Article content continued

“We — the moderate, progressive majority in Canada — risk being out-shouted,” she said. “We risk being out-shouted by determined advocates, who think their agenda must be pursued regardless of the economic consequences for ordinary working families.”

The reality, she said, is that demand for oil will continue regardless of Canada, that as many as 500,000 jobs are supported by the energy industry across the country, that pipelines are far safer than railways, and that driving customers to dirtier and corrupt suppliers in Venezuela or Russia defies logic.

Noting that “there is not a school, hospital, or road anywhere in the country that does not owe something to a strong energy industry in Alberta,” she asserted that “you don’t support working people by attacking the hardworking women and men in our energy industry, and by attacking good, mortgage-paying energy jobs.”

The reality, she said, is that demand for oil will continue regardless of Canada

While the federal government makes much of its support for the Paris Accord on climate change, and its own national anti-emissions plan, “none of that happens without Alberta,” she said. “We’re Canada’s principal energy producer. Alberta has to be on the team for Canada to have any hope of meeting its climate change targets.”

Her government has introduced an aggressive climate package at considerable political risk, which is only endangered by the anti-Alberta antics of other provinces, she said.

“We can act as one country that thinks strategically and competes internationally, or we can be a bunch of economic fiefdoms competing with each other for economic advantage.” In either case, “without Alberta, there is no national climate plan. Period.”