A group of rural landowners is taking the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to court for collecting only a fraction of the funds from industry needed to clean up orphan wells.

The AER set its orphan well levy at $154.56 million for this year — a 7% increase from the previous year. But the figure still falls far short of the $1.66 billion in closure costs estimated by the Orphan Well Association, the industry-funded organization that assumes liability for insolvent companies’ non-producing wells.

Susanna Calabrese, a lawyer with environmental law charity Ecojustice, announced the application for judicial review at a Tuesday news conference in Calgary alongside landowners Mark Dorin, Bill Heidecker, Teresa Patry and Dwight Popowich.

They’re asking the Court of King’s Bench to order the AER to recalculate the levy, in the application’s words, “to sufficiently cover the closure work that needs to happen each year to protect the health and safety of Albertans.”

Regular Orchard readers will likely be familiar with Calabrese and Popowich for their efforts to address the alleged conflicts of interests of oil and gas industry consultant, advisor to Premier Danielle Smith and AER board member David Yager through the province’s ethics commissioner and the AER’s internal mechanisms.

Dorin and Heidecker represent the Polluter Pay Federation and Alberta Surface Rights Federation, respectively, which are listed as co-applicants alongside Ecojustice, Patry and Popowich.

The group of landowners say they attempted to address the orphan well levy’s 87% funding shortfall through the AER internally, but the regulator refused to hear the case.

This time, they’re taking the AER to court, arguing that the shortfall is a violation of the Oil and Gas Conservation Act subsection 73(2), which mandates the levy “be sufficient to cover” this year and previous years’ cleanup costs, as well as any unexpected future influx to its inventory.

“The principle is simple: companies should pay for the liabilities they create, not Alberta taxpayers. But that safety net is falling further and further behind,” said Calabrese.

“The number of orphan sites continues to grow while the funding available to clean them up is not keeping pace. And when the levy falls short, the risk and ultimately the cost doesn't disappear. It gets pushed onto Albertans.”

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Calabrese noted how the orphan well inventory nearly doubled overnight with the bankruptcy of Long Run Exploration earlier this year, which added about 4,000 wells to the backlog — roughly the same number of certificates the association has issued for restoring well sites back to their original state since it was established in 2002.

NDP and conservative governments alike have provided a total of $335 million in interest-free loans to the Orphan Well Association and subsidized more than $148 million in industry’s unpaid surface lease payments to landowners.

Rural municipalities have also had to forego $250 million in unpaid property tax revenue that the provincial government says is unrecoverable.

Calabrese suggested that the levy is set so low because the nominally independent regulator is being influenced by input from government and industry advocates.

“In our view, that is an improper delegation of its legal responsibility,” she said.

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Teresa Patry, a farmer and rancher near Vermillion in central Alberta, highlighted the human cost of allowing orphan wells to accumulate on people’s property.

“When people hear words like orphan wells or liability management, it can sound like a policy debate. For those of us living beside these sites, it's not a matter of policy; it's personal and it affects our daily lives,” she said.

A recent study from the Pembina Institute found that orphan wells in Alberta and B.C. emit more methane annually than B.C.’s entire upstream natural gas industry.

In addition to its particularly potent effect on trapping heat in the atmosphere, exposure to high concentrations can cause respiratory and heart issues.

Active wells can also leak methane, as Patry has experienced with two aging oil wells on her property, which she suspects could be the cause of “unexplained health concerns,” including her son coughing up blood and daughter developing a growth on her thyroid.

The AER hasn’t given her answers.

“For years, my family has lived with uncertainty about what these sites mean for our home, our land, our health and our future,” Patry said. “Living with that uncertainty takes a real toll.”

A major shortcoming of Alberta’s regulatory framework for oil and gas is that there’s no mandatory timeline for closing inactive wells, let alone restoring the land to its pre-drilling state.

“They can sit on the landscape for decades, and indeed do,” said Calabrese.

It took eight years for an inactive gas well in the middle of an alfalfa field on Popowich’s property in Two Hills to be declared an orphan. The AER told him that it could take another decade or longer for the land to be restored.

For Popowich, these delays highlight how the existing orphan well levy framework is unsustainable.

“What the regulator is trying to do is not overwhelm the Orphan Well Association. They know themselves that they messed up by not properly funding it. The more wells that we send as orphans to the association, the more funding they need,” he said.

Mark Dorin, who has an inactive well owned by Whitecap Resources on his property in Didsbury, emphasized that the longer cleaning up orphan wells is delayed, the more it’s going to cost the public.

“This is why we need sufficient funding to retire these wells within a reasonable period of time — so that the period of time that taxpayers are compensating landowners on behalf of defunct oil companies doesn't drag out to decades, which is what's happening now,” he explained.

Bill Heidecker, president of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, has dozens of inactive wells on his ranch near Coronation in eastern Alberta.

“This matter didn't have to end up going to court,” said Heidecker. “For years, landowners have been patient. We've given the regulator the benefit of the doubt.”

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While landowners have played by the established rules, industry has been allowed to bend them to its will.

“Albertans deserve a regulator that actually regulates,” added Heidecker. “Because at the end of the day, this isn't just about wells. It's about accountability, and it's about whether Albertans can trust the systems that are supposed to protect them.”

Heidecker said that he’s sympathetic to concerns that an increased levy could put an undue financial burden on smaller oil and gas producers, who are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in energy prices.

“If you've got the funds, you should pay it, because there's always going to be a time when, say, gas is down and oil's up, or oil's down and gas is up,” he explained.

“There's always going to be weak players, so you can't just not collect on the basis of a few people that might go into receivership.”

In a statement, an AER spokesperson declined to comment specifically on “matters before the courts,” but emphasized the AER’s recent 7% increase to the orphan well levy, which was “endorsed” by the Alberta government in its most recent budget.

“The [Orphan Well Association] is a non-profit organization that works with the Government of Alberta, the AER and the oil and gas industry to manage the environmental risks of assets licensed to defunct oil and gas companies,” the spokesperson added. “This process is funded almost entirely by industry.”

Since 2022, the association has closed more than 8,900 orphan wells, the statement continued.

“This work has allowed municipalities, farmers, ranchers and recreational users to reconnect with what the landscape has to offer in Alberta,” it read.

The judicial review will be heard in court on Sept. 22. Read the full application here.

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Sept. 8, 3 p.m.: This piece was updated to include comment from the Alberta Energy Regulator.

Preorder my book

My new book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith, comes out Oct. 13.

I’m using every opportunity I can to remind Orchard readers to preorder it. Preorders are an importantly early step in the process of book promotion, because they signal general interest to booksellers, influencing the number of copies they purchase and how prominently they’re displayed.

Strong preorder sales will also influence the degree of media attention the book receives, providing it with further visibility.

You can preorder Dark Phoenix to your local independent bookstore through the publisher’s website. The book is also on sale via Amazon or Indigo, if that’s your thing.

If you’re in Edmonton, I’ll be celebrating the book’s release on Oct. 13 at the Aviary, where I’ll be talking to my friend and fellow freelance journalist Dani Paradis about the premier, in addition to reminiscing about the various right-wing events we’ve attended together.

Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, and include a copy of the book, which I will gladly sign for you.

Preorder to your local bookstore

Come to the book launch

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At Canada’s National Observer, I covered a report from the Pembina Institute that details the environmental and financial toll of orphan wells, offering policy proposals to mitigate the scale of the problem.

For Alberta Native News, I wrote about backlash to the Alberta government updating a statement to remove references to Indigenous Peoples, as well as Little Red River Cree Nation encouraging First Nations people to spend the week of Orange Shirt Day engaging in traditional practices.

Your routine reminder to preorder my book if you haven’t already.

If you’re in Edmonton, I’ll be celebrating the book’s release on Oct. 13 at the Aviary. You can buy a ticket, which includes a copy of the book, here.

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Nearly 1,000 communities representing a majority of Canadians have been directly impacted by extreme weather events exacerbated by the climate crisis, according to newly released figures from a national climate advocacy group.

The organization that put the numbers out, Elbows Up for Climate, is a coalition of 300 municipal elected officials formed last year to push for policies that address climate and affordability concerns in equal measure.

