I unfortunately live in Alberta and I have to say Smith seems decently smart. Which is not to say I agree with or would vote for her but that shes very capable of getting things she wants. Seeing Alberta pop up on HN so often is disheartening. I hope she gets voted out soon or I just might have to move
Right, I submitted because in addition to being from Alberta (originally, not there now) and having my whole family out there I think there's actually a useful analysis where Alberta's right wing forces have been for sometime a "vanguard" the further side of conservative ideology in North America ... and have had enormous "success" in not just fighting climate change initiatives but breaking apart a lot of the Canadian social contract. They're successful in enacting policy that even their own domestic population is wildly opposed to. Over and over again. E.g. they have extremely little support within their own urban centres, but still run the province however they want.
So actually, it's a place that needs to be watched as a barometer of the future, really. And an example of why "technology will save us from climate change" is a bad take: these people (petroleum sector) will fight tooth and nail to hold onto what they have and they will take us all down with them.
The $14 is what ARMA claims in their press relesaes but they haven't broken down where they came at that number. Many analysts seem to think it could be much higher.
The net effect along with other regulatory moves the AB gov't has taken (they banned all renewables projects outright for some months a couple years ag) is to discourage investment in what was formerly a growing sector.
It will only make sense if the per cost panel is less than certain number (if my math is correct it should be $175), but if the panel cost is over $175 then even with more sales taxes in other provinces the total will be cheaper. That is of course on capital cost not operational, also, not counting the “forced recycling” mentioned.
Has always seemed like a policy failure to not just charge those fees at the point of sale and then fund a robust waste disposal program for the community.
Why don't they slap some punitive taxes on O&G executives whose companies that leave abandoned wells all over the province? No? Government too captured by corporate interests?
AER charges all active O&G companies operating in Alberta a levy that's meant to fund closing orphaned wells should a company go bankrupt and fail to close their wells. However, you can argue that the levy isn't high enough or that there are too many loopholes that let companies sell off, merge, etc. without closing down wells first.
Alberta is the most US-like province. As it's not been hit by Trump tariffs, it opposes any change to the current situation. As it's based on oil revenue (with some food production), of course it opposes renewable energy sources. Bit selfish, it is.
I wonder how loud they'd yowl if "no trade with Canada" gores their ox?
Implicit in all the "we'll bring Canada to heel" and "we don't need anything from Canada" talk is an Alberta/Sask exception. They don't mean AB/SK. They mean the rest of Canada, which leans further to the left politically and has more of a manufacturing sector or agricultural / forestry focus.
Also notably there are US states like Texas which are also extremely focused on fossil fuel production which aren't taking this aggressive anti-renewables stance. Alberta is actually further on this axis than any other regime in North America -- taking on a very explicit anti-renewables stance. Even effectively (through regulation) banning their use in large scale datacentre rollouts.
The local elites there are extremely threatened by any renewable talk; they run an active disinformation campaign, and formerly the province had one of the fastest growing renewable sectors in the world. (Alberta gets a lot of solar hours and has high winds, too)
Aside, I was coming back from Edmonton a couple days ago and in the airport there's a wine/liquor store with a sandwich board out front proudly proclaiming that they "have US wine & liquor for sale!" -- completely thumbing nose at the rest of the country as a business opportunity.
Different product. Bourbon owns a lot of headspace with consumers, and is not available in most of the country right now. There are Canadian made Bourbon-like products, but nothing will fill that niche for purists.
I imagine there's a similar thing going on with California wines. But less so.
> Implicit in all the "we'll bring Canada to heel" and "we don't need anything from Canada" talk is an Alberta/Sask exception. They don't mean AB/SK. They mean the rest of Canada, which leans further to the left politically and has more of a manufacturing sector or agricultural / forestry focus.
The paradox is that if we take the US administration at their word, that it is the trade deficit that is the problem they need to solve, then Alberta is 100% of the problem. Ontario, BC, Quebec have basically equal trade with the US. We ship a lot to the US, but we ship a lot of things we could make domestically from the US, though that is rapidly changing (for instance a major rail car manufacturing process is spinning up to replace that as an import from the US).
Alberta is basically 100% exports to the US, with negligible imports from the US.
So it's hilarious when Alberta says this isn't their trade war. Again, if we take Trump and his crew of stunningly incompetent self-dealing grifters and rapists at their word, it is completely Alberta's trade war.
Apparently because the US buys Alberta oil, the rest of the Canada should be punished somehow? How spectacularly stupid.
But yes, Danielle Smith is a vile human and is a traitor to Canada. I get why Albertans elected her -- there are legitimate grievances and a better "deal" to be had -- but she is going to do spectacular damage to the province.
> Apparently because the US buys Alberta oil, the rest of the Canada should be punished somehow? How spectacularly stupid.
I mean they clearly actually mean the opposite. And are doing the opposite. They're making moves to push Alberta out of confederation. I think at this point it should be clear the Trump regime funding and supporting Alberta "separatist" campaigns. At least giving it a megaphone far beyond its actual real local support base.
So, yeah, one way of "dealing with" the "trade deficit" there is to simply push Alberta out of Canada.
Another (longer-term) move is taking over Venezuela and getting an alternate source for heavy crude.
It seems like the pro-Canada side is letting Smith set the agenda, is not organizing much or being extremely present/vocal. Just hoping that polling is accurate and it’ll all blow over. It makes me very nervous in light of Brexit and the general unreliability of polls these days. I still think it’s a long shot, but why are they playing with fire here?
The most worrisome thing is that Smith has basically already said they'll reserve freedom to "interpret" the result of this "referendum" however want.
So if they see a number above 25% I can guarantee you they'll take that as a blank cheque to pursue all sorts of things that the majority does not agree with.
Somehow their provincial polling numbers as a party don't even reflect the unpopularity of this referendum. It's very weird.
I left the province 25 years ago during Klein years. The same insanity has always been there. My parents, brother, etc are all very anxious about this right now and openly talking about moving (less so my parents as they're elderly). And we just sent my eldest off to her first year at the University of Alberta. So a lot of skin in the game for our family. The whole thing is extremely.. fucked up.
Feels like a one party state sometimes. Despite the ANDP holding quite high levels of support, there's just this sense that no other party can ever be allowed to govern. My parents have had election signs removed from their property, vandalized etc in the past. I volunteered for the NDP in elections in the early 90s and was openly threatened. It's very weird.
I mean, the Venezuela thing is just incredibly stupid. Yes, Trump is trying to pretend that's a big win, but even if the US spent hundreds of billions actually building infrastructure there, odds overwhelmingly favour it being lost in the next revolution. It turns out people don't like to be robbed.
But yeah, I 100% understand what they're really doing. But they keep up with this trade deficit farce, and when there was almost an agreement signed (which would have been a massive mistake on Canada's part), Trump immediately started celebrating even more oil capacity from Alberta and reviving Keystone XL...which...jesus christ, keep some sort of consistency.
Alberta separatism is hugely unpopular and will fail, and even better even this tepid one is "be in Canada but with more individual powers and all the benefits of Canada" -- to even get to double digits they have to push an absolute fantasy -- but when it's tied with becoming a part of the US it becomes amazingly unpopular. Even right wing Albertans look at the corrupt kleptocracy the US has become and say no thanks. I mean, there are the loudmouthed slobbering smooth-brain sorts that say their stupid nonsense online -- they should all be deported, fwiw -- but they're a tiny minority.
This is an insane take. A $14 recycling tax per $1000+ panel comes to <1.4%, which is around a quarter of federal sales tax for example, or 1/10 of combined GST and PST somewhere like BC.
Alberta has no provincial sales tax for the record and is the ONLY province without provincial sales tax. Solar panels are still more expensive in every other province in Canada based on sales tax rates alone.
<1.4% to fund the proper recycling of a solar panel seems more than reasonable.
Edit - also Alberta already has the lowest cost per installed watt of any province due to generally lower taxes and more vibrant construction ecosystem. Plus no PST. Complaining about a recycling fee is completely brain-dead and/or propaganda.
$14 per panel seems pretty good. This link estimates the cost at $15-45 USD, I've heard of costs as high as a couple hundred euros in France (except it's billed directly to the manufacturer so it's hidden). Complaining about $14 in the only Canadian province without PST is ridiculous.
