Natural resources minister defends plan to transition to green economy

As It Happens6:50Natural resources minister defends plan to transition to green economy

Canada's biggest challenge going forward won't be job losses in the oilpatch, says Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. It will be filling all the new jobs in the green economy.

Wilkinson has announced that new legislation will be coming this year to help workers in carbon-intensive industries move into jobs such as building retrofitting, carbon capture, and the mining and processing of critical minerals used in computers and green technology.

The details of the plan have not yet been released. But Alberta — the heart of Canada's oil and gas industry — is already pushing back. Both Premier Danielle Smith and provincial Environment Minister Sonya Savage have accused the federal government of jeopardizing Albertans' livelihoods.

Here is part of Wilkinson's conversation with As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

Minister Wilkinson, what's your message for energy workers who are getting anxious as they wait to see what is in your "just transition" legislation?

I'm not a big fan of the words "just transition." I actually prefer to talk about this as sustainable jobs.

Ultimately, what we are focused on is ensuring that we're building an economy that's going to create good jobs, well-paying jobs and economic opportunity in every province.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith tweeted this week that your government's "ill-conceived and short-sighted plan is extremely harmful to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are supported by the energy sector and will be detrimental to Canada's economic recovery." What would you say to Premier Smith?

I think it's important for her to understand what the bill is and what the action plan is and what it's not. And I want to give Premier Smith her due credit in the sense that she's relatively new, so she hasn't been part of some of the conversations on this that have been going on for some time.

But this is not about doing something to Alberta. This is about actually working with Alberta. We want to partner with Alberta in the context of talking about the opportunities going forward. 

Those are the opportunities for the conventional energy sector. But there are also opportunities for other sectors of the economy that actually are going to be huge opportunities —  like critical minerals in and the processing of critical minerals.

Certainly, we're interested in Canada continuing to play a role as a provider of conventional energy products, but those need to be in the context of reducing emissions. And we want to work with Alberta on: How do we reduce emissions so that the products that we sell as we move through this transition are the lowest carbon products that exist anywhere on the planet?

That's good for Alberta. That's good for Canada. That's good for the world.

Alberta, though, is apparently not at the table ... so what are Alberta energy workers supposed to take away from that? Why isn't Alberta part of these negotiations?

We did actually go through quite an extensive series of consultations as we started to move towards developing this legislation and this action plan. It very much included companies in the energy sector. It very much included the labour unions in Alberta. And it did include the government of Alberta, where there were discussions between officials over the course of the past couple of years.

I do think there is enormous scope for collaborative work here. 

Alberta's Environment Minister Sonya Savage ... [tweeted]: "This bill will phase out hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs in the energy sector. This should be of concern not just here in Alberta, but across the country." What's the disconnect here? Because how they are seeing what your plan is and what you're saying are very far apart.

I think that there are ways in which we can move forward collaboratively. I think we need to be thoughtful about how we are using terminology. I think the ... words around "just transition" are a bit of a loaded term for people in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I grew up in Saskatchewan. I'm certainly sensitive to that.

It's one of the reasons why I prefer to talk about all of this as sustainable jobs. This is about ensuring prosperity and ensuring place-based prosperity because the opportunities that are available in Nova Scotia are different from those that are available in Alberta. And we need to be working collaboratively with the government, with labour, with industry and others to ensure that we're actually making the appropriate steps forward.

You told our CBC News colleagues that if you have a concern, you're concerned that "there are so many opportunities" that will be coming through this with this plan that "we will not have enough workers to fill the jobs." I wonder if you're concerned that you're over-promising [or] overselling here?

I actually don't. I am very optimistic. And I think if you step back and you think about some of these opportunities — so you think about critical minerals, for example — you cannot have an energy transition without significantly augmenting the amount of critical minerals being produced and processed in Canada and in other jurisdictions around the world. That is going to create enormous numbers of jobs.

Even work that we are doing with respect to just improving energy efficiency … about 70 per cent of the buildings that are standing today are going to go through a deep retrofit if we're actually going to achieve net zero by 2050. That's going to drive enormous jobs.

If you step back and you think through all of the different opportunities for Canada, they are big. If you are somebody who got to choose where you were going to live based on economic prospects in most places, you would choose Canada.

What kinds of jobs will come with this plan?

It is different in different parts of the country. But if you think about Alberta, certainly there are enormous jobs in carbon capture and sequestration, if we are focused on reducing emissions from the energy sector.

There are jobs in critical minerals and minerals processing, which heretofore has been done largely in China, which obviously cannot continue given the strategic nature of that.

There are going to be enormous construction jobs in building up the electricity grid, including small modular reactors in Alberta.

There are jobs in the biofuels sector. There's enormous opportunity in hydrogen, both for domestic use and for export.

If you go to the East Coast, I mean, one of the big areas that both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are extremely interested in is offshore wind for the purpose of producing hydrogen to provide to Europe.

I honestly am of the view that — particularly given some of the demographic challenges that Canada is facing on a go-forward basis — that our issue is not going to be that we have people for whom there are no jobs. 

It is going to be that there are so many different opportunities that we are not necessarily going to be able to pursue them all as a country because of limitations on labour. And we're going to have to be very, very thoughtful about that.