Its researchers found that 934 communities with an estimated total population of 26 million faced extreme heat, unsafe air quality, flooding, severe storms, wildfires, droughts and/or declared states of emergency in 2026 so far.

“These numbers are sobering, they’re simple to understand, they’re real, and they show that Canadians are suffering,” former Toronto mayor David Miller, who co-chairs Elbows Up for Climate with former Montreal mayor Valérie Plante, told The Orchard.

This year’s figures represent a sharp increase from last year, when Elbows Up for Climate found that the same weather events impacted about a quarter of Canadians spread across 220 communities.

The numbers were compiled from official emergency alerts and media reports.

Miller, who travelled across Canada with his wife this past summer, said the climate impacts across the country were impossible to ignore.

“Every single day we were surrounded by wildfire smoke,” he said. “It was extraordinary.”

According to the data, Saskatchewan had the most communities facing climate emergency events with 289, followed by Ontario with 236, Quebec with 109, Manitoba with 104, B.C. with 62 and Alberta with 45.

The reason Saskatchewan’s numbers are so disproportionately high is that its heat and air quality warnings cover “a large number of small communities and rural municipalities,” a backgrounder on the numbers explains.

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Miller cautioned that not everyone is impacted equally by these events.

The numbers capture the “health impacts of wildfire smoke in Toronto, just as much as the horrific wildfires in some Indigenous communities,” flooding and communities being “evacuated because there was a risk, even [if] it didn’t happen.”

The most common weather emergency in Canada this year was extreme heat, with 669 communities impacted, compared to 320 communities with unsafe air quality warnings, 138 facing flooding, 68 local emergencies, 49 wildfires, 40 severe storms and 12 droughts.

A United Nations report released Wednesday suggests these events will become increasingly frequent as the world exceeds average temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the coming years.

With ambitious climate policies, the world can limit warming to a peak increase of 1.8 degrees by mid-century before entering a cooling off period, the report notes.

But on the current trajectory of ramping up fossil fuel production and gutting climate policies, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has done, the world will reach a 2.6-degree increase by 2100.

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Miller said he sees hope in the popular backlash against fossil fuel-hungry hyperscale AI data centres that Big Tech is attempting to impose on communities across North America to build technology that is being used to eliminate jobs and enable state surveillance.

A Leger poll from July 2026 shows four out of five Canadians concerned about data centres’ impact on their electricity bills and the environment, drawing together affordability and climate concerns, even as a plurality of survey participants characterized data centres as a positive development.

Notably, opposition is most acute in Alberta, where 90 per cent of proposed AI data centre capacity in Canada is being pitched. Almost half the Albertans surveyed described data centres as a “bad thing.”

“Even people who might be supportive of the fossil fuel industry often seem to see the data centres as a step too far,” said Miller. “Why do we need to burn fossil fuels so that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg can get even richer?”

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PS - Buy my book

My new book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith comes out Oct. 13.

It takes an in-depth look at the wild trajectory of the Alberta premier’s career in politics, media and corporate lobbying, detailing how she became the conduit for dark, authoritarian forces that are reshaping not just Alberta but Canada writ large.

I’m encouraging Orchard readers to preorder it, which signals broader interest in the book to vendors and media, helping it reach as many readers as possible.

You can preorder Dark Phoenix to your local indie bookstore by hitting the “shop local” tab here. It’s also on sale at Indigo and Amazon, if that’s your thing.

By preordering the book, you can help me outsell former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s memoir, Unreliable Boyfriend, which comes out the same day.

Wouldn’t that be something?

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I conducted an interview this week with Huffington Post journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed on his forthcoming book, Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisers, and Israel’s War in Gaza, which I’ll be releasing on Sept. 21, the book’s release date. I’ve been working my way through an advanced copy and it’s definitely worth a read.

Speaking of books, I have one coming out on Oct. 13. I would greatly appreciate if readers preordered Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith. Preorders count for first-week book sales, so it’s a strong signal of interest to booksellers, which will help place it on bestseller lists and gain press coverage.

I’ve got steep competition, with former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s hilariously titled Unreliable Boyfriend also slated for release on Oct. 13. Wouldn’t it be quite a statement if I outsell Freeland?

You can contribute to that outcome by preordering Dark Phoenix to your local independent bookstore through the “shop local” tab on the publisher’s website. If you’re strapped for cash or live in a small town without a local bookseller, it’s on sale on Amazon and Indigo.

Finally, my friend has their first book, Fired Up About Unions, which provides a crash course in labour organizing from a pro, coming out a couple weeks after mine. You can preorder it here.

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Given the broad opposition to AI data centres Alberta’s governing United Conservatives are committed to ramming through rural areas, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Premier Danielle Smith avoided the in-person town halls held in Lacombe and Redwater earlier this month.

Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish was dispatched to face the angry crowds of a demographic that is otherwise overwhelmingly supportive of the UCP.

Glubish was remarkably glib in response to questions from concerned citizens at the Aug. 20 town hall in Redwater — located in Sturgeon County, where Meta is already building a one gigawatt data centre with the government’s blessing — which I covered for Canada’s National Observer.

Some highlights:

• “If we have a choice between 300 jobs and zero jobs, I'm taking 300 jobs all day long.”

• “I’m sorry to hear that you have such a jaded view of the government.”

• “’If you believe that there is a risk due to AI companies being overinflated in values, you are free to choose not to invest in them.”

The premier would never.

Indeed, there was none of Glubish’s condescension at Thursday’s audio-only virtual town hall on AI data centres.

The format, with moderator Justin Wright — one of the province’s several health ministers — able to filter questions submitted online and over the phone, was familiar territory for the current host of Your Province, Your Premier and former host of the Danielle Smith Show.

From her opening remarks, the premier displayed the empathetic facade at which she is so adept, using it to sell a prepackaged policy agenda on data centres and more.

“I understand why you have some concerns. These are very, very big projects, and I think that you want to know what impact they will have,” said Smith.

“I’m really hopeful that you will share with us anything that you think we're missing as we look to ensure that we have a regulatory environment that covers all of your concerns.”

An early question was whether hiring for data centres will put “Albertans first.”

“I'm with you,” responded Smith. “It's part of the reason why we have some referendum questions on Oct. 19 asking Albertans if they agree that we should take control over our immigration policy so that we can do exactly as you ask.”

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Glubish and Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams, who were also in attendance, hewed closely to their talking points when Wright called on them to answer questions.

“The key thing is this Meta project is a good example of what a responsible project looks like,” Glubish said in response to a question about who will pay the cost of the pipelines that will deliver gas to the data centre, which the minister emphasized would be funded by Meta.

“The fact is, these companies don't need a subsidy, whether it be from the government or whether it be indirectly through Alberta citizens.”

A man named Terry asked what plans are in place for the data centres once they reach the end of their lives, likening them to the 77,869 inactive oil and gas wells strewn across land in rural Alberta.

“I just don't want to see orphaned industrial sites all through Alberta,” he added.

Smith acknowledged that data centres are expected to become obsolete every few years, “because of the powerful chips and computers that they have keep on changing.”

“You're going to see a constant renewal of what is in those warehouses,” she said. “But warehouses can be used for anything.”

Smith used the opportunity to hawk her government’s stringent reclamation requirements for renewable energy projects, comparing warehouses favourably to a “wind turbine out in a farmer's field [that] has a lot of cement at the base of it[,] a lot of steel [and] fibreglass blades that have to be removed.”

All those materials, of course, exist on a much larger scale in a warehouse.

Bridget Lemieux inquired about an analysis the Pembina Institute released on Wednesday estimating that the Meta data centre could increase Albertans’ power bills upwards of $460 a year between 2027 and 2031 as it draws on electricity from the grid.

Smith said that the potential impact on electricity demand is the reason AI companies are being required to build their own power plants for the data centres.

For the Meta project, the $4.6-billion Greenlight Electricity Centre isn’t expected to be operational until 2031.

As Rory White reported for Canada’s National Observer last month, executives at private utility companies TransAlta and Capital Power are boasting that they expect electricity prices to triple in the next couple years

Electricity consumers in Alberta are able to choose to sign up for a market-based or fixed rate. Smith recommended the latter “if you want some certainty in your power bills.” Otherwise, you’re on your own.

