MoUs don’t make mines, and partnerships don’t build processing facilities. What happens after the ink dries? By Ailsa Popilian and Marla Orenstein. Originally published in The Hub, April 15, 2026

Innovators . Entrepreneurial. Ambitious. This is how Albertans have long described themselves, a story often centred around our successful development of the oil sands, Alberta’s most consequential bet. But now the province is faced with a difficult question to reconcile: is this who we are or just who we were? This question will be answered one way or the other, whether we respond to it directly or not. Quite simply, some forces are bigger than Alberta. The question we shoul