Danielle Smith would never accept Ottawa's oil emissions rules, no matter how flexible

It might not have mattered for the Alberta government's reaction that what the Trudeau government promised as a 42-per-cent cap on oil and gas emissions will actually only require that industry to curb emissions by 20 to 23 per cent by 2030.

It might also not have been significant that there's ample flexibility and allowances that technology might not be ready by decade's end for aggressive emissions curbs — stuff that green advocates call "loopholes."

Or that this basically works nothing like a hard cap on emissions and more like big-league basketball's salary cap system, which allows teams to add on more high-priced players if they're willing to pay the luxury taxes. Under the draft plans Ottawa introduced Thursday, companies can buy credits for extra emissions or pay into a technology fund if they're not able or willing to live within these proposed federal limits.

It's not entirely clear Premier Danielle Smith's reaction would have been any less fiery if the federal Liberal ministers had relented further and only required emissions be 10 or 15 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030, or even if they'd have given resource producers some routes to increasing their greenhouse pollution.

WATCH | Environment minister unveils emissions cap framework:

Smith government's premise is that Ottawa essentially has no constitutional right to apply climate regulations on the oil and gas sectors. This means there was perhaps nothing that Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault could have acceptably done at his news conference Thursday — short of scrapping his policy and talking points and, instead, reading past speeches by the Alberta premier.

On this contentious emissions cap targeting Alberta's most lucrative industry, on Ottawa's newly released rules to curb methane, and on clean electricity regulations, Smith's response has been the same. Ottawa's proposals are not only punitive on emitters and Alberta's economy, but they are not legitimate because of the province's jurisdictional rights in the Constitution to govern its power generation and natural resources.

"Singling out the oil and gas industry, which is predominantly focused in a single province — ours — on a resource that is under our exclusive jurisdiction, in my view is a clear violation of the Constitution," she said.

What would have been acceptable? On the emissions cap and federal climate measures, she prescribed Guilbeault and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson simply abandon their plans and align with Alberta's, which similarly targets net-zero by 2050 but has far fewer regulations or targets on the path to that mid-century milestone.

Smith has signalled again that she would express her opposition to this new federal framework as a Sovereignty Act invocation in the new year. Last week when she wielded that provincial law the first time, she used it as a springboard to propose a new Crown corporation that could build and operate natural gas plants in a way that would somehow sidestep Ottawa's grid regulations.

"In this case, we'll do the same thing," Smith said.

"If we have to in some way create some certainty so that we do not have a production cap [for oil and gas], so we do not have a production shut-in, we will also be the producer of last resort, whatever that will look like."

There are certainly competing federal and provincial visions about what Alberta looks like in the 2030s. But now the latter features the province potentially serving as both a power plant developer and an oilsands extractor.

One industry lobby association agreed with Smith's assertion the rules could force companies to curtail their operations — "making this draft framework effectively a cap on production."