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When a caller named Kathy inquired about the risk to pensioners whose funds are invested in AI speculation, Smith urged her to look on the bright side.

Ignoring the substance of Kathy’s question, Smith cited money that Meta has poured into Richland Parish, Louisiana, after building the Hyperion AI data centre, including a $50,000 bonus for some teachers.

Conveniently ignored by the premier was $10 billion in tax breaks the state provided the tech giant in order to get the private data centre built on public land, which as Glubish emphasized in seemingly every answer he gave, Alberta’s government isn’t doing.

“I know that there are always examples out there of how projects have caused some harm,” said Smith.

“But I would encourage you to look at what Meta has learned and how they're speaking with us about the kind of benefits that they want to bring to Sturgeon County.”

With Thursday’s stage-managed production, Smith provided a masterclass in spin. The unanswered question is whether that will be sufficient to quell the burgeoning data centre backlash.

On the same day of the virtual government town hall, the province’s Official Opposition finally unveiled its focus-group tested position on data centres.

It turns out it was the position data centre critics have been requesting all along — an immediate pause on data centre approvals until the appropriate regulatory framework can be established.

"Instead of consulting Albertans and carefully evaluating the impacts of AI data centres, it is rushing ahead with a plan that could leave Albertans paying the costs while foreign corporations benefit,” Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi said in an Aug. 26 statement.

Nenshi, naturally, couldn’t help but note his accomplishment as Calgary mayor in having “attracted billions of dollars of investment and thousands of good jobs” to the city.

“What the UCP is doing is not good for economic development; it actually puts jobs at risk," he added without elaboration.

The party is touting its AI Data Centre Blueprint, which outlines seven conditions under which data centres ought to be approved:

• Must have community benefit, including permanent jobs for Albertans

• Must be on the right land zoned for proper use with setbacks from homes

• Must minimize the use of fresh water

• Must not increase utility prices and must mitigate emissions

• Must have full lifecycle plans including end-of-life reclamation

• Must respect people’s privacy and contribute to Canada’s data sovereignty

• Must include meaningful consultation with nearby residences and businesses

All these are fair enough, I suppose. They would at least serve to slow down AI’s penetration of every aspect of our lives without our consent and reduce its environmental and financial toll.

But the question in my mind is what took the Alberta NDP so long?

The Official Opposition grumbles that its August series of AI data centre town halls was announced before the government put theirs together at the last minute, accusing the UCP of being copycats.

But in the grand scheme of things, the NDP’s town halls weren’t announced much sooner than the government’s.

The key distinction isn’t timing, it’s that the government is using a performative listening tour to forge a consensus in support of its predetermined agenda, whereas the opposition went on a listening tour to justify taking the most obvious, safest position imaginable.

It’s no secret that widespread skepticism of data centres stems largely from the cavalier fashion in which the provincial government is approving these projects with no safeguards, making Alberta home to 90% of proposed data centre capacity in Canada.

Where was the Alberta NDP when the data centre backlash, with its cross-partisan appeal, was brewing months ago?

While Nenshi complains that the government “isn’t doing its job” on data centres, his own approach to this file suggests they aren’t the only ones.

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One last thing …

My new book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith comes out Oct. 13.

If you like my commentary on Alberta politics, I want to encourage you to preorder the book. Preorders are immensely valuable in helping a book’s first week sales, signalling its prominence to booksellers and media and helping it reach more readers.

You can preorder Dark Phoenix to your local independent bookstore on Dundurn Press’s website. You can also preorder it from Amazon or Indigo, which both have it on sale, if that’s your thing.

If you live in Edmonton, I’ll be celebrating the book’s release at the Aviary on Oct. 13, where I’ll be speaking to independent journalist and MacEwan University professor Danielle Paradis on stage.

Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door, and include a copy of the book. You can buy them here.

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I covered the Alberta government’s AI data centre town hall in Sturgeon County for Canada’s National Observer. Not a single member of the public who took the opportunity to speak expressed support for data centres.

At Alberta Native News, I reported on a Court of King’s Bench ruling that celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s company doesn’t have to be included in Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s application against the Municipal District of Greenview’s water license for its proposed data centre near Grande Prairie.

I also covered the Otipemisiwak Métis Government’s efforts to get the Town of St. Paul to recognize its Métis roots by returning to the municipality’s original name, St. Paul des Métis.

I did a Reddit AMA for about Postmedia’s impact on the Canadian political landscape on Wednesday, which you can view here.

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This story originally appeared in Alberta Native News.

None of Canada’s major pension fund managers have investment policies aligned with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which could expose them to legal risk as the federal government pushes for increased investment in major infrastructure projects, according to a newly released report.

The study, Indigenous Rights and Canadian Pension Funds, was published by Shift, a charity dedicated to aligning pension investment policies with climate goals.

“Respect for Indigenous rights is directly relevant to a pension fund’s ability to maximize returns, minimize risk of loss, and invest in the best long-term interests of its members,” reads the report.

“A pension fund’s ability to fulfill its long-term obligations to beneficiaries is dependent on a safe climate, which further underscores the importance of Indigenous rights to pension funds.”

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At the core of UNDRIP is the right to “free, prior and informed consent” for projects being built on traditional Indigenous lands, which is also “at the heart of a lot of the conflicts that we’ve seen over major resource projects for decades in Canada,” explains Shift executive director Adam Scott.

While governments and financial institutions have a “pretty patchy” track record on respecting Indigenous rights, he added, courts have been quite clear that governments have an obligation to consult Indigenous communities before projects can proceed.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action 92 calls on the corporate sector to adopt UNDRIP.

The report examined 11 large Canadian pension funds to determine whether they have investment policies or proxy voting guidelines, which outline expectations for companies they invest in, that align with UNDRIP, as well as reconciliation action plans.

The funds examined were:

• the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board,

• AIMCo,

• British Columbia Investment Management Corporation,

• Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec,

• Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan,

• Investment Management Corporation of Ontario,

• Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System,

• Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan,

• OPSEU Pension Trust,

• Public Sector Pension Investment Board,

• and University Pension Plan.

None of these funds have investment policies aligned with UNDRIP. Five pension funds have reconciliation action plans that are either in development or not comprehensive.

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Only the OPSEU Pension Trust and University Pension Plan have UNDRIP-aligned proxy voting guidelines. British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Public Sector Pension Investment Board have guidelines deemed non-comprehensive.

The report points to two international examples – Sweden’s Andra AP-fonden and Scottish Windows in the U.K. – of pension funds that explicitly tie investment decisions to respect for free, prior and informed consent.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has initiated a “politically driven push to lock in expansion projects for fossil fuels,” including LNG and a new tar sands pipeline, said Scott.

The prime minister is pushing for institutional investors, including pension funds, to invest in these projects through the recently established Canada Strong Fund, and is seeking to attract global investors at a September summit in Toronto hosted by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

“The economics of these expansion projects are highly questionable at the moment,” Scott said, referencing instability in the Middle East and the ongoing transition to renewable energy.

This will lead to a situation in which we’re left with “stranded assets” that are no longer valuable in the near future or “carbon lock-in” that is detrimental to the planet, Scott added.

“An Indigenous rights framework is likely to slow that process down, and it will have a measurable beneficial impact on the climate,” said Scott.

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He added that under the banner of “economic reconciliation,” some First Nations have become essentially coerced into becoming partners in fossil energy projects over the objections of their members, since the projects were going to proceed regardless of their objections.

Two Nisga’a Nation members are taking the Nisga’a Lisims Government to the Supreme Court of B.C., arguing that band leadership didn’t adequately consult its members when it became a partner in Ksi Lisms LNG, which Prime Minister Carney has designated a national interest project.

While the leaders may have consented to the project, it doesn’t necessarily meet the higher bar of free, prior and informed consent set out in UNDRIP.

“There still are rights at play that aren’t being considered, and so we’re urging major institutional investors like pension funds to take a rights-based approach and have that integrated into their Indigenous rights investment strategy,” said Scott.

Pensions firming up their Indigenous investment policies will send a clear message to the corporate sector that they must get their projects approved properly, leading to increased certainty for investors.

“That’s going to make the investments less risky over time and lead to better outcomes for everybody involved,” said Scott.

Read the full report here.

