With Canada making its economy cleaner and more competitive amid a global green revolution, the workers who’ll be most immediately impacted by that transition have weighed in. As NDP MP Charlie Angus writes, the clichés about Alberta oil patch workers clinging to oil at the expense of the planet are as unfair as they are inaccurate. And, as Angus and his Liberal colleagues agreed during their negotiations on the ‘just transition’, the label ‘just transition’ never did them justice.

Charlie Angus

In late March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world is dangerously close to its climate tipping point. The report was a “final warning” to global leaders. They said the window for action is rapidly closing and the world is facing a cascade of catastrophe if we push beyond the 1.5 degree red line. It is a bleak scenario, but for the first time in a long time, I have reason to hope. This is because we may have a crossed a more hopeful climate tipping point – that point at which when the economic and investment benefits of clean tech are so overwhelmingly obvious that it will drive a global shift away from fossil fuels.

The Biden administration has played a major role in bringing us to this crucial economic juncture. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been heralded as a significant weapon in the “clean energy arms race” to retool the global economy for the 21st century. The massive investments and support for clean tech have proven so bold that the Act first left other nations struggling to respond, then scrambling to catch up, which is great for the planet. In April, the Biden administration further raised the stakes with a proposed Environmental Protection Act update requiring that, by 2032, 67  percent of all new cars sold in America be electric vehicles (EV). Such a sudden and dramatic shift in the American auto market will have a huge impact on the bottom lines of fossil fuel investors. The writing is on the wall for the gasoline engine.

In the geopolitical realm, the United States and China are engaged in a very serious struggle for dominance in clean energy innovation. This competition will drive dramatic advancements in clean tech research. And Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has caused a major disruption in European fuel supply. Pundits assumed this would seriously hamper Europe’s green transition plans, but it appears to have done the opposite. In fact, the International Energy Agency has reported that energy investments in clean tech have intensified to the point that the world will hit “peak oil” (the point where oil production reaches its height and then begins to give way to other energy sources) as early as 2025. This is almost a decade sooner than previously anticipated.

So, where does Canada fit in? In March 2022, New Democrats and Liberals began negotiating the legislative basis for a just transition for workers in the energy sector. The need to put in place a credible plan for the just transition was part of the Supply and Confidence agreement where both parties agreed to work together on a series of shared priorities in exchange for stability for the minority government. I was sent in as the lead for the NDP team on the transition file. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting this to go well. The Liberal government has a dismal track record of over-promising and then failing to deliver on international climate commitments. Ever since Justin Trudeau made the “Canada is back” promise at COP 21 in Paris, his government has missed every single climate target they have set. Year in, year out, emissions from oil and gas continue to rise. As the federal environment commissioner reported in April, “the list of [climate action] failures continues to grow.”

Environmentalists and labour leaders were way ahead of us on this issue. They have been trying to find a way to bridge the seemingly impossible gap between workers and activists.

The challenge for the government is that following through on a just transition entails huge political risks. Canada is a petro state. The Trudeau government is weak in the West, where provincial politics are heavily leveraged, both economically and culturally, in the notion of a strong oil and gas industry. Tinkering with Big Oil’s dominance is fraught with political problems for the Liberals. And, New Democrats have our own political needle to thread. How is it possible to protect the interests of blue-collar workers while responding to the urgent demand for action from climate activists? The NDP have both constituencies in our political base. If we failed to deliver, it could also pose huge risks for us.

What I discovered in the lead-up to the negotiations was that key environmentalists and labour leaders were way ahead of us on this issue. They have been trying to find a way to bridge the seemingly impossible gap between workers and activists. It has meant rethinking the environment question. Until now, the focus on tackling the climate crisis has been about setting targets to diminish emissions without consideration of the huge economic implications of such actions. What if we refocus the discussion by prioritizing the tangible opportunities and benefits from an economy that is rooted in renewables?

Alberta energy workers are more than ready to take up the challenge. At a meeting with the Building Trades in Edmonton, a union rep from the oil patch summed it up: “You need to understand that our members build stuff. We are not committed to producing one kind of energy over another. If you want to build a clean-tech economy we have the skills to make it happen but we want to know that you are offering real jobs and not just slogans.”

And the slogan they dislike most of all is “just transition.” Implicit in the phrase is the idea that workers are being asked to transition from something that is certain – steady jobs in oil and gas – to a future that is more vague and precarious. Unless we could answer what the transition was going to lead to, then there was going to be pushback.

