Op-Ed: How to talk to Alberta: a no-nonsense guide to bridging divides

The rest of Canada may associate Alberta with oilsands, pickup trucks, and cowboy hats, but it’s also home to an innovation ecosystem where energy technologies are being invented, piloted, and scaled for global export.

By Ailsa Popilian and Alison Cretney

Originally published in The Hill Times, July 6, 2026

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The Alberta-Ottawa MoU has been framed largely as a pipeline deal, but it goes well beyond that. It's a step-change in provincial-federal relations and signals a deeper shift to reframe Alberta’s place as energy security increasingly determines economic strength. 

And for some Albertans it isn’t landing. Understanding why requires more than the latest polling numbers, although they help. The tone shift between Trudeau and Carney hasn’t significantly moved the needle with UCP supporters. And for some Albertans, longstanding frustrations around energy still simmer.

Decades of perceived slights have built something deeper than disagreement. That needs to be acknowledged, not explained away. And while polling reveals these entrenched frustrations, it also reveals something unexpected: Alberta is the most optimistic province when it comes to believing that the country can lead on energy and deliver on climate goals. 

Energy is identity 

The rest of Canada may associate Alberta with oilsands, pickup trucks, and cowboy hats, but it’s also home to an innovation ecosystem where energy technologies are being invented, piloted, and scaled for global export. Working at the intersection of climate and energy in the province showed us that Albertans are innovators, entrepreneurs, impact investors and much more. Albertans are not a monolith.

The Energy Futures Lab hosts a Fellowship of experts from every part of the system, from finance, cleantech, ENGOs, Indigenous communities, and yes, oil and gas. When you put them in a room and ask them to wrestle with some of the toughest energy transition questions, you learn a thing or two about bridging divides.

As political scientist Jared Wesley has put it, "Albertans can be fiercely provincial and proudly Canadian. They can belong to a local community, a treaty relationship, a region, and a country all at once. These attachments do not need to cancel each other out."

A rancher, a roughneck, and a climate activist walk into a room

Bringing together unlikely co-conspirators is something we know well. As part of the Alberta Narratives Project we helped shape a large-scale exploration of how Albertans, from all walks of life, think about energy and climate. The findings challenged a lot of assumptions.

What people responded to most was cooperative language, not combative framing. But perhaps the most telling finding about Albertan identity was that their views weren’t shaped by political or industry affiliation as much as their assessment of the future — whether they believed fossil fuels would remain economically viable, and whether they saw climate change as a genuine threat. Shift those evaluations, and the conversation shifts too.

The central Alberta town of Innisfail offers a useful case study. It hosted our Roadshow as it considered its energy future. It was later selected as the site for Deep Sky, Canada's first direct air capture (DAC) R&D facility, sparking millions in cleantech investment for the region. 

The announcement was met with grassroots pushback. Deeply held values around land stewardship shaped concerns about the technology. But rather than retreat from the conversation, Deep Sky and town council stayed in it. They held open houses and fielded tough questions head-on. The project moved ahead. A Montreal-founded company got rural Albertans on board with game-changing climate technology by taking them seriously, not overriding them.

How to talk to Alberta

The pitch isn't complicated. Talk to Albertans the way you'd have any serious conversation: sit at the table, stay through the hard parts, field the tough questions, and seek common ground rooted in shared values. Right now, that includes the economy, investment, quality of life and affordability.

Treating Alberta's contribution as something to be tolerated rather than built on is a common pitfall, as is denigrating its industries contributing to Canada's economic engine, run by the very people driving innovation in sustainable agriculture and reducing energy emissions.

Albertans have a maverick streak that the rest of Canada can benefit from, the tenacity to build things bigger and faster (when conditions are right), and a deep belief in producing the energy, food, and materials that the world needs without forsaking climate progress too. 

The MoU is much more than a pipeline deal. It’s a relationship reset that signals potential for a new mode of federalism — one that takes Alberta's economic and geopolitical role seriously, and builds from there.