Preorder My Book

My new book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith, is coming out Oct. 13. It details how Smith was able to mount her remarkable political comeback by embracing conspiracy theories from the darkest corners of the internet and communicating them in terms palatable to the broader public.

I’m urging readers to pre-order it, which signals interest to booksellers and helps place it on bestseller lists, which in turn generate media interest.

I’ve got stiff competition on Oct. 13, with the release of former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s hilariously titled memoir, Unavailable Boyfriend.

Through my publisher, Dundurn Press, you can pre-order Dark Phoenix to your local bookstore by hitting the Shop Local tab here. You can also pre-order it on Amazon or Indigo, both of which are offering it for 25% off.

I’ve been humbled by the feedback it’s received so far from journalists, authors and artists I greatly admire.

Here are some of them:

In an age of authoritarian populism, Danielle Smith has emerged as unsettling political superstar. Smith is resilient, dynamic, adaptive, media-savvy as she sells a politics of reactionary nostalgia in the service of the powerful. She is reshaping not just Alberta but Canada. Jeremy Appel’s incisive and crisply-written biography, drawing on deep reporting and research, is essential reading for understanding both Smith’s appeal and the dark future she is promoting.

— Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of The Time of Monsters

When encountering a politician like Danielle Smith, it's sometimes hard to truly grasp why they do the things that they do — and, more importantly, how they keep getting away with it. In Dark Phoenix, Jeremy Appel demystifies these questions. Through gripping writing and immaculate research, he paints a clear picture of what drives Smith: naked opportunism. It's a chilling tale of a woman who appears to be motivated by nothing more than her own ascent — and it's only in understanding both her thinking and the tactics she uses to achieve her goals that we can truly push back. Dark Phoenix is an important read for any anyone seeking to understand Alberta politics and its unhinged premier. It's even more essential as a case study of a kind of politician that is all too common these days.

—

Dark Phoenix is a powerful and highly engaging account that delves deeply into the intriguing story of Danielle Smith’s alarming rise and consolidation of power. Jeremy Appel has done a first-rate job documenting how seamlessly and ruthlessly she has championed the interests of Big Oil, the far-right and provincial separatists, and how her street-smart political skills now pose an immense risk to Alberta — and to Canada as a whole.

— Linda McQuaig, author of The Sport and Prey of Capitalists, Shooting the Hippo and Behind Closed Doors

Like Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, Jeremy Appel uses the details of Danielle Smith's life, from the shocking and enraging to the banal and deeply hilarious, to capture a cultural and political shift in Canada. Appel reveals Smith, with her uncanny ability to project empathy and normalize extremist ideas, as a defining figure in our neo-authoritarian age; where the role of government is to enact and enforce the policies of capital, while acting as the stage for reactionary grievance theatre. A must-read for anyone interested in Canadian politics.

— Jordan Foisy, comedian and lead writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Finally, if you live in Edmonton, I’ll be hosting a book launch at the Aviary on Oct. 13, where my friend , who’s currently working on a book of her own, will be interview me about Dark Phoenix on stage.

Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door and include a copy of the book. I should have an event link ready in the coming days, which I will of course share widely. But in the meantime, mark your calendar!

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For Canada’s National Observer, I reported on some access to information documents I obtained regarding the Alberta government’s plans for cleaning up inactive oil and gas wells that landowner advocates say show a deferential approach to the oil and gas industry.

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I was biking through Edmonton’s River Valley on Tuesday evening on my way to the Kinsmen Leisure Centre for a workout and sauna session, as I’ve done many times this summer. But then I hit a puddle.

Little did I know in that brief instant, but I would soon be set on a nearly day-long journey that would intimately familiarize me with the ailments in Alberta’s public health-care system.

I’ve biked over too many puddles to count in my lifetime, but this one was particularly slippery, which I later learned was runoff from an overfull upstream storm drainage facility — a consequence of Edmonton’s record rain this summer.

I flew off the side of my mountain bike, landing first on my left knee and elbow, which broke the fall for my right knee and left hand.

'“FUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK,” I screamed at the top of my lungs more than a few times.

My fall occurred right beside an outdoor rock climbing business, whose employee quickly came to bandage up my pretty badly cut left knee.

We were soon joined by a very kind Parisian tourist and his young daughter, who are touring across Canada, who wanted to make sure I’m OK.

It’s times like these that I’m reminded of people’s fundamental decency.

Hearing stories of long wait times in emergency rooms across the province, I wanted to avoid a trip to the ER at all costs — for myself, yes, but also hospital staff and other patients, whose time I didn’t want to waste on what appeared to be a minor injury.

I was in a bit of pain when I got home, so I popped some acetaminophen and naproxen and went to bed.

I woke up at 4 a.m. in a lot of pain, so I called 811, hoping they would tell me that I was fine and to go back to bed.

I wouldn’t be writing this if they did. The nurse told me to go to an ER and ordered me a taxi to the Royal Alexandra Hospital — the closest facility nearby.

I limped into the waiting room around 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Twenty hours later, I would be discharged with a brace on my leg and arm in a sling.

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The hospital staff were all incredibly kind and patient, showing immense grace under pressure that wasn’t always reciprocated by patients, who whether under the influence of substances, suffering from mental health issues, general dickishness, or some configuration of the above, could be quite nasty and abusive.

The staff were clearly overworked and doing their utmost best.

It’s no doubt a frustrating experience having to wait indefinitely for care. Time moves incredibly slowly to the point of meaninglessness.

You feel like a cog in a machine, rather than a patient with needs. Sometimes you wonder if you’ve been forgotten in the constantly shifting queue.

But some people’s needs are simply more urgent than yours. Naturally, someone who comes into the ER on a stretcher is going to be prioritized over someone with a minor fracture.

You try to avoid watching the clock, but what else can you do? You tell yourself, OK, maybe I’ll be out of here by noon. After noon comes you say 3 p.m.

Eventually, you accept you’ll be there as long as it takes, but I couldn’t help but negotiate with myself how much longer I’d be there. Is it human nature or just my neuroticism?

Alberta Health Services, or what remains of it, keeps a rolling list of estimated ER waiting times at each of the province’s hospitals. At Royal Alex, it was listed at somewhere in the realm of four hours — not too bad.

I ended up in the waiting room for seven hours, after which I figured it would be clear sailing. I would see a doctor, get an X-ray, get fitted with a cast or brace, and be out of there in due course.

It would be another 13 hours in the actual ER before I could go home.

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I did get to see a doctor fairly quickly once I moved past the waiting room, who sent me for an X-ray. But he had Lord knows how many other patients to see in between, as did the nurses and technicians.

After the X-ray, I was taken to an ER room with a busted recliner chair, an unfortunate circumstance given the nature of my injury. I asked if I could move, but the nurses politely declined, saying they might need that room for another patient.

The doctor eventually returned to confirm that, yes, I had relatively minor fractures of my elbow’s radial head, which I misheard as Radiohead, and my tibial plateau, which connects the shin to the knee.

For the latter injury, the physician wanted to get me a CT scan to have a closer, 3D look to confirm his hunch that I won’t need surgery.

"Oh boy, I’m going to be here for a lot longer,” I said, or something to that effect.

The doctor replied affirmatively, asking if I had somewhere to be. I did not, so I continued waiting as he went to his next patient and his next patient, etc.

Knowing the rough extent of my injuries and accepting I wouldn’t be discharged any time soon led to the most mentally taxing stretch of my time in ER.

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As I awaited the CT scan, somewhere around 7 p.m., I would guess, I mentioned to a nurse that I’d been in the ER since 5 a.m.

“I wish I could say that was unusual,” he replied. “We’re working in a broken health-care system.”

An hour or two after this interaction, I got my CT scan and then waited, met with an orthopedist, waited some more, met with him again, waited some more and then around 1 a.m., I received a brace for my leg, a sling for my arm and my discharge papers.

Indeed, the health-care system is broken. I witnessed this first hand. But I was one of the lucky ones, given my relatively minor injuries.

Prashant Sreekumar wasn’t. The 44-year-old father died in the Grey Nuns Community Hospital ER in December 2025 after waiting eight hours with chest pains.

The question is what are we going to do about it?

Premier Danielle Smith has an idea. Bill 11, passed in December 2025, enables physicians to work in both the public and private system, and establishes a list of medically necessary procedures that patients will be able to pay for with private insurance or out of pocket to receive expedited care at a private clinic.

