Ottawa and Alberta: Same old, same old.
“We are fighting with each other about who owns the land, who owns the rights to the water, which group has precedence over that group,” says Grant Hunter, Alberta’s minister of environment and protected areas.
“Meanwhile, we’re getting our butts kicked by the Americans.”
Hunter has only held the portfolio since January, taking over after Rebecca Schulz announced she’d be stepping away from politics.
He inherited a file scarred by years of trench warfare with Ottawa — most notably with former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, the ex-Greenpeace activist who seemed determined to throttle Alberta’s oil and gas sector. Prime Minister Mark Carney eventually moved Guilbeault aside. His successor, Toronto Liberal Julie Dabrusin, rolled out Ottawa’s glossy new Nature Strategy in late March: $3.8 billion to meet the federal 30-by-30 conservation target (which would protect 30 per cent of Canada’s land and water by 2030).
Hunter’s first notice came via a brief text from Dabrusin: “We’re excited about rolling out the 30-by-30 plan and look forward to your feedback.”
That was it. No prior consultation with Alberta. No recognition of provincial jurisdiction over land and resource management. Hunter’s response was swift and pointed. On April 7 he issued a blunt public statement that laid bare the core differences.
“Federal reporting measures do not capture the full picture,” it reads, “focusing on narrow definitions of protected land while excluding broader actively managed landscapes and only recognizing lands permanently dedicated to biodiversity conservation.”
Alberta, Hunter argues, already surpasses the spirit — and the reality — of 30-by-30 under a practical metric. Nearly 60 per cent of the province — roughly 40 million hectares of Crown land — is actively managed and conserved. Within that total, 16 per cent is in parks and conservation areas, 15 per cent in the Rockies and foothills, and about four per cent consists of working landscapes such as low-impact cattle grazing leases.
These are not sterilized preserves; they are living, productive lands cared for by the people who actually live on them.
“It’s pretty stringent what they’re putting forward,” Hunter says, “for them not to recognize our farmers and ranchers, who have been stewards of the land — probably the best stewards you’ll ever find.”
Before taking on the environment portfolio, Hunter built a national reputation as Alberta’s first associate minister of red tape reduction. When he started in 2019, the province earned failing grades from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. By 2021, Alberta had its first-ever A grade.
That experience shapes his current warning: Ottawa’s rigid, one-size-fits-all approach risks sterilizing Alberta’s ability to respond to critical mineral demands, energy needs, or economic shocks. And it’s not as if Canada has a reputation for lean governance: A headline in this week’s Financial Times of London blares, “Canada’s Red Tape Is Worse Than Trump Tariffs.”
Yet Hunter describes his working relationship with Dabrusin as “very pleasant, very professional.” Agreements on methane equivalency and impact assessments have been signed. Real progress, he says, happens when Ottawa treats provinces as equal partners.
The same clear-eyed pragmatism applies to one of Alberta’s thorniest environmental liabilities: oilsands tailings ponds. These vast engineered reservoirs hold 1.4 trillion litres of process-affected water and fine tailings — an industrial legacy spanning decades. Industry recycles the vast majority of its process water, but the inventory of fluid tailings and mine water remains massive.
Last year, the Oil Sands Mine Water Steering Committee, chaired by Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo MLA Tany Yao, delivered nine substantive recommendations. Chief among them: develop science-based standards for treating and releasing cleaned water — the same approach allowed in every other mining sector in Canada. Hunter sighs audibly when the topic arises. “If we were to apply those recommendations, you would find that we could mitigate this liability that’s on the books right now.”
The frustration is clear: Fifty years of accumulation cannot be solved with another 50 years of delay. “It is the only industry where they will not allow treat and release,” he says. “That is hypocritical.” Without a path forward, operators like Suncor face the perverse incentive of building yet more ponds — exactly what no one wants.
Federal Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Nature Julie Dabrusin.
Hunter brings more than policy chops to this file. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he comes from a faith tradition with deep knowledge of water stewardship — forged in Utah’s arid Salt Lake Valley where careful allocation, long-term thinking and community cooperation are matters of both religious doctrine and practical survival.
That heritage runs particularly strong in southern Alberta, where Hunter represents the Taber-Warner riding. Beginning in the late 19th century, Mormon pioneers fled persecution in the United States and established Cardston, Alta. Experienced irrigators, they constructed canals diverting water from the St. Mary River and other waterways to transform parched grasslands into productive farmland.
Yet Hunter’s red-tape-cutting instinct is now being tested on the water file itself. Recent amendments to Alberta’s Water Act have been controversial: The minister can now unilaterally approve lower-risk inter-basin water transfers (an unusual step in a province that has historically treated major watersheds as distinct) and funding was pulled from the Alberta Water Council, a forum established in 2004 where industry, NGOs, Indigenous groups and scientists could hash out thorny issues like drought, wetlands and water reuse. The government says it will continue robust engagement through direct consultations, roundtables and local watershed groups.
From expanding irrigation for agri-food processing, to managing eastern slopes water risks associated with coal mining, to converting Kananaskis tourism sites for year-round use, Hunter’s mandate is all about sustaining balance. He knows Alberta cannot conserve its way into prosperity, nor can it develop without addressing real environmental legacies.
And, more than most government files, Hunter’s mandate overlaps at most every juncture with the federal government. “It’s not a mom and dad versus the children relationship,” between Ottawa and Alberta, Hunter asserts. “It is an equal co-partnership.”
Alberta stands ready to be Canada’s economic engine — producing energy responsibly, reclaiming land thoughtfully, feeding the nation, and stewarding water resources and vast working landscapes. What Hunter wants from Ottawa is not more top-down edicts, but the regulatory space and partnership to do what Albertans have always done best: deliver results on the ground.
The Americans are not waiting; neither should we.
National Post