High quality 500-600w bifacial n panels are between $200-300 in Canada at normal install sizes (12-32). We do lag behind the costs elsewhere, but still nowhere close to $1000 per panel.
They probably should increase the levies. On the other hand, the province does get $20 billion+ in direct oil revenue per year (royalties), so it's not like oil companies are just straight up robbing us.
Except that revenue doesn't go towards well cleanup. Not really.
Also it goes up and down drastically. After Trump is finished making a mess in Hormuz, the number will go down again, and Alberta finance ministers will go back to ranting about reigning in excessive spending.
> Except that revenue doesn't go towards well cleanup
Well it's a hard problem because companies that are still in business clean up their own wells. Only bankrupt companies leave orphan wells. So guesstimating the costs is difficult. Yes there should be more planning perhaps, but if it does have to come out of general revenue it's still a net win.
Unless you've got the relevant licenses to install the panel up to code and hook into the power grid properly, yes, the cost of the installation is the cost.
Also, 5% would still be lower than the lowest PST of any province lol.
Also the "notoriously poisonous" part is just... not true.
There's bad faith outrage grifters and climate denialists who promote that idea, but the most common solar panel designs do not contain lead or cadmium.
And even the ones that do, solar panels are 100% recyclable. They shouldn't be going to landfill anyway, every single component in them except the glue that holds it together can be remanufactured into more solar panels.
Edit: To answer the inevitable followup question: "where are all the recyclers then?"
Solar panel recycling isn't a big business yet because the things are so damn resilient, with expected lifespans of 25-50 years or more.
The first generation of modern solar panels aren't even halfway through their service lives yet. Today the only dead panels are ones that suffered accidental damage, the supply of EOL panels that could be recycled is zero and will be for a while. We shouldn't expect to see recycling start to happen on a commercial scale until the 2040s or 2050s.
My understanding is that it’s the thin film variant that’s “famously poisonous”, the Cadmium Telluride ones. But that’s not the type that almost any field full of solar is made up of.
I think that's because it's adding to the cost of solar, effectively making it an barrier to entry; when other provinces or states have financial incentives to install solar panels instead.
This measure sounds a bit disingenuous since Alberta has such a large petroleum industry and this type of measure targets in particular renewables, it looks like a punitive tax. If the problem really is recycling costs, make them payable on recycling (like, again, many products such as used drywall or oil)
Nobody is opposed to a recycling fee. If you actually read the article you will see it's 2.5x to 100x the recycling fees imposed anywhere else in the world. And accompanied by a disinformation campaign from the government.
Notably the same province has a massive abandoned oil & gas well problem that they have failed to deal with for decades at this point.
The same government also effectively banned the use of renewables to power datacentre projects in Alberta, forcing them to use natural gas only.
- Commissioned research estimates approximately C$5 per panel in present-value recycling costs, accounting for cost escalation over 20 years and potential reuse.
- The gov'ts "ARMA" has not published a breakdown explaining its C$14 figure.
- Utility projects already face reclamation security requirements covering recycling and disposal, raising a potential double-charging concern.
Do sufficient facilities exist to keep up with the recycling demand that will exist 25-50 years from now for panels? If not, then the $5 per panel needs to be increased to account for the extra infrastructure.
"I stopped reading halfway because it sounded like pure propaganda to me without any justification as to why it was unreasonable." Please stick to the HN rules. Please act in good faith
She (Danielle Smith) is one of the shrewdest politicians in North America right now, actually.
Not, like good shrewd, but very tactically smart and with a very capable public relations ability capable of keeping a notoriously hard-to-tame right wing activist base in line behind her gov't.
Entrenched interests want to take us all down with them, unfortunately. They will burn the field and salt the earth rather than yield control and lose their parasitical source of wealth.
So actually, it's a place that needs to be watched as a barometer of the future, really. And an example of why "technology will save us from climate change" is a bad take: these people (petroleum sector) will fight tooth and nail to hold onto what they have and they will take us all down with them.
In case you want to appropriately calibrate your anger.
Note that usually you mount many solar panels, not just one, so this will stack relatively quickly.