This will enable doctors to use the public system as a financial cushion while they establish private practices, which will serve as a medical fast line for those with the means to purchase private insurance and assume the risks of claims being denied.

For the rest of us, that’s going to mean longer waiting times as physicians move into private care after they’ve completed their minimum number of hours in the public system. Public health care needs more employees, not fewer — full stop.

In order to do that, we need to address why there are so few staff per patient. Money is only part of the equation.

Privatization proponents point to how much Canada already spends on health care — 11.2% of GDP, which is significantly higher than the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 9.1% and growing.

Never mind that many parts of Canada’s health-care system are already privatized.

A full 29% of health-care expenditures in Canada are paid either out of pocket or through private insurance. Bill 11 is going to increase that number, which doesn’t include surgeries that are increasingly publicly funded but privately delivered for profit, which increases public health-care costs.

In the U.S., which spends 16.7% of GDP on health care, 47% of health-care spending is privately financed. Alberta’s creation of new markets for procedures that previously had to be publicly funded is a clear move in this direction, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has provided no indication that he intends on stopping it.

According to a 2025 study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, countries with lower proportions of privately financed and delivered health care, such as Iceland, Sweden, Norway and France, generally report higher life expectancy and lower mortality rates.

These countries spend varying amounts on health care per person, but what unites them is the low proportion paid by citizens themselves. The issue then isn’t so much funding but into whose hands those funds are going.

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There’s a very real crisis in our public health-care system, which is being used to pursue privatization. Taking this route will exacerbate the problem in public ERs while pushing it out of sight and out of mind for the well to do.

An ER is, in many ways, a great equalizer. Patients are assessed based on their need and placed in the queue accordingly, regardless of income or social status. Of course, wait times should be shorter, but we can’t let go of the principle of prioritization according to need.

After spending 20 hours with a broken leg in emergency care, many would be tempted to push for blowing the entire system up. I’m by no means a public health policy expert, but the professionalism of health-care workers as they cycled through patient after patient suggests to me that they possess the answer.

I’m sure these workers, their unions and professional associations have some ideas on how to fix what’s broken in the health-care system. I’m far more interested in their proposed solutions than the self-serving proposals of the private insurance industry, which has boasted of being a “key partner” in Bill 11’s reforms.

We don’t need get rich quick and queue jumping schemes for elites; we need to give hardworking health-care employees the means to deliver equitable and timely patient care.

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This story was first published in Alberta Native News.

The chief of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is backing the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs’ call for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to “immediately halt” plans for a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.

“If the B.C. chiefs say no, I respect what the B.C. chiefs want,” Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam told Alberta Native News.

In July, Carney and Smith signed an agreement that committed the federal government to fast-tracking a new one-million barrel a day tar sands pipeline to B.C.’s southern coast, following a similar route to the existing Trans Mountain pipeline.

“This proposal threatens both the inherent rights of First Nations and accelerates the expansion of the fossil fuel industry at a time when communities across the country are already experiencing devastating climate disasters,” reads an Aug. 9 open letter from the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) to Carney and Smith.

The letter is signed by UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Gitxaala Nation Chief Councillor Linda Innes and Heiltsuk Tribal Council Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett.

As they penned their open letter, 20,000 people were being forced to evacuate from communities near Okanagan Lake, which is at its lowest level on record due to drought conditions, in B.C.’s southern interior.

Carney plans to submit the proposed pipeline to the Major Projects Office for approval as a “national interest” project by Oct. 1, which would then force the project to proceed.

The UBCIC argues that this is a violation of the duty to free, prior and informed consent enshrined in multiple sections of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada adopted as law in 2021.

“Canada and Alberta claim that their engagement is early and meaningful, but they have already developed a project concept and corridor, submitted the proposal, named prospective development partners, established an October 1 target, and begun publicly promoting the project’s economic case,” wrote the chiefs.

“Consultation cannot be meaningful if First Nations are invited only to discuss how a predetermined project will proceed.”

The UBCIC added that the “destructive and disastrous consequences of expanding fossil fuel production extend far beyond any single territory.”

“Greenhouse gas emissions do not recognize territorial boundaries, they contribute to a climate crisis that affects every First Nation, every community, and future generations alike,” reads the letter.

In Treaty 8, Chief Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) has his own concerns with a new pipeline.

“Where do they plan to expand or to get all that oil from once they go ahead and do it? Because if they’re coming from our area here in Fort McMurray where the oil sands are, that ain’t going to happen,” he said.

“We will start launching court cases, and we will tie them all up in court for the next 20 years.”

Adam cited the health impacts of tar sands extraction on the downstream community of Fort Chipewyan, which he fears will be exacerbated by plans to release treated tar sands tailings fluids into the Athabasca River.

“I don’t care what pipelines they dream of,” he added. “They ain’t going to get no approval from ACFN on any further expansions of the oil sands to fill those pipes.”

Neither Alberta’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations nor the Premier’s Office acknowledged requests for comment.

Indigenous Relations spokesperson Karen Folk told The Canadian Press that the pipeline will provide “long-term benefits” to First Nations communities, who will be consulted through “ongoing dialogue … as this work continues.”

This newspaper reached out to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada for comment, which redirected the inquiry to the Privy Council Office.

Spokesperson Pierre-Alain Bujold said that consultations are underway with “potentially impacted Indigenous communities,” as well as the relevant provincial and territorial governments, to determine whether the pipeline should be designated as a national interest project.

If approved by the Major Projects Office, he added, “the project would undergo a streamlined review that upholds rigorous environmental standards and fully respects the rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

In a statement, federal NDP leader Avi Lewis said a new pipeline “defies common sense.”

“You can’t approve a project and then engage in consultation: that is just a pipeline to the courts,” said Lewis.

“And for Canadians across this land, it is a kick in the teeth to call this climate bomb of a project ‘in the national interest.’ It is in Big Oil’s interest for sure. But it doesn’t do a damn thing for people struggling with the cost of food and housing, increased costs from privatized healthcare, and of course the daily anxiety of climate breakdown.”

The Court of King’s Bench has ruled that the University of Alberta was within its rights to refund a $30,000 endowment made in the name of Yaroslav Hunka, a nonagenarian veteran of a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division who became the subject of international scrutiny when he received two standing ovations in Canadian parliament.

Shortly after the September 2023 incident, which occurred during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenkyy’s visit to the House of Commons, UAlberta VP of academic Verna Yiu announced that the Hunka endowment would be terminated.

As Duncan Kinney and I reported for the Progress Report in October 2023, UAlberta’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) has more than $1.4 million in endowments named after people who fought with the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, as well as the Nazi collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

In her Aug. 7, 2026, ruling, Justice Debra Yungwirth acknowledged that her decision to permit the Hunka endowment’s termination “may also impact other charitable endowments administered by CIUS,” given the existence of other endowments donated in honour of Galicia Division fighters.

However, a UAlberta spokesperson told Edmonton Journal reporter Jonny Wakefield, who first reported Yungwirth’s decision, that the university “will not undertake the time- and cost-intensive application process required to seek court approval to terminate or alter” other endowments.

Martin Hunka established the Yaroslav & Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund in honour of his parents in October 2019 to support research into the Ukrainian Catholic Church — namely Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and Metropolitan (Cardinal) Iosyf Slipyj.

“Yaroslav’s association with the Galicia Division was disclosed to the University when the trust was created,” Justice Yungwirth noted.

Later in the decision, she added:

When accepting the Hunka donation, it is clear that the University did not thoroughly consider the possible implications if the donation and its association with a member of the Galicia Division came to light. That oversight does not determine the outcome of the application, but it explains why the later public controversy created a conflict that the University had not adequately anticipated when the Hunka Trust was first established.

The Hunka endowment only ever provided $1,952 to the CIUS to fund a foreign academic’s travel to do research at two UAlberta libraries, the court heard during two days of proceedings in April.

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The university refunded the original endowment donation to Martin Hunka on Oct. 12, 2023, with the endowment’s earnings transferred to a separate fund to be used by the CIUS. On Oct. 30, Hunka deposited the refund cheque in his bank account.

