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Tag: Alberta
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The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Alberta’s power system watchdog, the Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA), analyzed two near-disastrous electricity shortages faced by Albertans in January and April of this year.
The January emergency alert event happened during a cold snap and resulted in calls for everyone in the province to sharply reduce power usage to avoid blackouts.
The April event, which was related to a whole series of power generation glitches, did result in some rolling blackouts.
In its report released this week the MSA made seven recommendations to avoid future failures. But the report doesn’t address the big issue —Alberta’s complex private power system is a mess, ill-suited to providing stable power in a fast-growing economy and increasingly diverse power-generation environment.
The MSA report suggests tweaks addressing some obvious flaws without addressing the underlying structural dysfunction. But even those tweaks suggest that Alberta has been lucky to avoid a catastrophic power failure.
The MSA suggests power generators make their commitments to supply the electrical grid a day ahead rather than an hour ahead of delivering the power. Forecasting needs to be improved on how much power solar and wind generation will supply, it recommends.
Companies should have to justify their power plant downtime in more detail, says the MSA and those reasons should be routinely audited. And companies should be required to keep a generator online if a supply shortage is imminent.
The province has enacted some changes already that appear in the report, including the Supply Cushion Regulation that requires natural gas plants to stay online in times of high demand. The MSA report shows that the requirement would have prevented the April blackouts if it had been in place at the time.
The day, rather than hour, ahead electricity sale system will be implemented, according to the government.
In March Nathan Neudorf, Minister of Affordability and Utilities, admitted there are problems requiring urgent attention.
“Our government is committed to Alberta’s unique and investor-driven energy-only market. However, the market’s rules were designed 25 years ago, and some are no longer optimal for the system today,” he said in a press release as the government announced more restructuring of the system.
“Unique and investor-driven” certainly does describe Alberta’s system.
With no overall public utility, Albertans are hostage to a sprawling network of private-sector power generators and retailers. Electricity prices are among the highest in the country. Bills are nearly indecipherable in their complexity.
Recent changes allow Albertans to switch companies and billing plans more easily, but that means the average customer has to keep a sharp eye on the electricity market month to month.
Regulations and rules (because despite calling itself de-regulated, the system has plenty of regulations) are, as Neudorf admitted, out-of-date.
Most of the regulations were designed to deal with massive coal-generation facilities. But with the development of more nimble natural gas units and a welter of green-generation options, the ecology of power in the province has changed.
When the red alert came in January, Premier Danielle Smith tried to lay a major part of the blame on the inability of wind power to make up the power deficit. The MSA report mentions forecasting issues regarding wind, but the root cause was pretty clearly a deficit in natural gas power generation due to various plant shutdowns and outages.
There is also the looming issue of electrical grid decarbonization, not anticipated by the province’s current regime and being fought tooth and nail by Smith.
Smith argues that the province can’t possibly meet Ottawa’s requirement to decarbonize]by 2035. She actively hobbled the renewable energy sector with a six-month moratorium on new projects.
Alberta’s power system is overly complicated, out of date, too dependent on private players and too inflexible to respond to today’s climate emergency. Layering on more rules and tweaking regulations won’t fix a structure which doesn’t serve the public interest.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Why do governments forget from crisis to crisis just how important protecting public health can be?
In Alberta, a province where public health became a political punching bag during the Covid pandemic, the question of where it stands as a government priority is particularly muddy.
Last September one of those public health crises rocked Calgary. An E-coli outbreak at several daycares entailed 450 infections, with 38 children and one adult requiring hospitalization. Some families are still dealing with the effects of the illness.
There were no fatalities.
This week a probe helmed by former Calgary police chief Rick Hanson pinpointed a number of problems in food inspection and enforcement, and offered a suite of solutions.
“The system responsible for food safety needs significant update and reform,” Hanson said.
The outbreak involved a commercial kitchen serving a chain of daycares. A meatloaf lunch was the common thread. But hard and fast evidence of exactly where the E.-coli came from is lacking.
The kitchen owners will face a licensing violation charge from the city of Calgary in September.
Premier Danielle Smith and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange offered the expected assurances that the study’s recommendations will be adopted. Some changes may take until spring next year since legislative changes are required.
The probe advocates the refocusing of the jobs of the food inspectors to take on an investigative role when there are chronic problems at a facility. Consequences need to be strengthened.
The system has also been groaning under the backup in inspection workload created by Covid. The report on the outbreak showed only 82 per cent of the required inspections are completed annually.
At the press conference, LaGrange said improvements are already underway and inspections will be increased. But she became a bit vague when asked about funding and inspector numbers.
Smith commented that it will take a bit of time to work out a balance in terms of new regulations for daycares.
“We don’t want to create a bunch of additional rules if it’s unwarranted,” she said. While commercial kitchens certainly require rules, she raised the issue of daycares dealing with outside food from parents who packed lunches for their kids.
More disturbing was Smith’s response to a wider question about the performance of Alberta Health Service during the crisis. The hospital response was terrific, Smith admitted.
But she implied it was not so great on the inspection side.
