Gary Mar and Colleen Collins

Published in The Calgary Herald

March 28, 2025

Last week, Premier Danielle Smith released a list of requirements for our future prime minister to reset relations with the province and get Canada on track to thrive as a nation.

Basically, the federal government should respect the Constitution, back off from overreach on provincial jurisdiction and remove artificial barriers to economic growth (including the northwest coast tanker ban, emissions caps and Impact Assessment Act).

Only the request for pre-approved corridors is new. The rest are long-standing deterrents to successful co-operative federalism — the Supreme Court’s answer to ongoing jurisdiction battles and investment destroying uncertainty where jurisdiction is shared or overlaps.

It’s early days, but if candidates decide to lay out their vision for federal-provincial relations there is no shortage of examples of what does and does not work.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper’s “open federalism” plan was a coherent vision that recognized jurisdiction as well as provincial diversity. While not perfect, there was progress — such as equal per-capita funding for major federal cost-shared programs. Provinces did not challenge the inclusion of mines in the 2012 Environmental Assessment Act, but they probably should have.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau had no stated approach, but his words and legislation preamble often recognized provincial jurisdiction and diversity, however, the actions of his government clearly did not. The Trudeau era has been fraught with court challenges, backtracking, endless consultation without accommodation and flight of capital to other jurisdictions, all while failing to achieve its “unicorn and rainbows” objectives. One case in point (among many) is the Clean Electricity Standard.

Lost in the shadows of Trump’s tariff threat and annexation musings, and Trudeau’s resignation with the ensuing leadership scramble in mid-December, then-federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault announced that the government backed down on its 2035 deadline for net-zero emissions for Canada’s electricity grid. After nearly three years of consultations and several drafts of federal clean electricity standards, they finally recognized the reality of what provinces and experts have been telling them.

Four provinces have repeatedly told the feds that a 2035 deadline was impossible, and a threat to the reliability and affordability of electricity in these provinces and, as a consequence, their economic performance. It is a very big deal for provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that have built their systems around inexpensive and plentiful natural gas and coal.

So why aren’t these provinces celebrating the “win”? Because it’s not a win.

The federal government finally recognized it needed to backtrack but it continues to miss the point that the standard is unconstitutional at its core and, because of that, the government lacks the competence to regulate a sector outside its responsibilities. To take the next step — if they want to co-operate with the provinces on emissions reduction — vacating the playing field would go a long way toward resetting the relationship.

Why did the provinces know that the 2035 target wouldn’t work while the federal government did not? Because the provinces regulate and, in some cases operate, the electricity systems in their provinces. They know their systems best.

And those systems differ significantly across provinces, as the Canada West Foundation has reported. And why is that? Because the resources available to produce electricity differ and because under the rules of the game, as set out in Canada’s Constitution, electricity generation and intra-provincial transmission are provincial responsibilities.

It’s time for the federal government to get out of provincial kitchens — on impact assessment, electricity, methane, emission caps, farm practices, plastics, etc. — and allow the provinces to manage the soup.

Unilateral regulation is not co-operation. Provinces can produce national outcomes by working with each other and with the federal government.

As the electricity regulations have demonstrated yet again, “If you want to go fast, go alone: if you want to go far, go together.”

Gary Mar is CEO and Colleen Collins is a Senior Fellow at the Canada West Foundation.