About a year later, he transferred the $30,000 into a lawyer’s trust account. On Jan. 25, 2024, UAlberta filed an application to the Court of King’s Bench to receive approval for the endowment’s termination over Hunka’s objections.

At issue was whether a charitable trust, such as an educational endowment, can be terminated under the province’s 2023 Trustee Act — a question which Yungwirth emphasized had yet to be tested in court.

Section 67 of the act outlines the conditions under which a trust can be altered or terminated. Hunka argued that because it doesn’t specifically mention charitable trusts, his endowment cannot be terminated.

Yungwirth rejected this argument.

“It would also lead to an absurdity if the legislation made it impossible to terminate charitable trusts. Circumstances may arise, like in this case, where the termination of a charitable trust must be considered and may be appropriate,” she wrote.

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The act states that the court must take into consideration “the benefit or detriment to any person that may result from the court approving or declining to approve any proposed variations.”

Hunka argued that refunding the endowment would be detrimental for the CIUS in general and research on the Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular.

UAlberta argued, in Justice Yungwirth’s words, that since he’s already been refunded, “Mr. Hunka is in possession of the funds and is free to distribute them to any scholar he sees fit.”

Acknowledging that the university’s fiduciary duty to the Hunka endowment as its sole trustee conflicted with the board of governors’ “broad and multi-faceted” obligations to the university, the judge concluded that this “conflict strongly supports termination of the Hunka Trust.”

“The University cannot be faulted for choosing a course of action that advanced some interests over others,” Yungwirth wrote.

Hunka’s lawyer, Julian Savaryn, told the Journal that his client is considering an appeal.

Julian Savaryn is the grandson of Peter Savaryn, who served as UAlberta’s chancellor from 1982 to 1986, co-founded the CIUS and was himself a proud Galicia Division veteran.

Lubomyr Luciuk’s witness qualifications questioned

During April’s hearings, each side objected to the admissibility of evidence submitted by the other.

The only evidence that was ruled inadmissible in full was an affidavit and report written by Lubomyr Luciuk, a controversial political geographer at Royal Military College who has previously defended Hunka and the Galicia Division.

Luciuk wrote a December 2022 Ottawa Citizen op-ed arguing that Ukrainians should be included in the National Holocaust Monument, in which he falsely stated that a plaque at the monument doesn’t acknowledge non-Jewish Holocaust victims and mused about defacing the monument.

In his report, Luciuk argued that Hunka wasn’t antisemitic, nor did he participate in any Nazi atrocities.

Justice Yungwirth ruled that these considerations are irrelevant to the question at hand, which is whether the university has a right to close the Hunka endowment under the province’s Trustee Act and if so, what procedures it must follow.

She added that the university didn’t terminate the endowment because they believed the elder Hunka is antisemitic or a war criminal, but because of “concerns about the public perception” of honouring a Waffen SS veteran.

Yungwirth concluded that even if Yaroslav Hunka’s personal beliefs were relevant, she doesn’t regard Luciuk as a “properly qualified expert.”

“In my view, Dr. Luciuk is not entitled to opine on Yaroslav’s actions or the subjective beliefs he held while serving in the Galicia Division,” she wrote.

Luciuk hasn’t acknowledged a request for comment. This story will be updated in the event he responds.

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Following a one-day Sunday strike, 4,400 WestJet flight attendants represented by CUPE Local 8125 have reached a tentative agreement phasing out unpaid work hours over three years.

Across the aviation industry, flight attendants are solely paid a full wage when the plane is in the air. “Ground work” is unpaid, or at a sub-minimum wage rate at best, which averages out to approximately 35 hours of unpaid labour each month, per CUPE.

This unpaid work was a key issue as to why WestJet workers voted 99% in favour of strike action in July after 10 months of negotiations.

WestJet isn’t a publicly traded company, so we don’t know how much profit it makes. But Gerald Schwartz, the CEO of its private owner, the Onex Corporation, is reportedly worth $1.6 billion.

Unpaid work was a contentious issue during the 2025 strike by 10,400 Air Canada flight attendants, represented by several CUPE locals.

In a deal reached after Air Canada staff refused a federal back-to-work order, airline workers now receive 50% of regular pay for ground work conducted an hour pre-flight beginning this year, which gradually increases to 70% in 2028.

Details of WestJet’s tentative agreement with CUPE, which members will vote on in September, were disclosed by the union on Thursday.

By the start of 2028, WestJet flight attendants will be paid half their regular wage for all ground work – not just work occurring an hour before takeoff.

“My initial comparison with the Air Canada deal is that this seems to be a step beyond because, ultimately, WestJet flight attendants will get some compensation for all hours of unpaid work,” Adam King, a labour studies scholar at the University of Manitoba and author of the Class Struggle newsletter, told the Globe and Mail.

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Additionally, the WestJet cabin crew will receive a 13% pay hike, including back pay retroactive to January 2026. It will be followed by a 2.75% increase in 2027 and an additional 2.5% in 2028. Cumulatively, that’s 18.25% over three years.

By contrast, an arbitrator imposed a cumulative wage increase of 20.25% over four years on most Air Canada workers in February 2026. This deal had been previously rejected by 99% of its CUPE’s Air Canada flight attendants, who pointed to a 28% compounded inflation rate in the decade since the previous contract went into effect in 2015.

While neither agreement is ideal, the WestJet workers’ gains stand on the shoulders of Air Canada’s staff, with both serving to stigmatize the notion of unpaid labour, which will undoubtedly be useful in future industry-wide labour negotiations.

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There was much speculation in advance of the WestJet work stoppage regarding whether the government would order the flight attendants back to work; they never did, allowing the strike to last a full day.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Jobs (not Labour) Minister Patty Hajdu likely sought to maintain a patina of labour peace, if only for their electoral aims, by avoiding a repeat of last year’s heavy-handedness, in which the federal government invoked section 107 of the labour code to order the workers back to their jobs after just 12 hours.

This threat must have loomed large in the background of the somewhat less brief WestJet strike, forcing CUPE to take a deal eliminating free labour for WestJet flight attendants but not going all the way in eliminating ground work inequities.

The Calgary-based airline, seeking to cut its losses after Sunday’s disruption forced the cancellation of 425 flights in the midst of a long weekend, knew it had to reach a deal — the sooner the better for its bottom line.

Awareness that the government could potentially invoke section 107 at any time no doubt strengthened the employer’s hand, but the Air Canada CUPE members’ defiance last year also demonstrated the limits of state coercion on behalf of corporate interests.

That could very well change with labour code reforms Carney has planned. Corporate leaders are asking the prime minister to introduce “proactive tools” to curtail workers’ ability to engage in their Charter-protected right to strike.

If corporate Canada and Carney think that legislating away the right to strike will reduce labour unrest, they’re in for a whole lot more disruption, on the ground and in the skies.

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With everything else happening, I had forgotten that Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May committed in August 2025 to step down as the face of the party once her successor is elected.

My memory was jogged during Wednesday’s early morning perusal of the news, when I saw that former Kitchener Centre Green MP Mike Morrice launched his leadership bid.

Morrice represented half of the federal Green caucus from 2021 to 2025, when he lost by 375 votes to Conservative Kelly DeRidder. He’s already secured the federal nomination for his former riding for the next election.

Don’t expect a coronation. Ottawa-based Nira Dookeran, who has organized for the party and ran as a federal and Ontario provincial candidate over the past 12 years, is running too.

If both candidates can raise at least $15,000 and sign up at least 200 new members, including 50 Young Greens, by Sept. 30, they will be on the ballot.

A peculiar quirk of federal Green Party races is the inclusion of a none of the above option, providing the potential for a candidate’s especially humiliating defeat.

The last time May stepped aside for a new leader, things didn’t go so well, with Annamie Paul’s tenure lasting little more than a year before May returned.

And the most recent election was as unkind to the Greens as it was to the NDP, who are engaged in a rebuilding process of its own that I’ve been documenting somewhat extensively.

I figured I’d reach out to each Green leadership candidate to allow them to make the case for why they should be the next Green leader and how the party can return to electoral relevance.

At this early point in the leadership race, the differences between the candidates appear to be more of emphasis than policy.

Dookeran, who doesn’t yet have a leadership platform or website, is focused on renewing internal party structures to make them more democratic, arguing that the party must “go back to its roots” to expand its support.