Tinkering with Big Oil’s dominance is fraught with political problems for the Liberals. And, New Democrats have our own political needle to thread. How is it possible to protect the interests of blue-collar workers while responding to the urgent demand for action from climate activists?.

I knew where they were coming from. Born in Timmins, I have represented the mining towns of northern Ontario for nearly 20 years. I have seen firsthand how the there is nothing “just” about how workers are treated when resource economies shut down. When a mine or plant is slated for closure in a one-industry town, there are always lots of promises to aid in diversification, economic development and retraining. It’s a great gig for consultants but the people of those small northern towns are always left holding the bag.

For example, after the iron mines closed in our region, the local high school (which had been mothballed) was reopened as a worker retraining centre. I stopped by one day to visit a friend and found 30 miners sitting in front of big, lunky computers playing solitaire. I asked my friend what was going on. He laughed resignedly and said, “We’re being retrained to be online entrepreneurs.” It’s an image that has always stayed with me.

In the early days of our negotiations with the Liberal government it seemed as if we were speaking two different languages. The government offered a vision of “just transition” that was rooted in talk about pension bridging for older workers, possible retraining options, an investment in a jobs centre. These were all important issues, but the NDP wanted to reframe the conversation on investing in an industrial job strategy. We were trying to push the government to recognize that the only way to meet our global climate commitments was by investing in hydrogen, geothermal, EV battery technology. Calgary Economic Development has pegged the opportunity from government investment in clean tech as promising 170,000 new jobs in Alberta alone.

The breakthrough moment came during a meeting with Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, when they assured us how important the just transition file was to the government. Frustrated, I responded bluntly, “Let’s be frank. I hate the term just transition. It’s a slogan that just pisses the workers off.” O’Regan dropped his guard and responded, “Yeah, I hate that phrase too.” Having put aside the troubling slogan (on which our negotiations were supposedly based), we began to discuss brass tacks. I pushed the government to meet with union leaders in the west who, up until then, had been left out of the conversation. Without the nod from western workers, this process wasn’t going to get off the ground.

Frustrated, I responded bluntly, ‘Let’s be frank I hate the term just transition. It’s a slogan that just pisses the workers off.’ O’Regan dropped his guard and responded, ‘Yeah, I hate that phrase too.’

Soon after, Wilkinson, O’Regan and Deputy Prime Minister Freedland began flying out to Alberta to meet with the Alberta Federation of Labour and their affiliates to hear their views on a new energy future. And so began the transition from the just transition to putting a real plan on the table.

We saw the first signs of this shift in the fall economic statement when the government declared its intention to take a more activist approach to ensuring Canada is a competitor in the global race for clean tech. Budget 2023 went further with upwards of $85 billion in promised tax credits that could play a huge role in kickstarting a clean-tech revolution in Canada.

If you look at Budget 2023, there is no mention of “just transition”. The focus is on creating “sustainable jobs.” The fact that the tax credits are tied to obligations for well-paying jobs and support for apprenticeships shows that the government is learning lessons from its discussions with energy, auto and industrial workers.

So, where do we go from here? The reality is that budgets often over-promise and then fail to get the money out the door. This remains a huge risk with the “sustainable jobs” budget of 2023. Another concern is the fact that the government still needs to bring forward the legislative framework to make the transition a reality that will deliver for workers and communities.

The government has promised to establish a Sustainable Jobs Secretariat as well as a Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council. What does this mean for workers on the rigs? Who do these organizations report to? What kind of mandate do they have? If such commitments aren’t locked in through legislation, good luck to the politician who thinks they can sell it in the union halls of Windsor or Fort Mac.

Negotiations between the Liberals and New Democrats are ongoing but we have a long way to go and the clock is ticking. There is a narrow window in the life cycle of a minority parliament to make this happen.

The need for urgency is evident. This is not simply about the urgency of the dire warnings of the IPCC or the often short shelf- lives of minority governments. Canada is facing intense economic pressure not to be left behind in the global race that is taking place for clean tech and EV technology. But in the bigger picture, I am hopeful that 2023 might be the moment when the world has crossed the economic tipping point to make a more liveable planet a distinct possibility. It would be great to be able to say that Canada did its part. 

Charlie Angus has been the NDP Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay since 2004. He is the NDP critic for Natural Resources, frontman for the Grievous Angels, and a regular Policy contributor. His latest book is Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower.