Steven Guilbeault and I only met once, and that was after he had left the Environment and Climate Change portfolio and had taken on the role as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture. My chance to chat with him came at a side event at the federal Liberal caucus retreat in Edmonton last year, where environmental leaders advanced a nationwide Youth Climate Corps and invited caucus members to chat over drinks and canapes. I found it hard to believe that the mild-mannered, soft-spoken, yet passionate advocate for climate action could be the focus of so much vitriol and ridicule in my province of Alberta. 

But then, what Minister Guilbeault had done as Minister of Environment and Climate was one of the worst things a federal politician can do in Alberta: challenge the province’s dominant rhetorical dogma. The story we like to tell about ourselves in Alberta is that we prop up the nation’s economy through the oil and gas industry, and insist that all other considerations – community health, climate change, emerging industries, changing economies – take a back seat to the profits and dividends of the oil and gas industry. Challenging that gets you in hot water. 

Minister Guilbeault resigned from the Liberal caucus on Wednesday, May 27th, to protest and draw attention to the stunning reversal of the Liberal government’s climate and energy plans. When Prime Minister Carney formed his first cabinet, Guilbeault was assigned another portfolio and left the Environment and Climate Change role he had held since 2021. Then the Prime Minister started rolling back the nation’s commitments to fight climate change. That move came as the Prime Minister sought less confrontation with the nation’s energy-producing provinces, Alberta chief among them. By resigning from the work he had joined the Liberal party to do, Gilbeault exposed some of the many discrepancies between the previous Liberal government taking climate change seriously, and one that believes the market will fix everything. The PM and the Premier had pipelines to build, and Guilbeault would only get in the way. 

Guilbeault was clear that the main reason he joined government was to move climate policy forward. This is something that Alberta – with its rash of catastrophic wildfires, floods, droughts, heat waves and crop failures – should understand as well as any jurisdiction in this rapidly warming country. 

Guilbeault followed in the footsteps of two equally driven ECCC Ministers — Catherine McKenna and Jonathan Wilkinson — delivering Canada’s comprehensive Emissions Reduction Plan, a sector-specific roadmap targeting 40 per cent emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero by 2050. Backed by over $12 billion in nature-based climate solutions, his tenure focused on protecting 30 per cent of Canada’s land and water in partnership with provinces, territories, and Indigenous peoples — growing protected ocean coverage from one to fifteen per cent and conserving more than half a million hectares of land.

On the world stage, Guilbeault was a consequential Canadian voice, successfully brokering the landmark Kunming-Montréal global biodiversity agreement and helping secure the historic Sharm el-Sheikh loss and damage fund at COP27 to support developing nations most vulnerable to climate change. At home, his office published Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations, draft regulations capping oil and gas pollution, and the country’s 2035 emissions targets — while also leading Canada’s delegation at COP29 and developing both a national climate adaptation strategy and a nature conservation plan.

Mr. Guilbeault’s successors, the Honourable Julie Debrusin in the environment portfolio, and former oil executive and industry cheerleader Tim Hodeson at Natural Resources Canada, have, in turn ingratiated themselves to Smith and the rag-tag band of separatists and ideologues that currently run Alberta. They have done this by agreeing to the weakest possible carbon pricing agreements with Alberta, in exchange for more crude oil pipelines that will make reaching our 2050 climate goals all but impossible. 

I don’t know if Steven Guilbeault is leaving government with any regrets. If I were in his shoes, my greatest remorse would be that Alberta still doesn’t see that in a world that is at least forty per cent of the way to a complete energy transition, and where climate change kills tens of thousands of people each year, enacting pragmatic programs to address these issues was in the best interest of the province. He was wrong.