Stephen Legault, Senior Manager for Alberta Energy Transition at Environmental Defence Canada, response to Premier Danielle Smith’s 2026 budget
Canmore | Traditional territories of the Treaty 7 Nations – We are disappointed to see that Premier Smith’s budget fails to address and plan for the seismic shift in global energy markets. The budget reads like a document written in 1976, not 2026. While acknowledging the dire challenges that come with relying on oil and gas prices, the Premier continues to focus the province’s economic attention on revenue sources that rise and fall with global commodity prices, including the daydream of doubling oil exports. This is increasingly problematic given that oil prices are likely headed into a period of structural decline as the energy transition gains steam.
Even as companies like Enbridge tell the Premier that a new pipeline involves too much financial risk, the fantasy of another bitumen pipeline is one of the pillars of today’s provincial budget. The budget treats oil and gas as if it will form the backbone of the Alberta economy in perpetuity when the global market for this commodity is forecasted to plateau before 2030.
What will Alberta do when China, India, and other markets for our crude oil begin to decline? The provincial government should be focused on addressing this question, but instead, successive provincial budgets have failed to address and plan for a seismic shift in energy markets worldwide.
The cost of inaction on climate change and the energy transition could damage unprepared Western economies, and yet Alberta fails to invest in both proactive, renewable energy, as well as measures needed to ensure Alberta can weather the storm of climate change-related disasters.
The province of Alberta must respond to these challenges with proactive measures. Environmental Defence is calling on the province to:
- Strike a Revenue Diversification Panel – similar to the Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances, to review a wide range of opportunities to create new revenue streams, including from the massive international market for renewable energy.
- Reverse the policy changes that crippled the renewable energy development, curtailing 99 per cent of the investment expected to advance wind and solar power, and battery storage technology in Alberta.
- Abandon plans to develop bitumen pipelines to the BC coast, the Canadian east coast, Hudson’s Bay and to US refineries and invest in long-term growth sectors instead.
A complete set of recommendations for Alberta’s new economic and energy economy can be found in Environmental Defence’s recent report titled New Frontiers, available for download here.
ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Alex Ross, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca
