The UCP Is Killing a Key Part of Alberta’s Environmental Protection

For more than 20 years, Alberta has relied on a network of consensus-based advisory organizations to help shape environmental policy on water and air quality, land stewardship and watershed management.

Over the past six months, that system has been quietly dismantled.

Biologist Jay White was the longest-sitting member on the board of the Alberta Water Council, one of several long-standing environmental organizations that was axed this year. He says the string of cuts is a blow that sets environmental decision-making in the province back years.

“Consensus decision-making is the gold standard for environmental resource management, and that’s being abandoned here,” said White. “Walking away from this model is absolutely a step backwards.”

The Clean Air Strategic Alliance was established in 1994, when the Progressive Conservative government under Ralph Klein saw the need for a multi-stakeholder forum to manage air quality after meeting with environmental partners. The Alberta Water Council followed nine years later, built using the same model.

In February, both councils were ordered to wind down operations within 90 days.

The cuts also fit within a broader series of changes to Alberta’s environmental governance since the United Conservative Party took office in 2019. Stand-alone offices for climate change and environmental monitoring were eliminated soon after the government took office.

But in the past six months, the pace of dismantling has accelerated. Alongside Clean Air Strategic Alliance and the Alberta Water Council, a long-standing watershed resiliency grant program was terminated, and the Land Stewardship Centre, which facilitated grants and provided ecological resources for landowners, was dissolved.

Ann Baran got involved with the Clean Air Strategic Alliance in the 1990s. A longtime local advocate in her home of Lethbridge County, she was invited by the Southern Alberta Group for the Environment to represent them on an alliance project concerned with managing emissions from confined cattle feeding operations.

At her first meeting, she found the prospect that the various partners around the table could find consensus dubious at best.

“I thought, Good grief, you think you're gonna get all these people to agree on a path forward?”

‘We were all equal partners’

At a meeting of either the Clean Air Strategic Alliance or the Alberta Water Council, the seats around the table would be occupied by an unlikely bunch: NGOs, such as the Alberta Lake Management Society; legal experts; regional watershed protection councils; municipal officials; and industry representatives from mining, agricultural, oil and gas and petrochemical groups. First Nations representatives were invited to participate. And, always, a representative from the Alberta government.

“I just couldn't understand how this could ever work. But, you know, it did.”

Baran stayed on the board for the next 30 years. After years of advocating at the local level, discovering the Clean Air Strategic Alliance was a revelation.

“At the CASA table, we were all equal partners. Our opinions were as respected as industry or government. Some of your ideas or concerns are taken into consideration. Maybe not all the time; at least you’re there. If you’re there and you express your opinions, there's a value to that.”

Both groups achieved a number of marquee successes over the last 30 years.

The Clean Air Strategic Alliance was responsible for developing the regulations for flaring and venting in the oilsands. It also produced a standard for allowable emissions for coal plants adapted to burn natural gas, achieving consensus within six months.

The water council succeeded in getting diverse sectors to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 30 per cent within three years. More recently, it ran a water shortage simulation about five years ago that formed the basis for the actual emergency drought response measures enacted in 2023.

It took years to reach that level of efficiency. Several longtime members describe the early days of either council as being paralyzed by conflict. But as relationships between sectors developed, the organizations earned the trust of their participants.

“You develop relationships with the other industry people and with government, and you learn to work together. You learn to see things from their eyes, too,” said Baran.

A consensus-based decision-making model

Jeff Birchall is a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Alberta. He studies climate change decision-making and the factors that constrain productive action. He says organizations like these performed a key democratic function by bringing experts, decision-makers and community stakeholders into direct contact.

“Community buy-in gets political will. From political will, you get a mandate within the municipality to actually do something. You get this cycle.”

Dissolving groups like these removes a crucial link in the chain, he says. Without those connections, that cycle breaks down.

Both organizations used a consensus-based decision-making model, relying on long-standing trust to bring members to the table and push them toward compromise. Often, that process produced agreement.

When it didn’t, the organizations still released public reports outlining recommendations and clearly identifying areas of disagreement.

Stakeholders who withheld consensus would have to publicly explain why.

Birchall says that transparency helped defuse the polarization that often surrounds environmental policy.

“There’s an argument that’s been developed that if you are for doing something about climate change, you therefore are against the oil and gas industry. In this province in particular, the provincial government pits them against each other.”

