Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I thank you for inviting me to address you.
I am speaking to you from Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton. I grew up in Ontario and Saskatchewan, and I have lived and worked in Alberta for the past 30 years. Three generations of my ancestors are buried in Alberta, on Treaty No. 6 land.
Here in Alberta, climate destabilization has contributed to multiple crises: more frequent droughts affecting food production, destabilization of hydrological patterns affecting water supply and flood control, increasingly intense and frequent forest fires, and biodiversity loss. All of these impacts further undermine indigenous economies and cultures.
Like many of the witnesses who have preceded me, I accept the extensive research showing that a schedule of caps on emissions from the oil and gas sector that will allow Canada to meet its 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas reduction commitments will entail a contraction in oil sands production.
Unsurprisingly, representatives of the corporation invested in the extraction and export of oil and gas oppose such a policy. I have addressed their arguments in my written brief, in some detail.
Today I want to speak to you about why Albertans need a progressive cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, a cap that is combined with other elements of a comprehensive package of policies to underpin a just transition to a post-carbon economy.
My perspective is that of a political economist who has studied the development of Alberta as a colonial settler state and a petro state, and the impact of its extractive model of development on ecosystems, on indigenous communities, on the opportunities available to our young people to choose their life paths, on our public goods and services, on employment and income security, on gender inequality and violence and on the racialized labour market.
I have also studied the effects of the structural power of the fossil fuel industry on our political institutions, on democracy and, indeed, on the making of climate policy.
Oil and gas extraction has brought Alberta periodic wealth, albeit only a fraction of the wealth it would have yielded had the rent been fully captured by the province's governments. This wealth was neither equally shared nor enduring. It was not invested in ways that would have laid the foundations for a post-carbon economy.
Our economy remains highly vulnerable to price fluctuations for commodities traded in global markets. Because of the decisions made by successive neo-liberal governments, we lack the fiscal capacity necessary to provide stable funding to public services. Right now, 37% of unemployed Albertans have been out of work for six months or more. A labour market skewed to resource extraction entrenches gender inequalities, and this extractive economy has devastated the traditional territories of Cree, Dene and Métis peoples. It has left us with an estimated $260 billion in environmental liabilities, and no credible plan in sight to finance cleanup and remediation.
The planned phasing out of unconventional oil and gas production in conjunction with investment in new green sectors and just transition policies will put Albertans, and all Canadians, on a new development path that offers real security and well-being, and real potential for reconciliation with indigenous people.
The fundamental obstacles to doing this are not technical; they are political. The most important questions for the federal government, then, are how it can strengthen a pan-Canadian consensus about what needs to be done, how it can mobilize citizens' participation in planning and implementing what must now be radical, structural reforms of the economy.
We need to build a strong consensus around the principles for allocating responsibilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and for supporting one another through the transition so that no group or region becomes worse off. We need new and reformed political institutions to do this. There is much work to be done to build a shared vision of a post-carbon society that is rooted in decolonization, solidarity and mutual care.
Thank you.