So a $336 premium, or roughly 1.3 additional panels in terms of cost.
While sure, that's not nothing, it's ~$6700 vs ~$7050, or a ~5% premium to the pre-tax cost of the panels.
Here’s 31 445W panels for $4,650, full retail. This is literally the first google result I clicked.
Two and a half years ago I bought 18 405W panels for $3,312, full retail. They were cheaper wholesale.
https://cdnsolar.ca/products/canadian-solar-445w-all-black-p...
The net effect along with other regulatory moves the AB gov't has taken (they banned all renewables projects outright for some months a couple years ag) is to discourage investment in what was formerly a growing sector.
I wonder how loud they'd yowl if "no trade with Canada" gores their ox?
Also notably there are US states like Texas which are also extremely focused on fossil fuel production which aren't taking this aggressive anti-renewables stance. Alberta is actually further on this axis than any other regime in North America -- taking on a very explicit anti-renewables stance. Even effectively (through regulation) banning their use in large scale datacentre rollouts.
The local elites there are extremely threatened by any renewable talk; they run an active disinformation campaign, and formerly the province had one of the fastest growing renewable sectors in the world. (Alberta gets a lot of solar hours and has high winds, too)
Aside, I was coming back from Edmonton a couple days ago and in the airport there's a wine/liquor store with a sandwich board out front proudly proclaiming that they "have US wine & liquor for sale!" -- completely thumbing nose at the rest of the country as a business opportunity.
I imagine there's a similar thing going on with California wines. But less so.
The paradox is that if we take the US administration at their word, that it is the trade deficit that is the problem they need to solve, then Alberta is 100% of the problem. Ontario, BC, Quebec have basically equal trade with the US. We ship a lot to the US, but we ship a lot of things we could make domestically from the US, though that is rapidly changing (for instance a major rail car manufacturing process is spinning up to replace that as an import from the US).
Alberta is basically 100% exports to the US, with negligible imports from the US.
So it's hilarious when Alberta says this isn't their trade war. Again, if we take Trump and his crew of stunningly incompetent self-dealing grifters and rapists at their word, it is completely Alberta's trade war.
Apparently because the US buys Alberta oil, the rest of the Canada should be punished somehow? How spectacularly stupid.
But yes, Danielle Smith is a vile human and is a traitor to Canada. I get why Albertans elected her -- there are legitimate grievances and a better "deal" to be had -- but she is going to do spectacular damage to the province.
I mean they clearly actually mean the opposite. And are doing the opposite. They're making moves to push Alberta out of confederation. I think at this point it should be clear the Trump regime funding and supporting Alberta "separatist" campaigns. At least giving it a megaphone far beyond its actual real local support base.
So, yeah, one way of "dealing with" the "trade deficit" there is to simply push Alberta out of Canada.
Another (longer-term) move is taking over Venezuela and getting an alternate source for heavy crude.
Notably both paths are being taken.
So if they see a number above 25% I can guarantee you they'll take that as a blank cheque to pursue all sorts of things that the majority does not agree with.
Somehow their provincial polling numbers as a party don't even reflect the unpopularity of this referendum. It's very weird.
I left the province 25 years ago during Klein years. The same insanity has always been there. My parents, brother, etc are all very anxious about this right now and openly talking about moving (less so my parents as they're elderly). And we just sent my eldest off to her first year at the University of Alberta. So a lot of skin in the game for our family. The whole thing is extremely.. fucked up.
Feels like a one party state sometimes. Despite the ANDP holding quite high levels of support, there's just this sense that no other party can ever be allowed to govern. My parents have had election signs removed from their property, vandalized etc in the past. I volunteered for the NDP in elections in the early 90s and was openly threatened. It's very weird.
But yeah, I 100% understand what they're really doing. But they keep up with this trade deficit farce, and when there was almost an agreement signed (which would have been a massive mistake on Canada's part), Trump immediately started celebrating even more oil capacity from Alberta and reviving Keystone XL...which...jesus christ, keep some sort of consistency.
