In this 4,000 word essay I recount and analyze the dozen or so news releases put out by Environment and Protected Areas Minister Rebecca Schulz since last June.
On 9 June 2023, after the 29 May election Rebecca Schulz was appointed the minister of Environment and Parks. Under the order of precedence for cabinet, Schulz was in the middle of the pecking order at ninth after the Premier. However since her appointment Schulz has overshadowed Smith energy and minerals minister, Brian Jean and has become indispensable in supporting Premier Smith assault against the federal government and, in particular, Environment and Climate Change minister Stephen Guilbeault.
In an particularly unsavoury remark in a friendly conversation with Tucker Carlson, Ms. Smith urged Carlson to put Stephen Guilbeault “in his crosshairs,” while adding she wanted Guilbeault “fired.”
Rebecca Schulz has been designated by Smith as the minister responsible for attacking the federal government’s climate policies and Stephen Guilbeault personally. An uncharitable classification would put Ms. Schulz in the “attack dog” category. Smith has made no secret of the fact that she is actively engaged in a campaign to force Justin Trudeau to fire his environment minister.
In this post, I briefly describe Schulz’s path to her powerful position and then catalogue the intemperate missives aimed at the federal government over the past year.
Rebecca Schulz
According to Wikipedia, Schulz “grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan.” According to her Legislature biography, Schulz holds a master’s degree (communications) from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Saskatchewan. Her route to political office began in 2009 when she joined Premier Brad Wall’s office. Her communications background and her political leanings assisted employment stints at Saskatchewan Government Insurance and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. Before running in Calgary Shaw, she was the Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Calgary.
Schulz formally entered politics in 2019 when the newly consummated United Conservative Party under Jason Kenney was elected. Schulz contested and won the riding of Calgary Shaw. She was named Minister of Children’s Services in April 2019 by Premier Kenney. In 2022 with the fall of Kenney, Schulz ran for the party leadership and placed fourth. In October 2024, she was appointed Smith’s Minister of Municipal Affairs. As Municipal Affairs minister, Schulz was drawn into the controversy of unpaid taxes where she demonstrated lukewarm support of rural municipalities and use deflection promising
We will be in contact directly with delinquent companies, reminding them of their tax responsibilities.
Our government will continue working with municipalities and the RMA to explore other options for tax recovery, including ways to promote payment agreements and provide specific direction to the AER within its regulatory framework.
As Environment and Protected Areas Schulz is utilizing her considerable talents in political communications and social media.
Attacks- the early phase
In this section I examine Schulz’s role in attacking the federal government under the direction of Danielle Smith, herself a savvy communicator and master of social media.
It did not take long before Schulz was leading all Alberta cabinet ministers in pronouncements mainly in the form of attacking federal environmental policies such as emissions, plastics, and defending the energy.
Soon after being sworn in and receiving her mandate letter, Schulz issued a call for resistance by provincial environment ministers. In her 29 June 2023 release she brought the governments and Saskatchewan and Atlantic provinces onboard to “halt the implementation of federal Clean Fuel Regulations. Citing the harm of rising gas prices she referenced the Alberta “plan” – the oxymoronic “Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan” as the proper way to deal with energy and environmental policy. The themes of affordability, Alberta as “a global leader in emissions reductions, clean technology and innovation, and sustainable resource development,” and the purported harm to economic development from federal policies would repeat throughout her campaign. Largely unproven and uneconomic technological innovations would also form part of the Alberta campaign.
In a 19 July release entitled “A practical path forward” after a meeting with federal environment minister Stephan Guilbeault, she assailed Ottawa’s plans to “implement a de facto production cap on oil and gas producers, emission reductions, plastics, oil sands mine water management, and other topics that are important to Albertans and all Canadians.”
I informed Minister Guilbeault that our government remains resolutely opposed to any federal cap on oil and gas emissions or electricity regulations that are not expressly consented to by Alberta and that do not align with Alberta’s emissions reduction and energy development plan.
In the news release she also flagged proposed federal electricity regulations and the oil and gas emissions cap as areas for consultation and concern for Alberta. The room temperature was definitely heating up. The language was temperate but firm. Personal attacks would come later.
