Al Duerr, For The Calgary Herald
Published Dec 08, 2023 • Last updated Dec 08, 2023
I am writing this from COP28, which I am attending as part of the Alberta and Canadian delegation. Watching some of the media messaging back home, I felt the need to address why Alberta has such a large delegation attending COP28 led by Premier Smith and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz. The delegation includes key government representatives along with academic, industry, agricultural, Indigenous and NGO stakeholders.
While the Alberta delegation is not part of the COP28 negotiations, everyone here saw value in contributing their time and resources to represent all that Alberta and Canada can offer the world. With an estimated 97,000 people attending this COP, we were not alone in recognizing the value of participating.
While I understand why some may question the value of our attendance, I want to shed some light on why it is critically important that Alberta voices from all sectors be heard at international conferences like COP28.
Unfortunately, the sad truth is that we cannot rely on others to tell our story. While Canada earned a reputation in the second half of the 20th century that far outweighed our size as a country, that is no longer the case.
Canada’s relevance has slowly decayed from decades of underfunding Canada’s diplomatic and trade commissioner service. Politicians of every stripe have been afraid of the optics of spending money in protecting our interests or promoting our industries; or, they just didn’t understand the importance of being in front of global decision makers and actively supporting Canadian interests in key international markets.
Provincial governments followed suit. The just-released senate review of our diplomatic corps and our trade commissioner services underscores this, highlighting chronic underfunding and lack of political leadership in supporting Canadian interests abroad, because the optics of spending money abroad didn’t fit with our increasing populist rhetoric.
Prior to my time in local government, I was active in taking Alberta environmental technologies in water and wastewater treatment into international markets, primarily in developing countries.
After returning to the private sector, I have been active in taking Alberta-developed environmental technologies — now in innovative energy efficiency and methane emissions reduction technologies, and services developed in Alberta — into international markets. I can say with absolute confidence that we have in Alberta companies incubated in the province’s energy sector that have global-leading technologies that the world needs.
This incubation of advanced environmental technologies was enabled by the early and continued leadership by successive Alberta governments through leading policy, regulation, and program delivery.
To illustrate this point, I attended the largest energy conference in the Middle East two months ago, and participated in a private, invitation-only CEO roundtable focusing on methane emission reduction. Around the table we had representatives of international environmental and industry associations, some of the largest engineering and service companies in the world, and major oil and gas producers.
I overviewed Alberta’s history, including some of the first flaring regulations in the world, the first carbon market in North America based on a large emitters tax, and focused government programs delivering real verifiable carbon reductions.
When I finished, I said that I believed that Alberta probably had one of the strongest methane emission track records in the world, but as a good Canadian, I asked to be corrected if others felt I overstated my case. Everyone agreed that I was correct.
More importantly, just yesterday I was told by a roundtable participant, who is the methane sector director of a very large international consulting group, that she now uses the Alberta example to demonstrate how real action on methane emissions reduction is possible.
Participating in that roundtable — and highlighting Alberta’s track record of action over ambition in this critical environmental area — had an impact far beyond the group I spoke to. Now Alberta is being used through an international network as an example of leadership on methane emissions reduction.
While in Canada some would have us believe that Alberta is an environmental laggard, nothing could be further from the truth.
We as Albertans must be the ones to reach out to tell our story to international audiences if we want to make a real difference on the environmental front.
Knowing the political risk that they took, I commend Premier Smith and Minister Schulz for leading an outstanding and diverse Alberta delegation. Our voices and important messages were amplified many times over by their participation and hard work in often challenging conditions. I was proud to be a small part of the outstanding Team Alberta delegation they led.