But long before the plug was pulled, signs that the culture was moving away from consensus were beginning to show.

Clear goalposts weakened to loose guidelines

David Spink worked for the provincial government for 26 years. He bore witness to the creation of the two councils and frequently sat on the Clean Air Strategic Alliance board as the government representative, first in his role as director of air and water approvals and then as director of environmental science and policy.

Spink says that when he sat on the council, he had the full support of then-environment minister Lorne Taylor to use feedback from the council to determine criteria for policy.

But over time, he says, the directive from government began to lack direction and specifics. Clear goalposts weakened to loose guidelines.

Groups like the Clean Air Strategic Alliance and the Alberta Water Council were ideal vehicles for improvement, Spink says. But the appetite for advancement has waned.

The current conservation culture among decision-makers, he says, is to preserve the status quo.

“Industry has changed. They now to some extent feel they’ve got the bit in their teeth,” Spink said. “Why would we do something if the government is not going to make us do it? If all we have to do is push back a little?”

As the expectations for industry slackened, or at least stagnated, the need for multi-stakeholder forums like these diminished.

While the advice of experts is still sought by government in multi-stakeholder meetings with industry, the shape of those meetings has changed. Rather than using the established and open channels of the Clean Air Strategic Alliance and the Alberta Water Council, the province will convene issue-specific advisory committees and pick the participants. Often, experts involved are asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Bill Donahue was formerly chief of environmental monitoring for the Alberta government. He says both councils were major inputs to policy and regulation setting, as well as forces driving public engagement.

“At the same time, they've been a window into what the government's doing, and then, also, potential critics.”

Now a private environmental consultant, Donahue co-authored a report last year that argued provincial regulations were insufficient to prevent contamination downstream of former coal mines. He sees these cuts as part of a pattern that is working to reduce transparency.

“This is the next step in what I think is a general opposition to environmental protection, and also an undermining of independent oversight and public input into environmental decision-making.”

Although the termination of the councils came as a surprise, further cuts to groups funded by the Environment Ministry were not unexpected.

Alberta ‘has walked away from a model that worked’

When Danielle Smith was elected premier in 2023, her government’s first budget projected drastic cuts to the Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas. The 2023 fiscal plan targeted a slash to the department’s operating expenses of just over 30 per cent by 2025-26.

Subsequent budgets reduced the cuts. But when the Alberta government unveiled its $9.4-billion deficit budget this year, the executive leadership of the two councils was not surprised to receive calls saying they were being disbanded.

The Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas did not respond to a request for comment from The Tyee. In previous statements to media, Environment Minister Grant Hunter attributed the cuts to the need to cut spending.

The total cost of operating both councils was $1 million annually. The majority of the work they generated was produced by experts who volunteered their time.

Hunter also assured the public that consultation with the necessary stakeholder groups would continue and pointed to the regional watershed councils as a replacement source of input. But council members say those regional councils lack the institutional memory, expertise and capacity to take on provincewide priority-setting functions.

The 2026 budget had other casualties, including the government-run watershed resiliency and restoration program.

Since 2014, the province has invested $55 million in the program, which enabled 200 projects facilitated by 90 different organizations on green infrastructure projects focused on improving flood and drought resilience and watershed health.

The Oldman Watershed Council, one of the 11 regional bodies referred to by Hunter, commissioned a study that estimated the program yielded water supply and flood and storm hazard reduction benefits worth $88 million. The total environmental benefits were projected as worth up to $253 million per year. The last round of program funding was announced in April.

White is concerned that the cuts are coming at a time when Alberta is facing increasing drought risk, water scarcity, climate uncertainty and competing demands on natural resources.

“In dismantling the water council, the province has walked away from a model that worked,” said White. “We were credible, neutral and a very respected voice on water in Alberta. And that credibility meant that when we came up with a consensus decision, that advice carried weight, even when it wasn’t politically convenient.”

He says he’s sure the loss of the groups will be felt in the long term. But by then, it may be too late to reinstate what’s been lost.

“When water conflicts intensify, as they inevitably will, the absence of this forum will be felt,” said White.

“I believe the province will regret it. Not politically, but practically. This will be missed, and if not by this government, certainly in governments that care about the environment in the future.”