When the Canadian Green Party was founded in 1983, one of its key commitments was to “promote citizen involvement in decision-making.”

“That's one of the significant ways in which the Green Party does politics differently,” Dookeran told this newsletter. “It's great on paper, and we have tried mightily over 43 years, but there are forces that have led us off that track. We need to get back to that because that's where our power is, that's where our uniqueness is.”

She added that she’s spent the past several years working to empower local electoral district associations (EDAs) “to rebuild and power our party from the ground up” through an organization dubbed EDA Empowerment.

Its signature achievement has been the circulation of a petition calling on Canada to establish a national carbon budget to reach an accelerated goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, rather than 2050, and report annually on its progress.

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This process served the dual purpose of both educating the party grassroots about how the parliamentary petition process works while mobilizing it to obtain signatures.

“The skills we're using on the petition project are the same transferable skills that we need during any election readiness period, so it’s building capacity on the ground,” explained Dookeran.

As of writing, the petition has 964 paper and 1,112 digital signatures, well above the thresholds of 25 and 500, respectively.

Dookeran emphasized that she has “great respect” for Morrice, but doesn’t necessarily see him as a grassroots movement builder.

“I know what work we need to do. I've been doing it. I'll continue doing it in the position of leader. I'll be able to do it with more alacrity, with more clout, with more influence, more streamlined, and we'll get it done faster and be ready to be an electable alternative for the Canadian public,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, Morrice is highlighting his experience in the House of Commons as an asset, particularly the opportunity he had “to build relationships with MPs in all parties that generate these results that help folks in my community.”

He cited a series of amendments to the Liberals’ Canada Disability Benefit, chief among them that it be indexed to inflation, which received support across party divisions in the House of Commons, as an achievement he’s particularly proud of.

Dookeran credited Morrice for this particular accomplishment; Morrice, for his part, said he “absolutely” agrees with Dookeran’s efforts to empower EDAs, although conceded that he hasn’t yet had time to examine her proposal in detail.

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Both candidates also expressed admiration for U.K. Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who was polling neck-and-neck with the ruling Labour Party earlier this year until Labour replaced Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham as prime minister.

When I pointed to the diminishing electoral prospects of the federal Greens from its three seats and 6.5% of the popular vote in the 2019 election to one seat and 1.2% of the popular vote in 2025, Morrice pivoted to provincial Green parties’ recent strings of success across Canada.

These include the 2018 election of Mike Schreiner as the first Green MPP in Ontario and Aislinn Clancy as the second in a 2023 byelection, climate activist Emily Lowan’s insurgent campaign to become B.C. Green leader last year, and recent polling showing the P.E.I. Green Official Opposition potentially forming government in October’s election.

“Greens are connecting with folks here in Canada and other jurisdictions around the world,” said Morrice. “It's a moment where I really hope we can be working in lockstep with provincial parties with whom we share the same values.”

Both Dookeran and Morrice are emphasizing economic inequality and its role in fuelling climate catastrophe.

Dookeran’s Green Party website bio reads in part:

At a time when forests are burning, communities are facing dangerous heat, and waterways are being polluted, Canada needs a Green Party willing to confront corporate power when private profit comes at the expense of people, communities, and the planet.

In our interview, Morrice spoke of halting the “wealth transfer that exists from regular folks to the billionaire class” as a means of addressing the “crises that we face,” including climate and housing.

These both sound much like recently elected federal NDP leader Avi Lewis’s messaging.

Dookeran, however, expresses skepticism that the climate-friendly politics Lewis advocates can be accomplished within the NDP’s confines, arguing that the New Democrats are as beholden to corporate interests as the Liberals or Conservatives.

“Big union organizing is a corporate interest,” she explained. “I'd like to see how he's going to implement some of the things he's talking about implementing and keep his labour base. I don't think it's possible.”

Morrice is more interested in making “common cause” with Lewis, pointing towards his own platform plank calling for “good faith engagement with other progressive parties in the interest of securing electoral cooperation until we have proportional representation.”

Echoing Lewis, Morrice added that if a Morrice-led Greens held the balance of power in a minority Parliament, its sole demand would be for the government to adopt proportional representation.

(I’m not convinced that’s a wise strategy for either Lewis or Morrice, but that’s a topic for a separate newsletter.)

“That is about ensuring that we are in service of the issues and not just planting party flags in a system of first-past-the-post, which is designed to encourage just that,” said Morrice.

The deadline to sign up as a Green party member and participate in the leadership election is Oct. 14. Voting occurs Nov. 2 to 13.

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About two hundred people gathered in front of the Sturgeon County building in Morinville, Alta., — on the Sunday of August long weekend no less — to protest Meta’s planned $13-billion AI data centre for the region, which has been all but rubber-stamped by the provincial government and county council.

The event was organized by 20-year-old county resident Ben Baril, who told The Orchard he was spurred to action by a “sense of betrayal” by municipal and provincial officials, noting the “existential crisis” facilitated by the extraction of natural gas necessary to fuel the one gigawatt data centre.

In April 2025, the county quietly amended its land-use bylaw to permit the building of AI data centres, but there’s been no public debate or vote on this specific 2.9-million square-foot hyperscaler facility, which is already in the process of being built.

Baril emphasized that he’s not entirely against the use of AI, but is concerned by the scale by which it’s being foisted on the public by an alliance of Big Tech and government.

“Obviously, there are use cases for AI, but the scale that it's being built out of is just completely unsustainable,” he added.

Other prominent concerns are the data centre’s anticipated water usage — both for cooling servers and powering them — the impact of increased electricity demand on power rates, the noise they make, their use of otherwise arable agricultural land and the digital surveillance widespread AI adoption enables.

Baril noted a “broad support for ending egregious crime against us and our environment” that transcends traditional political divisions in his rally remarks.

An online Leger poll conducted in July found that four out of five Canadians are concerned about data centres’ impacts on the environment and power bills.

Wayne Chambers, another local resident, bemoaned how no county officials were present to attempt to hear residents’ concerns.

County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw has argued that the public hearing on updating the county’s zoning bylaw, which faced no opposition, was sufficient consultation.

“They should be going in there,” Chambers said in an interview, gesturing towards a mock guillotine brought by a group of Trotskyists to the protest before emphasizing that he was speaking proverbially.

“That's the guillotine of justice. It's the beheading of our rights, and you're supposed to be representing the people. Does this look like you're representing us?”

A group of senior citizens dressed in dinosaur costumes — likely a familiar sight to attendees of protests against the provincial government in Edmonton lately — were in attendance.

One of them is retired University of Alberta English professor Janice Williamson.

“The Albertosaurus is kind of an emblem of our province, and we thought we would be dinos because we know about extinction. We've been here for millions of years,” explained Williamson.

“We understand how that works, and we don't want the human species to go extinct.”

Meta boasts that the data centre will create 3,000 construction jobs and then 300 operational jobs, figures repeated by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

Williamson said these relatively modest job figures aren’t worth the facility’s environmental and financial costs.

She identified the scale of this particular data centre and its use of fossil gas as especially concerning, contrasting the UCP government’s approach to building data centres with B.C.’s NDP government, which has capped data centre power usage at 400 megawatts for the next two years.

Ninety per cent of proposed AI data centre capacity is in Alberta, the CBC reported in June.

“We're just kind of a rogue state. Our government is selling us all out, and there's no proper vetting of any of these proposals,” said Williamson.

Given the composition of B.C.’s energy grid, its data centres will be mostly powered by renewable energy, although B.C. Green leader Emily Lowan has criticized the province’s government for adopting a "build-first regulate-later model" that takes corporate claims of minimal water usage at face value.

The plan is for Meta’s Sturgeon County facility to be mostly powered by its own $4.6-billion, 934-megawatt power plant, the Greenlight Electricity Centre, with plans to double its generation capacity in future years, which proponents argue will eliminate the data centre’s strain on the electricity grid.

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The plant is expected to be operational in 2030 — two years after the data centre begins its phased opening.

A guy named Jim, who wouldn’t provide his surname but said he lives near the future data centre, showed up at the event to argue with protestors.

Echoing the premier and Meta, he said that data centre water usage concerns are overblown, citing the “closed system” it uses to recycle a limited amount of water.

