Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend SPOG day in Sundre, Alberta. My friend Susan joined me and circulated the Forever-Canadian.ca petition. The response to the petition was mixed but mostly positive, in fact, Susan and I will be returning to the area to collect signatures soon! Stay tuned for the day and time.
One man made his position perfectly clear, “Alberta needs to be independent”. “What does that mean?” I asked him. Does it mean that the Alberta oil and gas industry no longer receives the most subsidies of any G20 nation? Does it mean that no new pipelines will be built to Canadian coasts? Great! How about oil and gas site clean up and restoration, who will hold the industry to account?
I explained that, as a Geophysicist and oil and gas liability expert, I have always wanted the Federal government to intervene more. That the provincial government is not doing enough to hold the industry to account and I am certain the problem will get worse without other provinces countering the continued environmental harm with us. He simply explained that “Ottawa needs to get its grip off of Alberta, transfer payments are killing us.”
There is no question that the province of Alberta needs to shake foreign interference and take responsibility of our precious resources. Management decisions with respect to our lands and resources, especially clean freshwater, are NOT within Albertan or Indigenous control. On this point, I agree completely, our sovereignty is on the line. Let’s place the blame correctly, though. Alberta is not shipping four times what we use in fossil fuel, gravel, or lumber resources to Ottawa, these resources are going mostly to the United States or elsewhere.
Yes, we pay taxes to Ottawa but Alberta is a net benefactor of Ottawa’s investment today. We are not giving more than we are receiving. According to The Fraser Institute, a long-standing supporter of the foreign interference into Alberta’s oil and gas industry, Alberta paid $3 billion in transfer payments in 2024. Meanwhile, Alberta received $29.6 billion in fossil fuel subsidies last year. The largest investment into fossil fuels by Ottawa, ever!
I am currently listening to Albertan’s own, Geoff Dembicki’s book The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change—which is being made into a TV series, by the way! Geoff’s book explains how foreign investors (the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, and Shell) sought to make money off Alberta’s oil sands. They were also made aware of the impacts on the climate that the extraction, development, refining, and burning of fossil fuel would have if it were to continue, in the 1950s. By the 1970s, these three were measuring the anticipated climate impacts from the extraction, development, refining, and burning of fossil fuels, internally. In 1977, they clearly outlined the expected detrimental impacts. Their models were proven accurate by climate scientists in 1988. And by 1995 an Alberta-led climate denial campaign was born and continues with worldwide coordination, even stronger today.
Why Alberta?
The question of “Why Alberta” is leading the world wide climate denial campaign has been plaguing me for a long time. Geoff’s research supports my understanding as an oil and gas geoscientist. The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin’s oil and gas reserves, including bitumen, have been understood for a long time. The cover image for this article is a map from 1925 which outlines the pay contours of the oil sands deposits surrounding the Fort McMurray settlement and the Athabasca River. What these executives also well-understood is reserves, quality and quantity. Internal documents from within the companies of Suncor (Sun Oil/the Koch Bros.), Imperial (Exxon), and Shell explain their scientists and executives understood the quality of Alberta’s bitumen deposits meant it would suffer most severely from policies aimed to limit fossil fuel development. Policies required to limit catastrophic climate damages would hurt their Alberta bitumen investments most because they are the dirtiest deposits in the world. The shear quantity of Alberta’s oil sand deposits were simply too sweet for these executives to concede; they chose to take the lead in misleading, instead.
What now?
On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice ruled that states must honour international climate policy or be subject to litigation by climate impacted communities and nations. The actions of these executives are officially illegal. For Alberta to become a sovereign entity, in real life, the path forward is now clear. We follow International law, the laws of nature, or the laws of the Earth; take your pick. We achieve sovereignty within Canada or through the settlement of Treaties 6, 7, and 8. Either way, we are settling with these misleaders. The former, allows us to work with our neighbours, the latter aims to separate and divide us from fighting them.
Either way, we are beholden to what our location may provide as limits near and climate damages become more severe. Personally, I want more support in fighting back against these strong, misleading forces than less, and want to see the “most responsible industry” do right by Albertans, First Nations, Metis, my kids, and yours. Once and for all. The fight is upon us, of this there is no doubt. Do you seek to unite or separate and with who against what? Context matters. We are on the same team, either way.
Very poignant and perceptive. The equalization issue is never explained clearly by AB government. Most opponents believe the AB government writes a cheque to the Quebec government.
Indeed, the UCP is completely captured in oil-friendly policies, by the industry. Albertans are stuck with dine and dash companies who leave the cleanup, and the health risks from leaking wells over decades, to the public!!