Premier Scott Moe unpacks new federal energy plan on The Evan Bray Show

On Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a new national electricity strategy aimed at doubling Canada’s grid capacity by 2050, as demand surges.

The plan calls for major investments in generation, transmission, storage and expanded interprovincial connections, while also signalling a more flexible approach that keeps natural gas in the mix — a framework that is drawing close attention in Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe joined The Evan Bray Show on Friday to share his thoughts on plan and how it fits the province.

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Listen to the full interview with Moe, or read the transcript below:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: Major electricity strategy announcement yesterday. Was that a surprise to you, or did you have a heads up that was coming?

SCOTT MOE: No, we’ve been in discussions with the federal government on the challenges of the Justin Trudeau era’s clean electricity regulations, or CER as they’re known. So we’ve been discussing this with Minister Tim Hodgson, Prime Minister Mark Carney and others in the PM’s office for quite some period of time, and I would just say, whether it’s this or we see an agreement this morning with Alberta, and hopefully going to give us an opportunity to expand the energy industry, this really ties into how are we going to not turn off megawatts of power anywhere in Canada? How are we going to power our economy moving forward? And how are we going to attract the investment into those industries? We’ve seen this on pause, and actually, backing up the last 10 years, by regulations and legislation and the policies of the federal government. What we are seeing today, I would say, in general, is some degree of ambition – not perfect – but some degree of ambition to at least have some realistic conversations in this space on what is really possible when it comes to not only having the electricity we have today and not turning off any megawatts, but ensuring that we have enough electricity for 2040, 2050 and years into the future, and what is that electricity mix going to look like? This isn’t that different. I would compare it to – although it is very different in how we’re moving forward in Canada – but the goal is not that different than when Donald Trump struck his energy dominance committee. That was a little bit different in the approach, but the goal is the same.

We’re seeing, Premier Moe, what feels like a relaxing of the clean electricity regulations, talking about natural gas and the role that it plays. But it doesn’t go as far as to mention coal. Knowing that that’s part of the security that we have around energy and electricity production here, is it a worry for you that Saskatchewan could get left out in some way on this strategy?

MOE: No. First of all, when it’s a Crown utility owned by the people, how we generate electricity is entirely within the provincial jurisdiction, and so we will generate electricity how we are able to do that in different areas of the nation, and in particular, when it’s a Crown utility owned by the people, we’ll do that in the most affordable, reliable way. However, we do have a commitment and we’ll make efforts to make sure that whatever this electricity generation mix looks like in 2050, we want it to be reliable. Yes, we want it to be affordable. Yes, and we do want it to be lower-emissions as well. And so, we’re going to find our way to that nuclear future. That’s our plan. And we’re going to use our existing assets to bridge that time in between, to, for example, make the investments, build the infrastructure, but also train the folks that are going to operate the nuclear facilities which, I would suggest, are going to be the very same families that, for generations, have operated the natural gas and the coal-fired, the thermal facilities that we have now, and I think that’s an important piece as well. This strategy, or the adjustment of the strategy that we see from the federal government, I think prioritizes energy security, it prioritizes not shuttering existing assets, and it prioritizes whether there an ability for us to create some interties with other provinces? All of those are conversations that are a priority for us, not only SaskPower, but the province.

I like the optimism, and I’m excited as well. I do hope that, like you said, we’ll see what this means when we put words into action, but I also note that this deal that we’re going to learn more about later this morning between Ottawa and Alberta – yes, it’s about a pipeline, but it’s also about this industrial carbon cost that they are looking and agreeing on. Knowing that our province has chosen to say “Look, we don’t agree with collecting these carbon taxes,” is that going to be a roadblock for us in our province?

MOE: That is the most important discussion happening right now. The pipelines are a foregone conclusion, in my opinion, all of them. What we need to do now, as Canadians, is make sure that we can land in a place where we can attract that investment and not only retain the production we have in the oil and gas industry, but start to expand it as well. The world wants it. I saw that when I was overseas, with and without the prime minister. They’ve always wanted more Canadian oil because of how it’s produced and the high quality product it is. So the pipelines are pretty straight approval in my opinion. We need to get this operating environment right, and there’s a number of details and intricacies to that, and the carbon tax will be one aspect that’s talked about. But when that is charged, it needs to be governed by the provinces, and that has been our voice in this conversation, and we have success in that space. We’ve pushed down our methane emissions in our oil and gas industry in this province by 65 per cent with provincial stringency standards, and so there’s also the question of how do the dollars get recycled back, and who do they get recycled back to from the tech fund where the money is paid into? A lot of details need to be worked out, but I am optimistic that we’re going to be able to do that and see investment in the energy industry. We’re going to need to invest in our electricity industry to power that industry and others, but we have to get this right. This is a true fork in the road, and I tell the prime minister often, “You have an opportunity to actually bring Canadians together to grow our economy, unlike any opportunity that I’ve seen in recent history.” And if we don’t get it right, the other conversation is a much more difficult one.

