Thanks.
Almost exactly one year ago, a coalition of Alberta unions representing thousands of Alberta workers in oil and gas, construction, manufacturing and industrial maintenance released a blueprint for our provincial economy entitled “Skate to Where the Puck is Going”. The impetus for both our coalition and the report was the daunting realization that change is coming to our provincial economy whether we like it or not.
As worker leaders and worker advocates, we decided that it's better to prepare for change than to get run over by it. More specifically, we decided that it's better to prepare to seize the many opportunities associated with the rapidly accelerating global energy transition than to bury our heads in the sand and be left behind as the rest of the world moves forward.
Our report outlined opportunities in areas like hydrogen, critical minerals, electricity, housing, transportation, building retrofits, agribusiness and renewable energy, but also offered suggestions about how to secure a future for our oil and gas sector in a decarbonizing world, specifically by helping the sector pivot towards producing feedstocks for materials as opposed to feedstocks for fuels.
Perhaps most important, we concluded that denial is not a plan and that delay is not in the best interests of the working people we represent. That's why we are very pleased that this committee is taking a close look at the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act.
In our coalition report, we argue that the only way we in Alberta can keep up with the scale, scope and pace of the unfolding global energy transition is for our federal and provincial governments to embrace the notion of government-led industrial policy in the public interest. We said that we need to pivot our economy toward opportunities in the lower-carbon economy. We said that we couldn't wait for the market to do it itself. We said that we needed to follow the lessons of former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, who used government-led industrial policy to create whole new industries and decades of prosperity when he saw in the 1970s that we were running out of conventional oil and gas.
We said that our governments at both the provincial and the federal levels have to put their money where their mouths are, because industrial policy only works when it is impressively funded. Perhaps most important, we said that workers need to be at the table when decisions about industrial policy are being made and that strings need to be attached to industrial policy funding to make sure that money actually flows to Canadian workers, Canadian businesses and Canadian communities.
With their Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration has done all of these things for the American economy and for American workers. The act has now been in place for more than a year and by every possible measure it has been an unequivocal success. The IRA has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. It has unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, and it's setting up the American economy for success in a rapidly changing world.
The question for Canadian policy-makers is not whether we should follow suit—of course we should. The real question is how we can up the ante and do even better.
The good news from our perspective is that the federal government has gotten the memo. In their last budget, they committed over $80 billion to IRA-style incentives. They have also seen the wisdom of giving workers a seat at the table and tying IRA-style strings to the funding to make sure that Canadian workers and Canadian communities benefit from the investments.
The bad news from our perspective is that Conservative politicians, both in Alberta and in Ottawa, have at least implicitly rejected the logic of the IRA and are ignoring or dismissing its obvious successes. How else can you explain the UCP Alberta government's decision to impose a moratorium on investments in renewable energy projects, a moratorium that is jeopardizing $33 billion in investments and 22,000 jobs? How else can you explain the reluctance of federal Conservatives to even discuss the IRA, let alone acknowledge its obvious accomplishments?
I'm here on behalf of Alberta workers today to say this needs to stop. In the IRA, we have a policy model that works. We need our elected representatives to stop putting politics ahead of the public interest.
Thank you very much. I look forward to the discussion.