November 30, 2025
Parents and small children are likely to be familiar with Laura Joffe Numeroff’s classic childrens' book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” In the story, a child giving a mouse a cookie leads to a cascading series of additional requests, with the fulfillment of each ask being followed by a new demand, until the cycle begins again.
The story seems an apt analogy for the emerging relationship between Mark Carney’s federal government and that of Danielle Smith in Alberta. The Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) signed last week, grants the Alberta premier a lengthy federal wishlist: agreement to pursue an additional bitumen pipeline to the British Columbia coast; an "appropriate adjustment" to the federal ban on oil tanker traffic off that coast; a removal of the prospect of a federal cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the oil and gas sector; a "suspension" for Alberta of the application of the federal Clean Electricity Regulations; and the removal of anti-"greenwashing" provisions in the Competition Act.
In exchange, there are uncertain commitments around the expansion of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) in Alberta - a technology whose effectiveness and economic viability remains the subject of major debates - specifically the expansion of the voluntary, industry-led, Pathways Alliance, CCUS initiative. There are also vague commitments to strengthening the industrial carbon pricing system in Alberta, recently substantially weakened by Smith's government.
The Canada-Alberta agreement has already prompted the resignation of a high-profile minister from Prime Minister Carney’s government. It has also led to intense intergovernmental conflicts with the Government of British Columbia, and the coastal First Nations in B.C., neither of whom seem to have been consulted on the agreement’s contents.
Not satisfied with major reversals of federal climate policies - likely to put the achievement of Canada’s domestic and international GHG emission reduction targets even further out of reach – and these other outcomes - the Alberta premier, always playing to her rural United Conservative Party (UCP) base, has already launched a new set of demands from Ottawa, this time around gun control.
The cascade of demands set off by the Federal-Alberta MOU is unlikely to stop there. Other provinces, particularly those, like Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, whose electricity systems continue to be strongly dependent on fossil fuel-fired generation, are almost certain to demand exemptions from the Clean Electricity Regulations of their own. This would effectively render the rules, a central element of the plan to achieve Canada’s GHG emission reduction targets, meaningless. Saskatchewan, in particular, is likely to go even further, demanding an exemption from the federal coal-fired electricity phase-out regulations as well.
A similar series of demands followed the Trudeau government’s fall 2023 exemption of heating fuel oil from the federal backstop carbon pricing regime, mostly in response to concerns in Atlantic Canada. The result was provincial calls from across the country for the exemption of all types of heating fuels, setting in motion a chain of events that ended with the demise of the overall federal consumer carbon pricing backstop system earlier this year.
The Alberta-Canada MoU follows a more recent playout of the same patterns between Ottawa and the provinces. In the face of the trade and security challenges being presented by the incoming second Trump administration, Prime Minister Carney’s government initially attempted to make peace with the provinces through the controversial Bill C-5 – The Building Canada Act. The legislation potentially exempts projects identified as being of “national interest” from federal environmental and other legislation. That effort was promptly met with an MoU among Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario demanding the wholesale withdrawal of federal environmental rules that might get in the way of resource development projects.
It is also important to remember the record of behaviour on the part of the Smith government in Alberta that the Canada-Alberta MoU rewards. Smith was swift to reach out to the Trump administration independently of Ottawa or the other provinces. Her government then sought to undermine what remains likely Canada’s strongest potential point of leverage in dealing with the US – its dependence on Canadian oil and gas exports, which could be restricted or taxed. Smith threatened a “constitutional crisis” if there was any attempt to use that leverage against the Americans.
Moreover, Smith’s government has adopted rules severely restricting renewable energy development within Alberta. That, by implication, makes any significant further decarbonization of Alberta’s electricity system virtually impossible.
In wider terms, Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government has invoked the ‘notwithstanding clause’ (s.33) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms no less than four times in the three months. The clause has been used to attempt to shield legislation ordering striking teachers back to work, and laws affecting transgender people, from legal review in terms of their consistency with Charter-protected rights.
In this context, the message sent from Ottawa by the Canada-Alberta MoU regarding the conduct of provincial governments around climate change, the environment, trade, labour and human rights, Indigenous Peoples and in their dealings with each other, is anything but helpful.
Ottawa is already going to enormous ends to satisfy provincial demands on multiple fronts. National unity is important in the face of the Trump threat. But limits still need to be placed on the behaviour of provincial governments, lest, like Numeroff's mouse, they demand an unending supply of more cookies, with little gratitude in return.