Right near the end of this legislative sitting, the cost of coal refurbishment became a topic again. The Saskatchewan NDP was given a document – it was leaked to them – that suggests the price of refurbishment of coal was much higher than originally told. The province’s quote was $2.6 billion. The NDP saying it’s $26 billion, but it appears to me that we’re not comparing apples to apples here. Can you clarify this, in your view?

MOE: This is politics at its finest, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. It’s $2.6 billion to refurbish our existing facilities to utilize those and to preserve our workforce so that we can start to build nuclear plants and train them, and likely their children and grandchildren, to operate those nuclear plants for the next 90 years in this province. It’s $2.6 billion. It is the most affordable plan moving forward. The opposition put forward their plan as well, and it actually is in compliance with the previous clean electricity regulations that Trudeau had, and so the NDP plan was a plan that we had modeled and it was too expensive, so we chose not to do that plan. We chose, knowing full-well that we have the right under the constitution, to create power and generate power however we can, and we want to do it in the most affordable and reliable way. What we’re seeing here is the NDP taking and adding up 25 years of fuel costs, of maintenance costs, of labor costs, of transmission for some reason – because all power needs transmission – and that capital cost, and saying that’s the upfront cost of this of this operation, and that’s just simply not the case. And what the politics of it is, what we’ve seen is an NDP leader that has lost a caucus member, has a campaign going actually to remove her, and she’s trying to talk about something else.

This is one of those topics where it’s tough if you’re not immersed in this, and even for people that talk about it on a daily basis, but don’t live it, it becomes very, very challenging. Remind us again, Premier Moe, why you feel coal was the right decision to get us to nuclear?

MOE: Because it’s more affordable and we already have the assets, which is part of what makes it more affordable. We can maintain those assets for a decade or a decade and a half, build out our nuclear capacity, start to switch our baseload power to a nuclear load. We have a Saskatoon company that is one of the largest nuclear companies in the world right now. We have and are one of the largest uranium-providing jurisdictions in the world. It only makes sense as we build out the other aspects of our economy. It’s the most affordable path forward. It’s the most reliable path forward, and we’re happy to see that there’s a government that’s open to ensuring that we don’t turn off one megawatt of power, we don’t shutter the assets that we have, prioritizing affordability and reliability. And listen, not all these conversations, whether it’s the oil and gas sector or the electricity sector, are in any way perfect, and we’re not landing in a spot where we would be perfect from the provincial government’s perspective, but we’re trying to compromise and find a spot that is going to allow for the investment to flow, our economy to flourish, people to go work in good careers – not just jobs, but good careers – not only now, but for years into the future.

We’ve talked a lot about the nuclear transition. I know it’s not a “coal until 2050, flip the switch, nuclear 2050 forward.” What is the date? Do you have a rough estimate of how long before we’re bringing nuclear on board in Saskatchewan?

MOE: I would say as soon as possible. More so in the northern part of our province, like north of Regina, up into maybe the Saskatoon area. There’s a lot happening. You’re seeing the announcement this morning between the federal government and Alberta. You’re seeing the update of these electricity regulations yesterday, with an openness to keep our existing assets going. We’re also in touch and in conversations with the major projects office on this 14-year regulatory process that the nuclear industry has today in Canada, which is quite unworkable and expensive. We’re a few hundred million dollars in, in six years in the Estevan area. We need to get that down to five or six or seven years, and the major projects office, Don Farrell there, is amenable to trying to work through that. So if we can shorten up that regulatory time, it’s going to make for a more affordable pathway and more affordable build costs, but it’s also going to allow us to maybe pull some of those large scale nuclear conversations forward into the early-to-mid-2030s for example, as opposed to allowing them the 14-year process that would put us into the 2040s. So there’s some work yet to do in this space, and we’re committed to doing it.

So possibly in the next decade, or a little more?

MOE: I think that would be a best-case scenario. There are federal regulations that need to be changed in order for that to happen, and I think what we’ve seen – whether it be with the announcement with Prime Minister Carney and Premier Smith today on the oil and gas industry or the electricity standards yesterday – there’s an openness to look at our current regulatory environment to improve it. It’s not perfect. Listen, I’m not in agreement with everything that’s happening here. However, it’s much better than it’s been the last decade, and we have to try. We have to try to find a workable, logical place for us and our industries to not only operate, but to expand, and that’s precisely what we’re trying to do – with a very different prime minister, I might say.