But isn’t the water that could be used for any other purpose?

“I don't know about that,” he replied. “It's like your toilet. You take water into your toilet. It sits there, right? Well, the water is being used in the AI centre too. It's used for cooling, but it doesn't leave the system.”

While closed-loop water systems can reduce — but not eliminate — data centres’ direct use of water, they require increased electricity generation to properly function, which is itself a water-intensive process.

While the UCP government has taken a firm position in support of data centres, the Alberta NDP has committed to a “listening tour” to determine what its position should be.

This piece is being co-published with Lily Polenchuk’s newsletter.

Alberta’s Ministry of Advanced Education removed references to the government’s commitment to campus free speech from early talking points regarding the May 2024 pro-Palestine encampments at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary, according to documents newly obtained through freedom of information.

The draft key messages, which were distributed the day encampments were established on May 9, also included a specific reference to encampments as an example of “illegal tactics” that aren’t permissible, which was similarly removed from the final version.

Roberta Lexier, a historian of social movements at Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, reviewed the documents, noting that they show the government “trying to thread a very fine needle between these sort of claims they’re making around free speech and its importance on campus, and then what happens when free speech actually happens on campus in the form of an encampment.”

“Free speech only applies to the groups that they want to support,” Lexier added, referring to anti-trans and residential school denialist speakers who have attracted protests or had their events shut down on campus.

“As soon as there’s a protest about something that they don’t support, they have to find a different way to counter that. They can’t just clamp down on free speech, because that’s going to look really bad and be really contradictory, and so then they move to this idea that encampments are illegal.”

The ministry attempted to conceal changes between its draft and final messaging for almost two years.

The UCalgary encampment was forcibly dismantled by police before the end of May 9 and the UAlberta camp was removed in the early hours of May 11.

A co-author of this piece, , filed a FOIP request with the Ministry of Advanced Education on May 14, 2024, seeking all correspondence pertaining to the UAlberta encampment sent between May 9 and May 12, 2024.

In June 2024, Polenchuk received partial access to the requested records. According to the ministry’s response letter, information was redacted because it contained advice from officials, was deemed non-responsive to the request, or was expected to cause harm to personal privacy, law enforcement, and the interests of a public body.

A few days later, Polenchuk requested a review of the redactions by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC).

On May 28, 2026, the OIPC told Polenchuk it had asked the ministry to “reconsider” some redactions, including internal discussions about government communications, the ministry’s role in responding to campus protests, and the planning surrounding the encampment’s removal.

Among the disclosed records was an early draft of the ministry’s messaging on campus protests.

The draft instructed officials to respond to questions about demonstrations on campus by saying, “I respect the right of students to protest, but illegal tactics - like encampments - are the wrong approach.”

The reference to encampments being an illegal tactic had been redacted from the original disclosure. In the final key messaging draft, “like encampments” was removed entirely.

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Also redacted from the initial key messaging draft was background information on the Alberta government’s policy requiring post-secondary institutions (PSI) to report annually on free speech on campus. However, this background on free speech reporting was entirely omitted from the final messaging.

Michael Litwack, an English and Film Studies professor at UAlberta who participated in the encampment, reviewed the documents.

He said they show how the “government and the university are committed to freedom of expression and academic freedom in a very partisan way – which is to say, for Zionists [and] those who agree with the UCP’s policies, but for students, staff, and faculty who gathered to defend Palestinian human and political rights, those basic charter freedoms were not respected.”

Litwack is co-plaintiff to a lawsuit against his employer alongside two Palestinian-Canadian graduate students, Noor Abdo and Mustapha Yassin, alleging that the university violated their Charter-protected freedoms of association, assembly and expression.

The documents also include correspondences from members of the public. All but one expressed concern about police’s heavy-handed approach towards the encampment at UAlberta after it was taken down.

On the afternoon of May 10 – after the encampment at UCalgary was taken down but while the one at UAlberta remained – an email was sent directly to the Premier’s Office, which reads:

Honourable Premier Smith,

This image today on the UAlberta campus is not free speech. This morning you stated on the radio but encampments as long as they don’t insight, violence or antisemetic or hateful hurtful rhetoric might be OK? This is not OK globalizing me antifa [sic] calls for the destruction of the Jewish people. This is hurtful, Hateful and should not be allowed. As you know protest is one thing hate and intimidation is another. Please do the right thing for the Jewish people And [sic] students of Alberta and Edmonton…

This was the sole correspondence from a member of the public that received a formal response. The email from which it was sent is redacted.

On May 13, the Premier’s Office forwarded the email to the Ministry of Advanced Education, requesting that ministry staff “determine and prepare the most appropriate Ministerial Response for [redacted] and the attached correspondence on behalf of the Premier, due by June 03, 2024 [emphasis in original].”

The revised records disclosed previously withheld parts of internal correspondence from Ministry of Advanced Education director of business operations and strategic services Taylor Daum, which reveal how the ministry saw its role vis a vis the university encampments.

Daum wrote that emergency planners from PSIs met prior to the UAlberta encampment to discuss protest management, and that institutions should communicate with their local municipalities first.

Previously redacted portions of Daum’s memo state that the issue was “less about emergency management” and “more about public relations and issues management.”

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Daum added that he could not identify any provisions in the Post-Secondary Learning Act that address protests, emergency management or law enforcement on campus that could guide the ministry’s response.

Instead, he suggested developing key messages outlining the government’s role while emphasizing that “the actual management of the protests rests with the PSI,” which “may or may not communicate those events to the department or [minister’s office].”

According to a third-party review of UAlberta’s encampment response written by retired Court of King’s Bench justice Adele Kent, then-minister of advanced education Rajan Sawhney and Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis met with the heads of Alberta’s universities in early May 2024 to discuss the possibility of pro-Palestine encampments.

The review notes that the university’s external relations department had repeated conversations with ministry officials on May 9 and 10, but administrators told Kent that the government didn’t attempt to direct their response.

“The U of A was very clearly trying to keep the government in the loop of what was happening,” said Lexier of MRU. “I understand from one perspective why that might be, but from another perspective, what does the government have to do with what’s going on on university campuses?”

“The U of A should have been managing this on their own, in their own way,” she added.

The Kent report notes that the university initially took a hands-off approach to the encampment. “Something changed during the morning of May 10,” wrote the retired justice.

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At an unrelated press conference that morning, Premier Danielle Smith praised Calgary police’s forcible dispersal of the UCalgary encampment the night before.

“I’ll watch and see what the University of Alberta learns from what they observed in Calgary,” Smith told reporters.

Kent noted that most of the people she interviewed for her review insisted that this was not a “determining factor” in UAlberta administration’s decision to change its approach to the encampment, but acknowledged that it “might have been in the back of people’s minds.”

Kent’s report notes that a member of the university’s Crisis Management Team wrote in the team’s shared document on May 10 at 9:45 a.m.: “GoA has signaled that they may be more active in directing our response.”

“There seems to be at the very least mixed messages from the government concerning their role in the decision,” said Litwack.

Nour Salhi, a journalism student at MacEwan University on the other side of the North Saskatchewan River who was one of the UAlberta encampment leaders, said that while the university uses language of academic freedom and viewpoint diversity, its response to the encampment “says more than any of those words combined.”

“Does the province have a part to play in all this? Yes, absolutely. But the university does not get to rid itself of the blood on its hands and remove itself from this situation,” said Salhi.

“They are very much immersed in the genocide and occupation of Palestine, and their behaviour towards their students here just goes to further proving that.”

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The original version of this story misidentified Taylor Daum’s employer.

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At Canada’s National Observer, I covered Toronto-based Thomson Reuters’ $125-million USD contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use Thomson Reuters’ detailed database of American residents’ personal information to assist in a crackdown on alleged immigration and voter fraud.

@jeremy.appelIn my latest for @Canada’s National Observer, I speak to critics of Thomson Reuters’ $125-million contract to sell detailed personal information of millions of American residents to ICE #greenscreen #fyp #viral #journalism #cdnpoli

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I appeared on Pivot Points, a brand new public affairs show on CJSR, to speak alongside Taproot Edmonton publisher Karen Unland, activist and entrepreneur Haruun Ali, and host Asad Chishti about AI, the climate crisis, police accountability and more.

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