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FINDING THE
JURISDICTIONAL
LINE
AS OTTAWA PURSUES POLICIES AIMED AT EMISSIONS REDUCTION,
CONSTITUTIONAL JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES WILL LIKELY BECOME
MORE COMMON BETWEEN THE FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL LEVELS
Feature
WITH THE recently enacted Canadian
Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act,
the federal government has committed to
achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emis-
sions by 2050 and bringing emissions
40–45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada
ruled on the constitutionality of the
Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act aer
three provinces mounted a challenge. e
top court will soon also deal with Alberta's
challenge to the federal Impact Assessment
Act, which the Alberta Court of Appeal
found unconstitutional this spring.
Lawyers advising clients in the energ y
sector expect these types of jurisdictional
disputes to become more common as
Ottawa continues to lay the path to net zero.
"With respect to the various federal
government policies to reduce emissions
… that's going to continue to be a point of
contention with the provinces, as we've seen,"
says Terri-Lee Oleniuk, a partner in Blake
Cassels & Graydon LLP's Calgary office.
"I don't think we're done with that, with
the constitutional fight over emissions
reduction," she says.
e dispute is rooted in the question
of who gets to decide how we develop
our economies in Canada, says Sander
Duncanson, a Calgary-based partner
at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP who
specializes in environmental, regulatory,
and Indigenous law issues for natural
resource developers. Historically, it has
been le to the provinces to decide how to
put people to work and how to stimulate
their provincial economy, he says.
"The current federal administration
has gone much further than any govern-
ment has before – as far as I know – in
dictating to the provinces how they must
modernize their economies," he says.
This shift also includes phasing out coal-
fired power generation and requiring
that by 2035, all electricity generation in
Canada must come from net-zero sources,
Duncanson adds.
Dennis Langen leads Stikeman Elliott's
energ y regulatory team in its Calgary office.
