A standing ovation for former federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault. A call for a national windfall tax on oil companies.
In Alberta.
These were all part of Thursday’s keynote address at the Elbows Up for Climate conference at Edmonton’s Art Gallery of Alberta.
Elbows Up for Climate is a collection of more than 300 mayors and municipal councillors from across Canada, pushing for action on the environment.
John Vaillant, author of the bestselling Fire Weather, noted the irony of Guilbeault, who had been the bane of the Alberta government during his time as the federal environment minister, being saluted by hundreds of municipal politicians only a short walk from the provincial legislature.
Vaillant and Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland pulled no punches when it came to talking about the risks that supercharged wildfires present to Canadians. Ireland has made no secret of the connection he’s made between climate change and the wildfire that razed his town in 2024, including his own home.
Ireland said that Jasper thought it had learned a lot from the Fort McMurray fire in terms of preparing for its own big one. Some fire risks were removed near the town. Landscaping work was done to hamper a fire from crossing from the forest into town. But the Jasper fire was a “supercharged” blaze, and cyclonic winds carried embers into town like tiny meteorites, setting fire to businesses and homes.
“We spent a lot of time planning and preparing, but we were not prepared for the ferocity, the intensity and the size of that fire,” said Ireland. “It wasn’t the fire that got our town, it was the ember shower that landed on structures,
Vaillant said that forest fires do happen naturally, but the “supercharged” fires that decimated Fort McMurray, Jasper, Los Angeles and raged through Greece are new over the last decade. And he said the connection to warmer days and nights is irrefutable. But, he lamented that, even in communities affected by fires, the public refuses to accept the basic science.
“There’s no getting around the fact that weather is different now, and fire is different now,” said Vaillant. “We’ve always had big fires, that is true, but not this bad, not this often.”
He predicted a future where it will be common to see planes grounded because it’s too hot to take off, and pavement buckles because of intense temperatures. And he said the new wildfires have no precedent.
And he made no bones about laying the blame at oil and gas companies, accusing them of charging the climate with carbon while raking in record profits. He said it is time for Ottawa to charge a windfall tax on oil companies. He called the current $100-plus a barrel price an example of “war profiteering.”
“One way to understand capitalism, as it currently practiced, is as a Ponzi scheme,” said Vaillant, where the environment is leverage and the global rise in temperatures is the “interest on that debt.”
Author John Vaillant, Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, former Montreal mayor Valerie Plante and former Edmonton mayor Don Iveson discuss wildfire danger at the Elbows Up for Climate conference at the Art Gallery of Alberta on Thursday, June 4, 2026. Steven Sandor/Postmedia
Climate change, despite the wildfires, has become a political back-burner issue. Guilbeault fell out with his Liberal party when Mark Carney replaced Justin Trudeau as prime minister. He will soon be leaving Ottawa. He makes no secret of the fact that he feels the new Liberal leadership has betrayed its principles when it comes to environment. And he said the anger he faced in Alberta in his time as environment minister was undemocratic.
“It’s not a situation unique to Alberta. We are seeing a rising populism all over the world and rising polarization around a number of issues, including climate change, and I think we should all be worried,” Guilbeault said. “It’s interesting that some people who would drape themselves in freedom of speech and freedom of expression would work very hard to prevent others from being able to express their views on something like climate change.”
Ireland said he’s received flak for his stance on climate change.
“But, what are they going to do, take my house away?” he said.
Yet, he added that he understands his very public stance on climate change could hurt his city.
Valerie Plante, the former “green” mayor of Montreal, said because cities have to work with the federal and provincial governments, sometimes they are fearful of pushing back on issues like climate change.
“We can bring people’s voice to the prime minister and other people, but I have to say it is often difficult as well, because we depend so much on the other level of governments, right, in terms of money. We’re begging for money all the time,” said Plante. “It’s actually the constituents and the citizens are people and Canadians. When you elect people who believe in climate change and you give us strong mandates, then we can go and march to Ottawa, but by ourselves it becomes difficult because we get punished sometimes when we don’t go the same way as the federal or the provincial governments.”
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