Thanks, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
You've asked me to weigh in on the subject of an emissions cap for Canada's oil and gas sector. I'm not here to dissuade anyone from acting on this commitment, but rather to urge you to proceed carefully to make sure you consult with workers in the sector and to communicate clearly with those workers throughout the process.
Some may find it surprising that a labour leader from Alberta is not automatically opposed to an emissions cap on oil and gas. You shouldn't be, and I say that for two reasons. First, Alberta workers, including the majority of workers in the oil and gas sector, accept both the science of climate change and the need for policies to reduce emissions. Climate change is real, it's serious, and Canada needs to do its part.
Second, we here in Alberta, have experience with emissions caps and that experience tells us that they can actually be helpful to the oil and gas industry. This may seem a little counterintuitive, so let me elaborate. In 2015, when the previous Alberta government introduced its climate leadership plan, it included a 100 megatonne cap on emissions from the oil sands. Lots of people know about this, but what you may not know is that Canada's major oil sands producers actually asked for the cap. It wasn’t in the original plan. Companies like Suncor, Cenovus and CNRL asked for it to be added.
Why would they do such a thing? They could see the writing on the wall. Even at that time, eight years ago, global investors were starting to feel leery about fossil fuels. Canadian oil sands companies were worried about becoming global investment pariahs, so they embraced the policies contained in the climate leadership plan, including carbon pricing, output-based allocations and the emissions cap, as a way to show investors that Canada was taking climate change seriously. And it worked. The cap and other policies produced concrete incentives for companies to reduce their per barrel emissions. In turn, this gave investors more confidence and now the industry has made a commitment to be net zero by 2050.
Emissions caps and other related policies are not some sinister plot to shut down Canada's oil and gas industry. Done well and carefully, they are simply reasonable, even necessary, policies to help the industry adapt to changing circumstances. But to be honest, from the perspective of Alberta workers, an emissions cap is not the biggest issue facing our province's oil and gas sector. It's not even close. The biggest issue is the unfolding global energy transition itself.
Contrary to the spin coming from certain politicians and pundits—