The recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Alberta and the federal government, signed with much fanfare, commits the province to aligning with Ottawa’s evolving methane emissions reduction agenda. The headline target of a 75% cut in methane emissions from 2014 levels by 2035 has been framed as a necessary step in Canada’s climate strategy.But buried beneath the political choreography is a question Albertans and Canadians should be asking now, before the regulatory machinery begins to move. Will these methane rules stop at oil and gas, or will they expand into the agricultural sector next?Ottawa has already signalled the groundwork for such an expansion..OLDCORN: Carney’s grip on power remains razor-thin, threat of spring election looms.According to federal narratives, Canada’s agricultural sector is responsible for roughly 10% of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions are not the result of industrial negligence or mechanical inefficiency; they arise from natural biological processes. Cattle digesting their feed, animals exhaling, manure decomposing, and crop residues breaking down in the soil all release GHGs.Yet under the federal government’s own accounting philosophy, that 10% share places agriculture on par with the emissions attributed to Alberta’s oilsands. If the oilsands warrant increasingly strict GHG regulations, it is not hard to imagine how a future federal government might justify imposing similar restrictions on farmers and ranchers.Ottawa’s Agricultural Methane Reduction Challenge, launched as a voluntary initiative, is funding research into feed additives and other interventions to reduce methane emissions from livestock..At the same time, the federal government has set a voluntary target to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, which are also GHGs, from nitrogen fertilizer use by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. While these measures are framed as collaborative and non-binding, Canadians have seen this movie before: voluntary programs often serve as the prelude to mandatory regulations.Meanwhile, the oil and gas sector has already been handed its next round of methane rules.On December 16, 2025, Ottawa finalized new regulations that build on the 2018 methane framework, which had already required a 40% to 45% reduction by 2025..SLOBODIAN: No, I won’t mourn violent ICE agitators and I won’t apologize for it.The new rules tighten leak detection, ban routine venting and flaring, and impose additional monitoring and reporting requirements. Federal estimates suggest these measures will reduce emissions by 304 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent between 2028 and 2040, at a cost of roughly $14 billion to industry.The first round of methane regulations did achieve reductions, but at significant expense. The second round will amplify those costs, which will ultimately be passed along to consumers.If agriculture is next in line, Canadians should consider the cautionary tale unfolding in Europe. This fall, the EU mandated the use of Bovaer, a methane-inhibiting feed additive designed to reduce methane from cattle burps and flatulence. The product had been validated by more than 150 scientific studies, all concluding it was safe and effective..Yet within one month of rollout, farmers across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the UK reported alarming outcomes: reduced feed intake, digestive problems, fertility issues, and cattle unable to stand or remain upright.Several countries immediately paused or scaled back their use and dropped the mandatory requirement.The question Canadians should be asking is simple: If a product backed by extensive scientific literature can fail so dramatically in real-world conditions, how confidently can we “trust the science” when regulations mandate its use?.WAGNER: ‘The land of my birth has vanished’ — what the Liberals did to Canada.But the larger issue is this: Are agricultural and oil and gas methane emissions significant relative to those from Canada’s boreal forest?Canada’s boreal forest contains one of the largest wetland ecosystems on Earth and, as such, is a massive natural emitter of methane. Bogs, swamps, and fens release methane continuously through natural biological processes.Ironically, elevated methane emissions from wetlands are indicative of carbon sequestration or humus material formation. You know, that rich black organic material one finds along marshes and bogs..Yet federal inventories focus overwhelmingly on human-caused emissions, while natural emissions are estimated with wide uncertainty ranges and minimal field data.If agricultural and oil and gas methane emissions are truly as large as Ottawa suggests, where are the reams of evidence showing they exceed natural emissions by an order of magnitude?The answer is straightforward: accurately measuring natural methane emissions is extremely expensive, and governments have shown little appetite to fund such research. Grants overwhelmingly target human-related emissions because those are the emissions policymakers intend to regulate..BURTON: Alberta’s independence question is no longer hypothetical — Canada needs to pay attention.But when researchers do measure natural emissions, the results are striking.Field studies by Professor Maria Strack at the University of Waterloo, using flux chambers in Alberta’s northern wetlands, show methane fluxes that, when combined with geographic data from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and extrapolated across Canada’s vast boreal region, suggest natural methane emissions could be at least five times higher than the combined methane emissions from Canada’s oil and gas and agricultural sectors..And even that may be conservative, as flux chambers are known to significantly underestimate real-world emissions.This raises a fundamental fairness question.When a T-bone steak costs more than $30 and many Canadians are debt-financing their grocery bills, should farmers and ranchers be penalized for methane emissions that are unavoidable to food production?.OLDCORN: Floor crossing to Liberals isn’t about one MP — it’s about breaking Pierre Poilievre.Should regulations target natural biological processes in livestock while ignoring far larger natural emissions from Canada’s massive wetlands?If Mother Nature’s methane emissions dwarf those from Canadian industry and agriculture, why are we penalizing the latter and ignoring the former?Before Ottawa expands methane regulations into the agricultural sector, Canadians deserve a full and honest accounting of all methane sources, natural and human alike. Anything less risks imposing pain without achieving meaningful climate gain.Joseph Fournier is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
