Jonathan Wilkinson says that a bill to help people move away from dirty jobs will be passed this year
The federal minister of natural resources has pushed back the date when legislation will be introduced to help workers move from high-emissions fields to what the government calls “sustainable jobs.”
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Wednesday, while he was in the Edmonton area, that his government would introduce legislation for sustainable jobs “this year.”
The federal Liberals had said before that it would happen before summer.
Wilkinson said in an interview, “I just don’t know when that will be done.” “Of course, we have to finish writing the law’s legal language.”
In Alberta and other oil-producing provinces, there has been a lot of disagreement about a plan to help well-paid oil and gas, agriculture, and other workers find new, greener jobs while Canada tries to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. The plan would create a “soft landing” for these workers in new, greener jobs.
Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta has said that the plan is “short-sighted” and “harmful” to the province.
The leader of the NDP in Alberta has asked Ottawa for more money to help with this change.
As part of an interim plan for sustainable jobs that was released in February, a federal government department will be set up to oversee and coordinate the work. In the plan, it was said that new industries like clean technology, hydrogen, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) will create more jobs than there are people to do them. Wilkinson repeated this point of view on Wednesday.
“Alberta is in a very good position in terms of the size and number of opportunities,” he said. “We’re working hard to make sure that these opportunities are used to their fullest.”
During the 2021 election, the Liberals also promised a $2 billion “Futures Fund” to help Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland grow their economies and create good-paying jobs outside of the oil and gas industry.
The government hasn’t said anything about how that fund will be used. Wilkinson said it would start before the government’s term was over, but he didn’t give a date. He also mentioned the billions of dollars in the federal budget that will be spent on tax credits and carbon capture, which should help create green jobs.
Delay leaves environmentalist skeptica
Alienor Rougeot, the climate and energy manager at Environmental Defence in Toronto, said on Thursday that pushing back the deadline for legislation on sustainable jobs would be “a really dangerous delay.”
She said that the government has promised to take these steps since 2019 but hasn’t done so yet.
She said, “Many people, even those who were in favor of these plans, have lost faith that the government will actually carry them out because it’s been so long.”
She said that environmentalists are watching to see if the law requires the federal government to meet certain goals and update the plan regularly.
In an email, Roy Dallman, who works for Brian Jean, Alberta’s Minister of Jobs, Economy, and Northern Development, said that the federal government hadn’t talked enough with the minister or the provincial department about the plan.
“Our worry about the green jobs transition plan from the federal government is that the current jobs and salaries of skilled workers don’t match up with the yet-to-be-determined replacement jobs,” he said.
He said that the province thinks the energy transition will affect 638,000 workers, or a quarter of Alberta’s workforce, in oil and gas, agriculture, mining, forestry, construction, and transportation.
Budget investments designed to bolster greener job
Wilkinson was in Fort Saskatchewan on Wednesday to talk about the federal budget from last month. Fort Saskatchewan is northeast of Edmonton. If the bill passes, companies that invest in renewable power generation and more transmission capacity would get tax breaks. It would also increase the amount that was promised to get CCUS projects going. It would also offer tax credits for hydrogen plants and equipment to turn hydrogen into liquid ammonia for transportation, as well as tax credits for extracting and processing important minerals for use in batteries.
Mark Plamondon is the executive director of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association. He recruits heavy industrial projects to an area northeast of Edmonton where companies have easy access to natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons.
He said of the tax credits, “Anything that helps this region become more competitive on the world stage is an important part of the overall competitiveness equation.”
Plamondon said that what businesses want is more certainty about the value of the carbon credits they get for cutting emissions. He said that if the value of these credits goes down, investments in reducing emissions will be riskier.
Plamondon said that the training and skills needed to build and run any large industrial plant are similar, and he doesn’t see green jobs and regular jobs as opposites.
Rougeot is worried, though, that some of the new tax credits keep giving money to the fossil fuels industry.
She is worried that Canada will have to go through a second, more aggressive energy transition if it can’t meet its emissions reduction goals.
“Denial won’t stop the change from happening,” she said.”It will only make sure that it can’t be handled.”
Gabrielle Symbalisty, the press secretary for the energy minister, said that the Alberta government wants to know more about CCUS funding so that potential investors can be more sure. She also said that the federal government hasn’t taken up the province’s offer to work together on CCUS incentives.
She said that even though the province liked the critical minerals tax credit, it doesn’t go far enough to make Canada’s opportunities the same as those in the U.S.