Alberta climate plan should help get oil to port, natural resources minister says

CALGARY Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr hailed Alberta’s new climate change policy Wednesday and said that the plan will help lower the resistance to pipeline projects across Canada.

Carr, the newly elected Liberal MP for Winnipeg South Centre who was named to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first cabinet earlier this month, was in Calgary to meet with oilpatch leaders and government officials.

In an interview, he said the vision of NDP Premier Rachel Notley bringing together environmental organizations and energy industry players in support of the climate strategy “is a real change in how Alberta presents itself to Canada.”

And he said the province’s climate plan should help Alberta in its quest for new pipelines to get its landlocked oilsands crude to tidewater.

“To the extent we are friendlier to the emissions file, to the extent to which we as a nation can have a regulatory regime which can hold the confidence of Canadians ... the more competitive we will be, the more likely we will be able to move these resources to market,” Carr said.

Improved market access is part of his mandate as Canada’s Natural Resources minister, but “it has to be done in a way that is environmentally sustainable,” he continued.

Alberta’s climate plan not only includes a $20-per-tonne carbon tax in 2017 that will grow to $30 a year later, it also calls for an accelerated phase-out of coal-fired electrical generation and a cap on oilsands emissions.

The strategy is being touted as the best way to cut Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions — the highest in the country — and also help the province access new markets.

A series of pipeline projects have stalled in the face of environmentalist opposition, driven in part by concerns over the large carbon footprint of the oilsands.