly would. There is a natural rate of decline in all of these fields, and you need constant reinvestment in order to maintain your current level of production.

With a 2030 target, or even a 2035 target, we have been told that would reduce the production we can do by two million barrels a day. I've already done the math for the committee on what 2.5 million barrels a day of additional production would be able to provide to our GDP. You can imagine what a reduction of two million barrels a day would take away, not only from our GDP but also from jobs, as well as the income we need for royalties and for taxes.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

You mentioned the two million barrels mark. Your target is to reach eight million barrels a day by 2034. What specific infrastructure would you need to get built in order to get that product to market?

[Danielle Smith]

Well, a few things.... I was pleased to see that Prime Minister Mark Carney has again put the issue of the Keystone pipeline back on the table as a way to—hopefully—get a deal for steel and aluminum. I think that's the way the country works together. It's that we all use our various advantages to be able to help one another. That could be one million barrels a day.

Enbridge Mainline I think also has a few hundred thousand barrels a day that they want to be able to optimize in their current system. In addition, on the Trans Mountain pipeline, I was pleased to see that David Eby is supporting the optimization of that system, which also could add another 300,000 barrels per day.

Then, if we also get a million barrels per day from a new pipeline, northern gateway 2.0, we're getting pretty close to an additional 2.5 million barrels per day, which would generate 55 billion dollars' worth of revenue for the Canadian economy, of which about $10 billion or more would go to the federal government to help pay for NATO commitments.

This is a win all the way around.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Premier.

As it stands, if Prime Minister Carney doesn't dramatically change or remove the Trudeau era and Guilbeault era job-killing environmental policies, is there any chance whatsoever that Canada could possibly actually become an energy superpower?

[Danielle Smith]

What I'm hoping the Prime Minister will do is align with the plan that we put out in 2023, which is to look toward a 2050 target to become carbon neutral, not only using renewable technologies and new technologies but also allowing some of the innovations that I've been talking about here today. Barring that, if the federal government maintains its restrictions of 2030 and 2035, there will be no investment.

As I mentioned, we already have 20 billion dollars' worth of investment that has fled the country in just the last few months, going to the United States. We can bring those dollars back if we restore investor certainty.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Mr. St‑Pierre, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bataille, you mentioned in your testimony that Canada could become a petrostate. Can you clarify what you meant by that?

[Christopher Bataille]

“Petrostate” and “electrostate” are two terms that have come up in the financial industry and the financial press in the last six months. What that refers to is the attitude of a country toward long-term development, not necessarily what they're doing right now with their reserves, but where they're orientating their new investments.

China, mainly for energy security reasons and local air quality reasons, is very much doubling and tripling down on electric vehicles, solar, batteries and what have you. The U.S. approach is somewhat schizophrenic, because it developed a lot of these technologies but obviously there have been reversals. Europe is mainly heading toward an electrostate, and, again, that's for energy security reasons.

If we put all our investment into oil and gas development—everything that's available to us—we could very much end up with a built structure that's not suited to the demands of the 2040s, 2050s and 2060s, when mainly it's going to be electricity-driven technologies that move the globe's economy. We can do both for a little while, but we really have to emphasize our electrostate development as well as any fossil fuel developments that we're doing at the present.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

During your testimony, you talked about the carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM.

I'm from Quebec, where the aluminum industry is quite significant. Can you tell us how important the CBAM is to the aluminum industry, and even the steel industry? How can we seize those opportunities?

[Christopher Bataille]

We've been talking about border carbon adjustments for a couple of generations at this point. All they do is allow a country to apply quite strong policy inside the country, and anybody who is exporting into that country—bringing in steel or commodities or what have you—has to pay the equivalent charge to what domestic producers are paying. All it's doing is levelling the playing field.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Premier Smith, in the previous hour, we heard from Clean Energy Canada. According to that organization, between 2025 and 2030, approximately half a million jobs in the low-carbon energy sector or the renewable energy sector could be added to Alberta's economy. Do you think Albertans would like to have that half a million jobs in those sectors? What is your opinion on that?

[Danielle Smith]

We have committed to bringing a sustainable level of wind and solar onto our grid. To do that, we have to have natural gas as a backup. When solar works only 10% of the time and wind works only 30% of the time, you need to have something that works the rest of the time.

That's part of the reason that we coupled those two things together. Yes, I think there's support for that approach.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

If I understand correctly, you support adding jobs in the renewable energy sector.

[Danielle Smith]

Yes, and I support the creation of jobs in, importantly, natural gas, because when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, you need something to keep the lights on. Having natural gas as our baseload and then being able to supplement that with renewable energy is the model that we're moving towards.

[Eric St-Pierre, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Merran Smith, can you tell us about the Alberta moratorium on renewable energy? You mentioned in your testimony that $3 trillion has been invested in renewables. We know that the provinces have a considerable impact on climate policies. What are your comments on that? Can you tell us if this moratorium has had any impact on Alberta's 2030 targets?

[Merran Smith]

I would say that what we hear from the investment community globally is that what they want is stable, predictable policy. Things like a moratorium on renewables sends the wrong signal and chases that money away. British Columbia has now announced two new calls for power, and Ontario has been announcing calls for power, including energy storage. What we've seen is that millions and billions of dollars are going to those jurisdictions to build out that new clean energy infrastructure. This includes supporting Canadian companies that are developing new types of storage technology.

I have to say that there are some very impressive companies using storage. For example, in Vancouver, there's Invinity Energy Systems—

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mrs. Smith.

Thank you, Mr. St‑Pierre.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Premier Smith.

Ms. Smith, I would ask you to answer the question and not use your communication tactics to unfortunately use up my speaking time.

Dawn Farrell, the former CEO of Trans Mountain, the pipeline that cost Canadian taxpayers $40 billion, testified before this committee. She said she believed that a pipeline transporting oil from the oil sands was helping fight climate change. Do you agree with her?

[Danielle Smith]

We call it the oil sands, and the Trans Mountain pipeline is actually giving us some of their expertise to build the plan for a new pipeline to the northwest coast of B.C.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Premier, I'll repeat my question: Do you think a pipeline transporting oil from the oil sands helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions? You're talking about pipelines, while we're talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

[Danielle Smith]

Yes, I think it does, because we have a lot of non-combustion uses for bitumen, including asphalt, carbon fibre, graphene—which can go to make batteries—and petrochemicals. Not every portion of a barrel is combusted, and that's part of the reason that we have invested tens of millions of dollars in looking at new uses for oil. We already have 6,000 uses, and I'm sure we will find more.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay.

Do you know that greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production are higher than all of Quebec's greenhouse gas emissions?

[Danielle Smith]

This is why we need to do the Pathways project, so we can do carbon capture, utilization and storage and direct air capture, as well as bring new power sources onto our grid to be able to decarbonize. That's the Pathways project, to get to net zero by 2050.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay.

You talk a lot about 2050, but does Alberta have an absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2030?

[Danielle Smith]

We will move as fast as technology allows us to, as I mentioned. We've done a direct air capture project, and it's already beginning to reduce it in a new way.