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Seven hundred and ninety-nine days. That’s how long it took for the Alberta government to respond to a simple request for information. In the summer of 2020, I was trying to figure out what prompted the Alberta Energy Regulator to unilaterally suspend dozens of environmental and economic rules imposed on oil and gas companies — without any public consultations or formal review. Normally, there’s a paper trail for any major regulatory decision. At least, there should be a paper trail for how decisions are made in a country that — according to industry — has the “most stringent environmental regulations in the world.” When governments adopt new rules and laws in Canada, the process is supposed to be transparent, so that members of the public can participate. But in this case, many decisions were mysteriously made behind closed doors. So I was intrigued when an oil company worker told me that their colleagues from other fossil fuel companies were sitting on a joint committee with the government to make these decisions. This was not common knowledge. And I had never heard of such an organized arrangement between industry and government to change policy, done in private without any public […]
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