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Last campaign, Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party used their \u201cPipelines, Jobs, Economy\u201d narrative to pummel Rachel Notley and the NDP. During her government, Alberta had suffered two years of low oil prices, a precipitous drop in oil and gas capital expenditures, the loss of 33,000 oil and gas jobs at the low point of the bust in mid-2016, then a recovery that stalled because of a 2018 Keystone pipeline leak that forced Notley to impose a 325,000 barrel per day production cut only months before an election.<\/span><\/p>\n The NDP just couldn\u2019t catch a break. Voters blamed her anyway. The oil and gas industry and its boosters vociferously attacked Notley for those things she could not control and gave her no credit for those she could, like using her Climate Leadership Plan as leverage to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s federal government to approve two pipeline projects. Notley made her situation so much worse by refusing to run on her energy and climate policy record, which was much more hydrocarbon-friendly than critics claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n A day after the election, I <\/span>argued<\/span><\/a> that \u201cdespite implementing an impressive suite of energy policies that was cheered by the oil sands producers (the future of the Alberta oil patch), she has never been able to connect the dots. Nor could Marg McCuaig-Boyd, her energy minister, nor Shannon Phillips, her environment and climate change minister, nor Deron Bilous, her economic development minister.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Is the NDP better prepared this time? Marginally. Will it be able to \u201ctalk energy\u201d in the critical Calgary battleground? If the past four years are a guide, not likely. (You can read why in my column, <\/span>Rachel Notley has no energy game<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll review the NDP energy platform in more detail closer to election-day when there might be additions to consider, but the proposals to date are uninspiring. Better than 2019? Absolutely. But compared to the dynamism of the global energy transition and even plans put forward by various Alberta groups, the NDP proposals seem generic and uninspired. The party\u2019s hydrogen proposal, for example, is mostly covered by the UCP government\u2019s <\/span>hydrogen roadmap<\/span><\/a>. It also proposes $20 million to \u201cconduct an inventory of current hydrogen infrastructure\u201d even though in January the Province <\/span>issued<\/span><\/a> a request for proposals to build an Alberta hydrogen fuelling system (i.e. infrastructure) for heavy duty commercial vehicles. <\/span><\/p>\n Does no one periodically update these documents?<\/span><\/p>\n My complaints about the NDP energy platform are picking nits compared to the utter disaster that is the UCP government\u2019s \u201cEmissions Reduction and Energy Development\u201d plan. My April 20 column (<\/span>Is Smith\u2019s \u2018climate plan\u2019 intended as a sop to Calgary voters? It isn\u2019t good for much else<\/span><\/a>) covered the basic objections and criticisms.<\/span><\/p>\n In the metaphorical sense, Smith is bought and paid for by Little Oil: junior and intermediate producers (especially gas producers), service companies, finance, and other sectors that serve the industry. Her lobbying for the odious $20 billion RStar campaign before becoming UCP leader, then proposing it as government policy when she became premier, led political scientist Duane Bratt to conclude that Smith is corrupt. In other words, bought and paid for. The composition of her energy future panel – five Little Oil executives, including Dave Yager, her former Wildrose Party president during her previous turn in politics – is another sign of her corruption. (My Feb. 16 column, <\/span>Smith\u2019s panel on Alberta\u2019s energy future is a bad joke<\/span><\/a>, explained in more detail)<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/energi.media\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Danielle-Smith-e1682963148853.jpeg\")