![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a8878ef484e5e990a701ef0fd2734de6.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nOttawa and Alberta: Same old, same old.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are fighting with each other about who owns the land, who owns the rights to the water, which group has precedence over that group,\u201d says Grant Hunter, Alberta\u2019s minister of environment and protected areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeanwhile, we\u2019re getting our butts kicked by the Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter has only held the portfolio since January, taking over after Rebecca Schulz announced she\u2019d be stepping away from politics.<\/p>\n
He inherited a file scarred by years of trench warfare with Ottawa \u2014 most notably with former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, the ex-Greenpeace activist who seemed determined to throttle Alberta\u2019s oil and gas sector. Prime Minister Mark Carney eventually moved Guilbeault aside. His successor, Toronto Liberal Julie Dabrusin, rolled out Ottawa\u2019s 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\u2019s land and water by 2030).<\/p>\n
Hunter\u2019s first notice came\u00a0via a\u00a0brief text from Dabrusin: \u201cWe\u2019re excited about rolling out the 30-by-30 plan and look forward to your feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was it. No prior consultation with Alberta. No recognition of provincial jurisdiction over land and resource management.\u00a0Hunter\u2019s response was swift and pointed. On April 7 he issued a blunt public statement that laid bare the core differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cFederal reporting measures do not capture the full picture,\u201d it reads, \u201cfocusing on narrow definitions of protected land while excluding broader actively managed landscapes and only recognizing lands permanently dedicated to biodiversity conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alberta, Hunter argues, already surpasses the spirit \u2014 and the reality \u2014 of 30-by-30 under a practical metric. Nearly 60 per cent of the province \u2014 roughly 40 million hectares of Crown land \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
These are not sterilized preserves; they are living, productive lands cared for by the people who actually live on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty stringent what they\u2019re putting forward,\u201d Hunter says, \u201cfor them not to recognize our farmers and ranchers, who have been stewards of the land \u2014 probably the best stewards you\u2019ll ever find.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before taking on the environment portfolio, Hunter built a national reputation as Alberta\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
That experience shapes his current warning: Ottawa\u2019s rigid, one-size-fits-all approach risks sterilizing Alberta\u2019s ability to respond to critical mineral demands, energy needs, or economic shocks. And it\u2019s not as if Canada has a reputation for lean governance: A headline in this week\u2019s Financial Times of London blares, \u201cCanada\u2019s Red Tape Is Worse Than Trump Tariffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Hunter describes his working relationship with Dabrusin as \u201cvery pleasant, very professional.\u201d Agreements on methane equivalency and impact assessments have been signed. Real progress, he says, happens when Ottawa treats provinces as equal partners.<\/p>\n
The same clear-eyed pragmatism applies to one of Alberta\u2019s thorniest environmental liabilities: oilsands tailings ponds. These vast engineered reservoirs hold 1.4 trillion litres of process-affected water and fine tailings \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 the same approach allowed in every other mining sector in Canada. Hunter sighs audibly when the topic arises. \u201cIf we were to apply those recommendations, you would find that we could mitigate this liability that\u2019s on the books right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The frustration is clear: Fifty years of accumulation cannot be solved with another 50 years of delay. \u201cIt is the only industry where they will not allow treat and release,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is hypocritical.\u201d Without a path forward, operators like Suncor face the perverse incentive of building yet more ponds \u2014 exactly what no one wants.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Federal Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Nature Julie Dabrusin.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 forged in Utah\u2019s arid Salt Lake Valley where careful allocation, long-term thinking and community cooperation are matters of both religious doctrine and practical survival.<\/p>\n
That heritage runs particularly strong in southern Alberta,\u00a0where 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.<\/p>\n
Yet Hunter\u2019s red-tape-cutting instinct is now being tested on the water file itself. Recent amendments to Alberta\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s mandate is all about sustaining balance. He knows Alberta cannot conserve its way into prosperity, nor\u00a0can it develop without addressing real environmental legacies.<\/p>\n
And, more than most government files, Hunter\u2019s mandate overlaps at most every juncture with the federal government. \u201cIt\u2019s not a mom and dad versus the children relationship,\u201d between Ottawa and Alberta, Hunter asserts. \u201cIt is an equal co-partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alberta stands ready to be Canada\u2019s economic engine \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
The Americans are not waiting; neither should we.<\/p>\n
National Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ottawa and Alberta: Same old, same old. \u201cWe are fighting with each other about who owns the land,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[164,2853,3256,111,13895,61,8820,13894],"class_list":{"0":"post-30058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mark-carney","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-grant-hunter","10":"tag-julie-dabrusin","11":"tag-mark-carney","12":"tag-minister-of-environment","13":"tag-ottawa","14":"tag-southern-alberta","15":"tag-steven-guilbeault"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}