Guilbeault asks Alberta minister to ‘correct’ column on emissions reduction

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has written a letter to his Alberta counterpart to correct what he calls errors in Jason Nixon's recent newspaper column.

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has written a letter to his Alberta counterpart to correct what he calls errors in Jason Nixon’s recent newspaper column.

Earlier this week, an Alberta newspaper published an op-ed by Nixon in which he called the new federal plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “insane.”

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In his letter, sent Friday, Guilbeault says Nixon misread a graph and got his facts wrong.

“I want to correct the record on what this plan does and does not do,” he writes.

The first sentence of Nixon’s column, published Saturday, read “Alberta will not accept production cuts in the insane climate plan released by the Liberal-NDP coalition.”

He backs that up with reference to numbers pulled from the federal document. He writes they prove the federal plan is an attempt to reduce oil and gas production and economic activity in Alberta that would destroy the province’s quality of life.

That’s not what the numbers say, wrote Guilbeault.