Alberta to invoke Sovereignty Act against Ottawa’s Clean Energy Regulations

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith confirmed the her plan to invoke the Sovereignty Act on Your Province Your Premier on Saturday.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will be using the province’s Sovereignty Act to challenge Ottawa’s requirement to achieve a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.

Smith confirmed the plan on 630 CHED’s and QR Calgary’s Your Province Your Premier on Saturday.

During the radio show, Smith said the province tried to work collaboratively with the federal government to make the province’s electricity grid net zero by 2050. However, Ottawa’s target of 2035 is “unachievable” and will make electricity unaffordable for Albertans, she said.

“We will not put our operators at risk of going to jail if they do not achieve the unachievable,” she said. “We have to have an affordable grid, and we’re going to make sure that we defend our constitutional jurisdiction to do that.”

Smith added that the Clean Energy Regulations disregard Section 92 of the Constitution Act, which says provincial matters fall under provincial jurisdiction.

“I don’t want to do this. I really didn’t. From the very first conversation I had with (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau, I said I wanted to work with him on this. We put together a table with good negotiators so that we could find areas of common ground. But Steven Guilbeault (federal environment minister) … he’s a maverick. He doesn’t seem to care about the law, doesn’t care about the Constitution. I do. And we’re going to make sure that we assert that,” she said.

This comes after the Alberta government sent an 18-page technical submission to Ottawa earlier this month explaining why the national Clean Energy Regulations “are simply unworkable.”

Global News has reached out to Steven Guilbeault’s office with a request for comment.