One of Smith’s campaign keystones during the provincial election was taking the powerful Alberta Health Services down a peg or two and reducing the role of the Medical Officer of Health. That was in response to Covid restrictions which galvanized her far-right base.
“When it comes to this role of public health inspection, food inspection offices, going into child care operations, going into restaurants, I’ve had a conversation with my health minister — under our new refocusing, is this really Alberta Health Service’s job or is it Alberta Health’s job?We haven’t made a decision yet about reorienting that department.”
The dismantling of Alberta Health and restructuring health care in the province into four separate units was announced in early spring, but apparently where public health should fall in that new structure still hasn’t been worked out.
Public health, a government responsibility which is crucial in times of crisis, doesn’t feature in the media releases about the restructuring process which splits the province system to focus on primary care, acute care, continuing care, and mental health and addictions.
However, the political implications of public health decisions have taken a partisan spotlight, with the government taking power away from the medical officer of health and giving sweeping power to cabinet in times of public health crises such as pandemics.
The function of public health isn’t restricted to mask and vaccination mandates. Foreseeing and preventing widespread contagion falls to public health medical staff and researchers.
The government needs to send a message that it is prioritizing public health and providing the resources to protect Albertans. That might include biting the bullet and bringing in some “red tape” food safety regulations. It should involve re-establishing public trust in the Medical Officer of Health.
Preventing the next public health crisis will take common sense commitment, devoid of interfering politics.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Alberta’s government has tipped over from defending its jurisdiction to chronic whining.
Last week Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz put out a thunderous declaration that the federal government’s new nature strategy is unconstitutional.
As everyone living in Alberta knows by now – pretty much everything the federal Liberals propose is unconstitutional and violates provincial rights according to the United Conservative Party government.
The UCP is not having any of that namby-pamby co-operative federalism. Every federal initiative has to be fought out in angry declarations or court.
So the federal nature strategy, and the Nature Accountability Act federal Environment Minister Steven Guibeault tabled on June 12, just provoked the heck out of Schulz.
The fate of species at risk, shocking decline in wildlife habitat, protection of wild rivers and boreal lands apparently are, in the sovereign domain of Alberta, provincial concerns.
There’s more than just a little of the Old Testament idea of mankind having dominion over all creation in the Schulz press release.
“Albertans – including communities, Indigenous people, farmers, ranchers, hunters, resource workers and stewards of our beautiful province – will decide how to best manage provincial lands,” declares Schulz.
The Alberta minister hints she is speaking for all provinces.
“This report is yet another example of Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault blatantly ignoring the Canadian constitution and pretending to engage with provinces to carry out his radical, ideological agenda.”
Except there’s a bit more to the story.
The strategy grows out of COP 15 and The Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework which espouses targets such as conserving 30 per cent of land, water and seas, reversing degradation of habitat, stopping introduction of invasive species, preventing species from going extinct, increasing green spaces and reducing pollution.
In short, the framework, which Canada signed on to in 2022, strives for common sense sustainability in government policy-making to improve biodiversity.
The development of that national nature strategy has not been a unilateral federal Liberal initiative.
At the end of May 2023, provincial environment ministers met with Guibeault to begin hammering out the strategy.
“Ministers agreed that implementing the new biodiversity targets and objectives will require meaningful collaboration among all levels of governments, including federal, provincial, territorial, and Indigenous governments and organizations,” declared the talking points at the end of the meeting.
“Following the launch of federal consultations on Canada’s 2030 National Biodiversity Strategy earlier this month, Ministers agreed to collaborate in the coming year to develop the Strategy, building on over 25 years of collaboration since they jointly endorsed Canada’s first Biodiversity Strategy in 1995.”
So – there has apparently been a national biodiversity strategy since 1995 and provincial ministers signed on to help devise the current version of it.
Except – Alberta wasn’t at that May 2023 meeting. There was a provincial election going on and apparently nobody was available to attend the session. (Quebec also didn’t sign, although its minister attended as an observer and committed to develop a similar provincial strategy.)
Guilbeault, who has battled it out in past with Alberta, is obviously aware of the extreme sensitivities around environmental issues which could potentially affect economic development.
The nature strategy and the act both explicitly mention provincial consultation and input.
The issue of the constitutional division of powers regarding the environment is a thorny one. The whole carbon tax battle, which the feds won in the Supreme Court, didn’t really clarify all that much. Federal actions which might impact economic activity within provincial borders are a different kettle of fish.
While environment and land management in general appears to fall into provincial jurisdiction in the constitution, several aspects of wildlife control, such as migratory birds and aquatic wildlife, fall into the federal purview. Biodiversity, that all-encompassing term in the middle, doesn’t get an explicit mention in the constitution.
At some point doesn’t it make sense to step back and look at what makes common sense?
Habitat doesn’t stop at borders. Species at risk can’t tell the difference between B.C. and Alberta. That’s why these really big environmental challenges are the subject of global initiatives and agreements in the first place.
Living in harmony with nature and conserving the natural bounty we already have would seem an overarching moral and ethical thing to do.
Isn’t it time the Alberta government climbs down off its parochial horse for the greater good?
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
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The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