A 25 July release before meeting with Canada’s environment ministers, she identified four issues Alberta would be focusing on-
- Plastic waste- “ Alberta does not support Canada’s designation of plastic manufactured items as toxic and is challenging the federal government’s legislation in court.”
- Emissions reduction- Alberta “aspires to carbon neutrality by 2050.”
- Clean electricity regulation- “The Alberta government has stated that any clean electricity regulations must include a carve-out for provinces like Alberta, which rely on natural gas-fired generation.”
- Oil and gas production cut- the Alberta government is opposed to federal plans to implementation of a production cut on oil and gas producers.
In the first of many joint statements with the premier and other senior cabinet ministers, on 8 August 2023, Schulz and Affordability Minister, Nathan Neudorf responded to the federal government’s net-zero policies by 2035. They assailed a paper jointly issued by Energy and Natural Resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Guilbeault’s ministry “re-announcing” various tax credits and programs for renewable electricity and technology upgrades. The ministers labelled the $40-billion multi-year promises “a pittance compared with the estimated $1.7 trillion in funding that would be required to fully transition the grid by 2035.” These claims, to be repeated over the next six months, were that the timeline- 2035- was “unrealistic,” the lack of funding to provinces that “do not commit to the unrealistic goals,” risks to the integrity of the grid, and affordability.
Renewables moratoriumThis statement was soon followed by a stunning blow to the renewable electricity industry when Smith announced a six-month moratorium on 3 August 2023. Smith’s claim was that without “reliable” natural gas back-up for peak capacity, greater reliance on renewables would undermine system stability. Other claims were that a groundswell of farmers was worried that after the renewable facility was shut down there was no regulatory system to ensure proper clean-up and rehabilitation. |
Matters were beginning to heat up. On 1 September, Schulz led the province’s “unaffordable blackout regulations” assault against Ottawa’s electricity regulations. Leveraging two recent grid alerts, Schulz maintained that natural gas is “essential” to assuring the integrity of the electricity grid. She reiterated findings in the Public Policy Forum report “Project of the Century” which claimed a total cost to complete a complete energy transformation would be could be more than $1 trillion, and as high as $1.7 trillion. $1.7-trillion. What the Forum’s report said was that there was wide range of estimates given by a wide variety of government, government regulators, academics and think tanks. The highest number cited was the Conference Board of Canada report of $1.7 trillion. These estimates are given over a variety of time frames. Alberta would continue to play up the “affordability” issue.
The tone was decidedly more aggressive and hostile.
Our position remains unchanged: the proposed regulations are unconstitutional, irresponsible and do not align with our Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan, which aims to achieve a carbon-neutral power grid by 2050. As currently written, these regulations will not be implemented in our province – period.
The release contained the ironic claim that “between 2005 and 2021 electricity emissions fell by 53 per cent” without mentioning this was primarily achieved under the NDP’s “climate leadership plan” which forced coal-fired plants to close by 2030. The release concluded with an olive branch- “We invite the federal government to support us rather than work against us.”
Thus far Premier Smith had not entered the fray. On 22 September Schulz took on the Prime Minister and Guilbeault for increasing methane reduction targets.
It is appalling, but not surprising, that the Prime Minister and Minister Guilbeault would find it acceptable to undermine Alberta’s successful work to reduce emissions, all for a photo op in New York. These statements also undermine and risk the viability of the work commenced by the Alberta-Ottawa working group currently underway to align Alberta’s and Ottawa’s emissions reduction efforts (emphasis added).
Again Schulz reiterated that she wanted Ottawa “to work with us not against us.”
Schulz and Smith turn to personal attacks
Matters remained quiet until 8 November when Schulz had the opportunity to attack Guilbeault’s record as environment minister. The Environment Commissioner, operating independently of the federal government, reported that the federal government will not reach its own 2030 emissions target. Whether this was surprising news to environmentalists or energy analysts and to the public at large is immaterial. She repeated messages that the federal government should stick to its own jurisdiction and pointed to perils for the Canadian economy and affordability if Ottawa persisted in its path.
“The bottom line is clear: this is a federal government that is setting itself and Canadians up for failure through bad and unserious policy, designed purely for international photo ops and grand announcements.
