Thanks, Mr. Chair.
As president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, I have the honour and privilege of representing more than 170,000 workers, in every sector of the Alberta economy, including oil and gas. I also had the honour and privilege of acting as the chair of what we called the coal transition coalition. The CTC, as we called it, was a coalition of unions representing most of the workers in Alberta's coal-fired power plants and associated coal mines. These were the workers who lost their jobs when the previous Alberta government announced the phase-out of coal power and when private power companies dramatically accelerated the phase-out of that power because from their perspective it made economic sense for them to do so.
Together with Roy Milne from the steelworkers, who is another guest on your panel today, we negotiated with the Alberta government for what I think remains the first and only sector-wide just transition package in Canadian history for workers displaced by climate policy. The package we negotiated provided for EI top-ups, training vouchers, relocation allowances and pension bridging for workers. It also envisioned joint employer-employee workplace committees to address site-specific issues and it provided money for coal communities to do some economic planning, which was important, because in many cases the coal plants and mines were the biggest employers in town.
The Alberta approach to just transition in the coal sector was laudable, and I'm proud of it, but one of the reasons I'm here today is to tell you that it was no panacea and it cannot and should not be used as a full template for the energy transition that's already unfolding in oil and gas.
Why do I say that? It's mostly because there are big differences between the coal sector and the oil and gas sector, differences that matter for policy. For starters, there's the simple issue of scale. There were only about 2,000 workers in Alberta affected by the coal phase-out, the majority of them working in mines. In contrast, the Alberta oil and gas sector currently employs 130,000 people. That's down 40,000 since the price of oil and gas collapsed in 2014, but it's still a much bigger number.
There's also the issue of representation. Almost all of the workers in the coal-fired power sector were union members. That meant we had a structure in place for engaging with them and talking with them. In contrast, outside of oil sands-related construction and downstream facilities such as refineries, most workers in oil and gas are not unionized. This is problematic, because engaging with workers needs to be a key part of formulating just transition policy. Unions in coal provided the infrastructure for communication, engagement and, frankly, legitimacy. Without unions in much of the oil and gas sector, talking to workers and getting them on board is going to be much harder.
The final big difference has to do with the nature of the workforce and the nature of the transition itself. In coal, the workers were mostly full-time, permanent, long-term employees, and it was clear that they were losing their jobs because of government policy. In the oil and gas sector, on the other hand, many jobs are short-term and temporary, and it won't be clear-cut why their jobs are being lost. Is it climate policy? Is it market forces? Is it technology? The truth is it's all of the above, and that will make it much harder to decide who should qualify for benefits.
All of that means we can't simply cut and paste what we did in the coal-fired power industry and apply it to oil and gas. It's clear to me that if we're serious about helping Canadians navigate the energy transition, in addition to talking about labour market adjustment for displaced workers, we need to be talking about economic transformation. Band-aids won't cut it. We need to intentionally build a new economy that gives workers new opportunities to thrive. That means money, lots of it, especially for oil and gas provinces such as Alberta. It means having a plan for industrial development. It means having a plan for labour force development to match the industrial plan. It means not leaving it to the market. It means channelling our inner C.D. Howe, if you will, and it means mobilizing like we did for World War II or the Allies did with the Marshall plan in the aftermath of the Second World War. Anything less will be a failure to our climate aspirations and to the economic needs of our citizens and workers, and we need to rise to that challenge.
Thank you.