Alberta separatism is hugely unpopular and will fail, and even better even this tepid one is "be in Canada but with more individual powers and all the benefits of Canada" -- to even get to double digits they have to push an absolute fantasy -- but when it's tied with becoming a part of the US it becomes amazingly unpopular. Even right wing Albertans look at the corrupt kleptocracy the US has become and say no thanks. I mean, there are the loudmouthed slobbering smooth-brain sorts that say their stupid nonsense online -- they should all be deported, fwiw -- but they're a tiny minority.
Alberta has no provincial sales tax for the record and is the ONLY province without provincial sales tax. Solar panels are still more expensive in every other province in Canada based on sales tax rates alone.
<1.4% to fund the proper recycling of a solar panel seems more than reasonable.
Edit - also Alberta already has the lowest cost per installed watt of any province due to generally lower taxes and more vibrant construction ecosystem. Plus no PST. Complaining about a recycling fee is completely brain-dead and/or propaganda.
Edit 2 - https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/06/05/solar-panel-recycling...
$14 per panel seems pretty good. This link estimates the cost at $15-45 USD, I've heard of costs as high as a couple hundred euros in France (except it's billed directly to the manufacturer so it's hidden). Complaining about $14 in the only Canadian province without PST is ridiculous.
Can Alberta apply it to oil and gas companies too?
Also it goes up and down drastically. After Trump is finished making a mess in Hormuz, the number will go down again, and Alberta finance ministers will go back to ranting about reigning in excessive spending.
Well it's a hard problem because companies that are still in business clean up their own wells. Only bankrupt companies leave orphan wells. So guesstimating the costs is difficult. Yes there should be more planning perhaps, but if it does have to come out of general revenue it's still a net win.
https://solarpowerdepot.ca/canadian-solar-450w-mono-bifacial...
https://solarshoppingmall.com/products/renesola-450w-mono-so...
Those numbers point more towards 5-10% cost per panel.
I think your “$1,000+ panel” is conflating the hardware with its share of the entire installation. I don't know how else to explain it.
Also the "$14" number was put out by AMRA (the government's body) without any explanation of how they arrived at that number.
TFA is biased, yes, but its bias is frankly justifiable in the current context. While your "take" seems profoundly dishonest.
Also, 5% would still be lower than the lowest PST of any province lol.
But bulk buyers of panels aren't the end consumer. Passing that on as part of a $15000 installation over 15 years is nothing.
There's bad faith outrage grifters and climate denialists who promote that idea, but the most common solar panel designs do not contain lead or cadmium.
And even the ones that do, solar panels are 100% recyclable. They shouldn't be going to landfill anyway, every single component in them except the glue that holds it together can be remanufactured into more solar panels.
Edit: To answer the inevitable followup question: "where are all the recyclers then?"
Solar panel recycling isn't a big business yet because the things are so damn resilient, with expected lifespans of 25-50 years or more.
The first generation of modern solar panels aren't even halfway through their service lives yet. Today the only dead panels are ones that suffered accidental damage, the supply of EOL panels that could be recycled is zero and will be for a while. We shouldn't expect to see recycling start to happen on a commercial scale until the 2040s or 2050s.
This measure sounds a bit disingenuous since Alberta has such a large petroleum industry and this type of measure targets in particular renewables, it looks like a punitive tax. If the problem really is recycling costs, make them payable on recycling (like, again, many products such as used drywall or oil)
Notably the same province has a massive abandoned oil & gas well problem that they have failed to deal with for decades at this point.
The same government also effectively banned the use of renewables to power datacentre projects in Alberta, forcing them to use natural gas only.
https://renewablesassociation.ca/recycling-a-tv-costs-2-75-w...
https://globalnews.ca/news/12048123/alberta-solar-panel-recy...
Notably:
- Commissioned research estimates approximately C$5 per panel in present-value recycling costs, accounting for cost escalation over 20 years and potential reuse.
- The gov'ts "ARMA" has not published a breakdown explaining its C$14 figure.
- Utility projects already face reclamation security requirements covering recycling and disposal, raising a potential double-charging concern.
Not, like good shrewd, but very tactically smart and with a very capable public relations ability capable of keeping a notoriously hard-to-tame right wing activist base in line behind her gov't.
Best not to underestimate her.