“And to whatever extent this federal government tries to implement these policies, it will end up hurting Canadians, destroying economic growth and worsening the affordability crisis in the process.
“The federal government should stay in its own lane and leave emissions reductions to the provinces that understand the industries we are constitutionally responsible for.
“I’d like to reiterate our government’s invitation to Ottawa to work with us toward an achievable 2050 goal of carbon neutrality.”
Carbon neutrality, a meaningless term like net-zero, was entering into the lexicon.
A week later, Schulz and Smith teamed up to highlight the province’s “big win” at the Federal Court of Canada on plastics usage which the industry, Alberta and Saskatchewan had intervened. in. Noting that Alberta is “proudly home” to Canada’s largest petrochemical sector, “It’s time for the federal government to listen to the courts and to Canadians.”
Next came Smith and Schulz’s trip to COP28 in the petro-state Dubai. There the pair “would showcase Alberta’s effective, common-sense and innovative approach to reducing emissions while keeping energy reliable, secure and affordable.” The duo claimed Alberta as a “world leader in reducing methane emissions, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), and will completely phase out coal-fired electricity generation by early 2024.” The latter phrase was hilarious and ironic as mentioned given the phase-out was entirely due to the efforts of the Notley government which stood up to industry claims this could not be done by 2030.
It was noteworthy that Alberta’s Energy and Minerals Minister Brian Jean was not invited to go along given that so much of the tour was focused on attracting petrochemical and oil and gas investment. Obviously the Premier had utmost confidence in the manner in which Schulz was running the anti-Ottawa campaigns by standing up proudly for the oil and gas industry.
The statement was quickly followed by two joint statements from the Middle East concerning methane emissions targets (4 December) and the federal emissions cap (7 December.)
On methane regulations, Alberta’s lead delegates to COP28 characterized the new “rules and targets” as “costly, dangerous and unconstitutional.” This federal initiative was characterized by the pair as ”help(ing) to win international headlines.”
Managing emissions from Alberta’s oil and gas industry is our constitutional right and responsibility, not Ottawa’s, and we are getting the job done. Using a province-led approach, Alberta has already reduced methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 45 per cent – hitting our target three years early – and we’re just getting started.
Ottawa could have helped us keep reducing emissions with joint incentive programs in line with Alberta’s Emissions Reduction and Energy Development Plan. It could have listened to the Supreme Court’s declaration that the Impact Assessment Act was unconstitutional and abandoned this kind of arrogant and ineffective scheme. Instead, these new regulations threaten our successful province-led approach and impede good work that’s already underway (emphasis added).
For years, Alberta, not Ottawa, has done the hard work and achieved results. We strongly support reducing methane emissions and have invested tens of millions into developing these technologies. Minister Guilbeault must work with us, and not against us, to keep cutting methane emissions and charting a course for carbon neutrality by 2050.
Attacks turn personal
Relations between the two governments reached a new low with this ad-hominum attack on Guilbeault.
Ottawa, ONTARIO, Canada on October 21, 2021.
© HOC-CDC
Credit: Mélanie Provencher, House of Commons Photo Services
Instead of building on Alberta’s award-winning approach, Ottawa wants to replace it with costly, dangerous and unconstitutional new federal regulations that won’t benefit anyone beyond Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault’s post-office career (emphasis added).
Three days later Smith and Schulz characterized the federal emissions cap by- a “de facto production cap on Alberta’s oil and gas sector amounts to an intentional attack by the federal government on the economy of Alberta and the financial well-being of millions of Albertans and Canadians.” Taking direct aim at Guilbeault they stated:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his eco-extremist Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault are risking hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in Alberta’s and Canada’s economies and core social programs, are devaluing the retirement investments of millions of Canadians, and are threatening the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Albertans (emphasis added).
Personally attacking a federal minister of the Crown was now fair game for Schulz and others in the provincial government. At the close of COP28, Guilbeault was again personally signalled out. The Alberta release began
I am greatly encouraged by the success of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and other nations and subnational governments, at COP28 in pushing back against the voices of those obsessed with accelerating the phaseout of sustainable and affordable energy derived from abated oil and natural gas.
