It’s fascinating, all the same. After several weeks of wildfires of historic violence in Alberta, thousands of people have had to be evacuated, the skies are still covered in smoke and the air quality is poor in most of the province. Yet not only were the May 29 provincial elections not canceled, but the environment did not even emerge as an important campaign issue.
The race is between two party leaders who, for their own reasons, seek to avoid talking about climate change. On the one hand, outgoing Premier Danielle Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party of Alberta, is still haunted by climate-skeptical statements from her early years in politics. She has since sought to reposition her discourse on the issue.
The Alberta Conservatives are sort of following the evolution of the oil industry’s public relations strategies. After having minimized climate change and its impacts for a long time, we have recently discovered an overwhelming technological optimism. It is now believed that through carbon capture and burial (financed with public funds, whenever possible), we could radically reduce the environmental impact of oil extraction and move towards a zero economy. emission without upsetting his lifestyle too much.
Forest fires stronger and more frequent than ever are of course a consequence of climate change. Moreover, a study published last week in theEnvironmental Research Letters showed that 37% of the forest area burned in western Canada and the United States between 1986 and 2021 was attributable to the activities of 88 oil and cement companies in the region. But talking too much about this study, or the general link between forest fires and greenhouse gas emissions, would undermine the optimism (bordering on denial) on which the local economic model continues to rest.
On the other hand, Rachel Notley, leader of the Alberta NDP and premier of the province from 2015 to 2019, also has no interest in drawing voters’ attention to the climate emergency. It’s because New Democrats in Alberta have distanced themselves from the positions of the federal party for several years now, especially on environmental issues. On the Transmountain Pipeline, for example, Mme Notley had previously criticized Jagmeet Singh for his opposition to the project, accusing him of being insensitive to the reality of workers in this sector of activity.
In the province, just about everyone is only one degree separate from someone who makes a living in the oil fields. The anxiety around the energy transition is therefore real. It is cynically fueled by economic actors whose interests lie in the status quo, yes, but it is real. And Ottawa’s remoteness from the reality of the Prairies — especially when the Liberals govern with only a handful of elected officials from the region — is just as real.
This remoteness has already translated into policies that are ill-suited to the lives of people in the province. And, of course, provincial and federal conservative movements use this memory and a certain legitimate distrust of the country’s political elites to mobilize their bases against the political proposals that emanate from them, such as the carbon tax.
In this context, Danielle Smith and her supporters are already taking the opportunity to portray Rachel Notley as a “radical” who wants to destroy the Alberta economy. To regain power in Alberta, the New Democrats must therefore constantly prove, and reprove, that they are Albertans first, and insist on the ideological distance that separates them from the federal party. To win the pivotal constituencies, mostly concentrated in the Calgary area, the leader seeks to avoid the issue of the environment and instead campaigns on less… regionally specific themes, such as the rising cost of living or the state of the health system.
The result is somewhat surreal. Shortly after the election was called, it felt like the campaign, with the partisan attacks that always accompany it, had been greatly slowed by the wildfire emergency. Faced with the crisis, Mr.me Smith as Mme Notley aspired to be reassuring, responsible, in short, prime ministers. They sought to show the face of a united province in the face of the “tragedy”, before resuming the campaign, taking care to make it focus on something else. Except that a tragedy, by definition, is inevitable. And that climate change is preventable with political will.
The question of climate adaptation and the state response to forest fires is also removed from the debate. However, we know that the United Conservative Party’s cuts to forest fire services have greatly weakened the province’s capacities. But for government incompetence on fire management to become the subject of heated political debate (!), political opponents would have to want to highlight the climate emergency.
The result ? As images of their orange skies travel around the world, one gets the feeling that Alberta politicians talk about it as if it were a test inflicted by wrathful gods who came to test the human race, its resilience, its courage and his instinct for solidarity. A bit like we were talking about the ice storm in Quebec in 1998, moreover, at a time when the depoliticization of environmental disasters was still a matter of hegemonic “common sense”.
Anthropologist, Emilie Nicolas is a columnist at Duty and to Release. She hosts the podcast Detours for Canadaland.