How the Alberta MOU Violates Canada’s Climate Obligations
This post provides a summary of a much longer analysis, one version of which is available on both the Rideau Institute website, and the original on RI Senior Fellow Craig Martin’s Substack.
While there has been much discussion of the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (the MOU), there has been rather less analysis of whether it is consistent with Canada’s international law obligations.
There has been much debate about the new Memorandum of Understanding (the MOU) that the federal government and Alberta signed in December. As most readers will recall, it envisions a rapid expansion of Alberta’s production of bitumen from its oil sands fields, the development of a new pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast for export to Asia of the expanded oil production, and a massive expansion of electrical generation for data centers and new infrastructure. The agreement also provides for all of this to be facilitated by a streamlining of the climate and energy-related regulatory process, exempting Alberta from many of the current climate and energy policy regulations that would be implicated by the planned expansion.
Canada has both legal and moral obligations to do its fair share in responding to the climate change crisis….
While there has been much discussion of the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (the MOU), there has been rather less analysis of whether it is consistent with Canada’s international law obligations. Canada has both legal and moral obligations to do its fair share in responding to the climate change crisis—and understanding what these obligations are, and whether policies such as this new agreement violate them, should be of considerable importance to all Canadians.
Key Elements of the Canada-Alberta MOU
In a nutshell (as most Canadians will know), the federal government and Alberta signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (the MOU) that envisions a rapid expansion of Alberta’s production of bitumen from its oil sands fields, the development of a new pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast for export of the expanded oil production to Asia, and a massive expansion of electrical generation for data centers and new infrastructure. All of this is to be facilitated by a streamlining of the regulatory process, and exempting Alberta from current climate and energy policy regulations, including the carbon pricing standards under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (the GGPPA), and the federal Clean Energy Regulation enacted under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The plan assumes that its impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be offset by a massive carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project. The entire project is to be privately funded, and it envisions buy-in and involvement of the First Nations.
Canada’s Legal Obligations – The ICJ Decision
[T]here have been several groundbreaking decisions by international tribunals on the obligations of states regarding their response to the climate change crisis, culminating with the Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect to Climate Change from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) just last summer.
Critics, including some within the government itself, quickly condemned the project for making the achievement of Canada’s climate goals—particularly its ultimate long-term goal of attaining net-zero by 2050—all but impossible. But there has also been widespread support for the project as being a boon for the Canadian economy. Strangely, there has been little discussion of how the project relates to Canada’s legal obligations. Yet in just the last year, there have been several groundbreaking decisions by international tribunals on the obligations of states regarding their response to the climate change crisis, culminating with the Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect to Climate Change from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) just last summer.
The ICJ established that the states have a fundamental obligation, under both treaty and customary international law, not to harm the climate system. This obligation requires that states take increasingly ambitious action to reduce their net GHG emissions, to do their part in achieving the consensus goal of keeping the average global temperature increase to 1.5º Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is an obligation of conduct, which requires states to act with due diligence in setting and implementing the measures necessary to reduce their GHG emissions. In addition, states have obligations to cooperate with one another in this effort, and they have separate obligations under human rights law to prevent harm to the climate system, given that it is a precondition to the enjoyment of other fundamental rights.
The MOU…now more clearly violates Canada’s climate change obligations.
Canada’s climate plans submitted in accordance with the Paris Agreement, which committed Canada to be net-zero by 2050, were already deemed insufficient to fulfill Canada’s fair share of the reductions required to meet the global 1.5º C objectives. The MOU, however, now more clearly violates Canada’s climate change obligations. The expansion of bitumen extraction and processing will directly produce an increase in GHG emissions that cannot be completely mitigated by the CCUS project, even if the developing technology for that project is entirely successful. What is more, the expanded energy generation called for will also likely increase emissions. Finally, the relaxation of regulations and the exemptions afforded Alberta will weaken and undermine the Canadian climate change law and policy regime in ways that will further lead to a reduction in the rate at which GHG emissions are being reduced within Canada.
The adoption of such plans in and of itself constitutes a violation of the due diligence obligations identified by the ICJ. Far from increasing the ambitiousness of its plans to reduce GHG emissions, Canada is, with this MOU, implementing plans that will directly increase GHG emissions, weaken its climate change law and policy regime, and make it virtually impossible to meet its already insufficient targets.
There is real injustice in failing to do one’s part in resolving a problem that one has helped to cause, and which is causing harm to innocent people.
Some may think such obligations abstract and of little matter. But Canada is among the group of Western states that are responsible for creating the bulk of historic GHG emissions, and thus bear disproportionate responsibility for creating this existential crisis for humanity. The obligations identified by the ICJ are owed in large part to the states of the Global South, and the peoples of those states, which are highly vulnerable to the increasingly dire consequences of climate change, and which contributed almost nothing to the causes of this crisis. There is real injustice in failing to do one’s part in resolving a problem that one has helped to cause, and which is causing harm to innocent people.
Canada must do its fair share to help the world deal with the crisis.
Finally, Canada owes obligations, as a matter of human rights, to the people of Canada—both those currently alive but also those of future generations. We are now on a trajectory of hitting a temperature increase of 3.8º C by 2100, which will be catastrophic for human civilization. Canada must do its fair share to help the world deal with the crisis.
Our next post will examine Prime Minister Carney’s landmark speech at Davos, Switzerland on 20 January 2026; take stock of President Trump’s so-called Board of Peace for Gaza, and update on the increasingly dire situation in Ukraine.
Photo credit: Craig Martin – AI generated (Alberta oil sands).
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