We were gravely disappointed to see federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault and other radical activists continue to push an approach that would consign the world to energy poverty and economic stagnation by focusing only on ending all fossil fuel use.
That extreme position was defeated at COP28 by a growing alliance of thoughtful world leaders that well understand we can indeed grow our economies, develop our natural resources and ensure energy and food security for the world while simultaneously reducing emissions through technology and multilateral cooperation.
It was a national embarrassment to witness Minister Guilbeault at an international conference actively sabotaging the interests of Albertans and other Canadians by releasing a series of incoherent and illegal policy pronouncements that he and his government have absolutely no legal authority to impose upon the provinces of Canada (emphasis added).
Matters went quiet between Schulz and the federal government until February when Smith and Schulz launched a campaign to axe the carbon tax. The Liberal’s ill-considered carbon-tax carve-off the previous November, was designed to enhance Atlantic Liberal MPs flagging chances at re-election. In “Rebranding the carbon tax won’t fix a failure,“ Smith and Schulz stated that the carbon tax did not reduce emissions and raised the “cost of everything.” The pair labelled this policy shift as an “act of desperation,” the result of “flawed environmental activism,” and a “a cynical and desperate ploy that will fail.”
Then matters heated up again when Guilbeault announced a cap on plastic production. On 25 April Schulz responded by rejecting this “unconstitutional cap” on plastic. She suggested that this would throw a wrench into Dow Chemicals $9-billion “net-zero petrochemical plant.” This came five months after a highly staged announcement by Dow, the province, and federal ministers Freeland and Champagne that they would go ahead with the building of this plant with over $1-billion in provincial incentives. Why the Environment and Protected Parks Minister would go out of her way to lead the attack on federal plastics policy and investment and not other ministers responsible for investment and jobs, is a puzzle. But such was the Orwellian cast of a minister of the environment sticking up for plastics and fossil fuels.
During this whole period of attacks, Schulz was also involved in two, albeit rare, positive spin stories. The first, on 17 January 2024 with Brian Jean heralded “progress” on well clean-up. The second was on 3 May when Schulz claimed emissions in Alberta “keep declining.” What the headline did not point out was that Alberta’s per-barrel emissions were in decline conflating absolute emission reduction with efficiency improvements. She also took the opportunity to blame the federal government for Capital Power’s decision not to proceed with its carbon capture and utilization project at Genesee. Again “Ottawa” was cast as the villain in this play with Alberta only seeking “solutions.”
Only Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault would choose to increase energy production in high-polluting countries like China, Russia and India to meet global demands while devastating our economy and preventing jobs for Canadians (emphasis added).
On 13 May another apparent victory came for Alberta with the Supreme Court ruling in a five-two decision that the Impact Assessment Act “remains” unconstitutional. Again, it was Smith and Schulz who controlled the narrative for the government, the economy minister and energy ministers were absent. The two warned that Guilbeault “still has the ability to meddle in projects that are within provincial jurisdiction.” Smith and Schulz reiterated that Alberta would not accept accept the Impact Assessment Act as “valid law,” crowing “Choices have consequences. Alberta has won in court twice in the past year and we are ready to win again.”
At the end of May, Smith and Schulz issued another release calling on the federal government to scrap the cap on oil and gas emissions. Citing S&P “new analysis” which “exposes the federal government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap as a reckless gamble that will devastate Canadian families and do nothing to reduce global emissions” (emphasis added). Evoking threats to future economic prosperity, the release repeats the well-worn themes of per-barrel emissions reductions, the promise of new technologies and continued global demand for fossil fuels.
| Bill C-372- On 5 February 2024 Charlie Angus, NDP Member of Parliament for Timmins-James bay introduced a private members bill to address concerns about misleading fossil fuel advertising. The Bill is modelled along similar legislation brought in to combat misleading advertising by the tobacco industry in 1989 (Corporate Knights, Summer 2024, p. 11).
The Preamble reads in part:
The Bill would prohibit a person from promoting a fossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related brand element or the production of a fossil fuel except as authorized under the Act or Regulations. It would also prohibit “false promotion.” It would create offences with fines not exceeding $1-million or jail terms of less than one year. |
Most recently Schulz has drawn here fire on the Royal Assent of Bill C-59, an omnibus budget bill which incorporated aspects of Charlie Angus “greenwashing” private members’ Bill C-372, the Fossil Fuel Advertising Act in February 2024. The bill was summarized by the National Post’s Tristan Hooper as prescribing jail time for those “speaking well of fossil fuels.” Schulz characterized Angus’s Bill as a “gag order” and one which “threatened fines and jail time for Canada’s oil and gas industry if they tried to defend their record on the environment. Canadians were immediately outraged, and the bill was laughed away as being just plain crazy.”
Any company not willing to risk millions of dollars in fines and legal fees will be forced to stay silent. And that is exactly the outcome that Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault and the federal Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois alliance wants to happen (emphasis added).
A month later, C-59 passed and Schulz and Brian Jean on 20 June 2024 issued a statement blaming the “federal Liberal and NDP coalition” for “draconian legislation that will irreparably harm Canadian’s ability to hear the truth about the energy industry and Alberta’s successes in reducing global emissions.” They correctly predicted that the legislation:
will prevent private entities from sharing truthful and evidence-based information that happens to oppose the extreme and untruthful oil and gas narrative of the federal NDP and Liberals. This is being done to intentionally intimidate boards and shareholders, silence debate, and amplify the voices of those who oppose Canada’s world leading energy industry.
Further they stated:
We’re already seeing the NDP-Liberal coalition’s plan play out as organizations like Pathways Alliance and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers are making difficult decisions to remove websites, reduce available information, and cease advertising out of fear that if they do not comply with the narrative of eco-extremists like Minister Stephen Guilbeault and Jagmeet Singh, their companies will face tens of millions in penalties (emphasis added).
They accused the federal government of being “lawless” and pledged to “relentlessly defend our province, its people, their free speech rights and their livelihoods without pause or apology.” Tools to defend Alberta’s “world-class energy sector” included constitutional challenges or the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act.
A week earlier, on 14 June 2024 Schulz attacked the federal nature strategy as being unconstitutional. She stressed that any national plan dealing with Alberta’s land and resources must reflect “social, economic and environmental values of Albertans, not Ottawa; especially when Ottawa’s ultimate goal is to sterilize our land and resources, which hinders economic opportunity and resource development projects before they can even be proposed (emphasis added).
Ottawa needs to stay in its own lane. Albertans – including communities, Indigenous people, farmers, ranchers, hunters, resource workers and stewards of our beautiful province – will decide how to best manage provincial lands (emphasis added).
The proposed legislation would respond to biodiversity loss and adopts the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework. The Bill addresses all 23 of the global accord’s biodiversity framework targets.
Schulz continued accusing the federal Minister of “blatantly ignoring the Canadian constitution and pretending to engage with provinces to carry out his radical, ideological agenda” (emphasis added).
Summary
Ms. Schulz employs well understood rhetorical claims to build the case for firing Canada’s environment minister. Oxford defines rhetoric as “speech or writing that is intended to influence people, but that is not completely honest or sincere.” The selective use of words such as extremist, radical, lawless, ideological, dangerous, arrogant, unrealistic are all ways of creating strong emotions on the part of the reader. These words are important cues to the media and social media influencers in how to frame narratives for the general public. The narrative of defending Alberta against an arrogant, ideological Ottawa is highly resonant for the UCP’s base.
Threats to the status quo are decontextualized- a fancy word to mean that the existential threat to our planet from the burning of fossil fuels are ignored or dismissed.
Schulz in particular, and Ms. Smith, have made the attack personal as they seek Guilbeault’s removal. By personalizing the fight with Trudeau and Guilbeault it also gives the “defenders” identifiable targets to “put in the crosshairs,” as Premier Smith alarmingly said to former FOX host, Tucker Carlson. To be sure the federal government is stretching its constitutional powers leveraging on international commitments. It will be very interesting to see how some of these constitutional gray areas are sorted out by the federal courts and how the Sovereignty Act will be used.
A constitutional challenge to Bill C-59’s Competition Act amendments is expected.
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