MACLEOD: Every road leads to Ottawa — how Ottawa’s power keeps expanding at Alberta’s expense

There is a pattern here, and Albertans should stop pretending it is accidental.This Liberal government is no longer satisfied with taxing, regulating, delaying, and lecturing Alberta. This federal government is now reaching into more and more areas of daily life: what we say, what we read, how we heat and power our homes, how our industries operate, how our news is distributed, how our privacy is protected, seizure of our firearms, what vehicles we can drive, and how all major projects are approved or strangled.Every new intrusion arrives with a pleasant label. Safety. Fairness. Sustainability. Canadian content. Climate responsibility. Public interest. Responsible regulation. Who could object to words like those? But Albertans are not neophytes at this. We have learned to look past the label and ask what the policy actually does. And all too often, it shifts authority away from citizens, provinces, and markets, and towards Ottawa. That is a growing problem.Take speech and digital content. While recently watered down considerably, mostly due to the stated refusal of the major online platforms to comply with this draconian legislation, the bulk of the federal government’s Online Streaming Act brings online streaming platforms under CRTC authority. Ottawa presents this as a way to support Canadian stories and music in the digital age, with another $600 million in capital, and the government has said the law allows the CRTC to issue orders regarding the “discoverability and showcasing” of Canadian programs. That may sound harmless to people who trust federal regulators. Many Albertans do not..Once government regulators begin deciding what content should be made more discoverable, they are no longer simply protecting culture. They are influencing what people are more likely to see. That is not outright censorship in the old-fashioned sense of burning books or banning newspapers. It is softer than that. It is bureaucratic and algorithmic. It is polite. But it still gives federal institutions more influence over the flow of information. That should concern every free citizen.The Online News Act follows the same pattern. Ottawa said it wanted large digital platforms to bargain fairly with news businesses. Again, the language sounds reasonable. But the result was a federal law regulating how major platforms interact with the news ecosystem. Meta blocked Canadian news links. Google pays $100 million annually for its exemption. Smaller outlets were hurt. Canadians had less access to news on platforms where many people actually read it. And somehow, Ottawa still called this progress.Energy is an even clearer example. Alberta’s economy is built around producing something the world needs: oil, natural gas, petrochemicals, electricity, food, fertilizer, and the industrial backbone that supports them. Yet Ottawa treats Alberta’s energy sector less like a national asset and more like a national embarrassment.The proposed federal cap on oil and gas emissions is one of the most obvious examples. The draft regulations would set the first compliance-period cap at 27% below reported 2026 emissions levels, estimated to align with 35% below 2019 levels. Ottawa insists this is not a production cap. That is a lawyer’s answer, not a practical one.If an industry cannot reduce emissions quickly enough under federally imposed limits, then production, investment, jobs, and growth are all threatened. You can call it an emissions cap all you like. To the people who actually work, invest in, and depend on the sector, the consequences are real..Let’s move on to the Clean Electricity Regulations. Beginning in 2035, Ottawa’s rules will set carbon dioxide limits on most fossil-fuel electricity generation units. The federal government says there are flexibilities and that provinces can choose the best solutions for their circumstances. That is a nice sentiment. But Alberta has a cold climate, an energy-intensive economy, a unique electricity market, and serious reliability concerns. We cannot run a modern industrial province on slogans, modelling assumptions, and speeches from politicians who will never be held responsible when the grid becomes unstable.Electricity has always been understood as a core provincial responsibility. Yet Ottawa is again pushing national climate policy into an area where Alberta should have primary authority. It is not enough for the federal government to tell us what we may produce. It increasingly wants to tell us how we may power ourselves. Heat pumps, indeed.The carbon tax file is just as revealing. Albertans were told the consumer carbon tax was necessary, then politically inconvenient, then effectively disposable. But the ideology behind it did not disappear. It simply migrated into the industrial system. The May 2026 Canada-Alberta MOU agreement included an effective carbon price of $130 per ton by 2040. But it didn’t include any immediate pipeline approvals, let alone a shovel in the ground. That is not a small policy detail. That is a long-term carbon price structure embedded in Alberta’s industrial future. It means Ottawa’s climate framework remains alive, even when the branding changes. The consumer pays one way or another: through higher costs, lower investment, reduced competitiveness, and slower growth. The noose is being tightened more slowly.Major projects are another area where federal influence has become suffocating. Alberta does not object to environmental review. Serious projects should be reviewed. But review is not the same thing as obstruction. Canada has built a system in which pipelines, mines, LNG projects, ports, transmission lines, and other major infrastructure can be studied, delayed, litigated, re-studied, politicized, and regulated until investors simply leave.Ottawa does not always need to say no. It can make "yes" so slow, expensive, uncertain, and politically painful that the answer becomes "no" by default. That is not responsible regulation. That is economic sabotage by process..Firearms policy is another example of Ottawa imposing central Canadian assumptions on Alberta’s values and way of life. Many Albertans grew up around responsible firearms ownership. For them, firearms are connected to hunting, sport shooting, rural life, predator control, property, tradition, and personal responsibility. Ottawa increasingly treats legal firearms owners as if they are the problem, while violent crime in cities continues for reasons that have very little to do with a farmer’s rifle or a sport shooter’s collection, or a shotgun handed down through generations.This is more than a policy disagreement. It is a cultural insult. Ottawa looks at rural and Western Canada and sees something to supervise. Alberta looks at Ottawa and sees politicians who do not understand, nor have any desire to understand, the people they are regulating.Privacy and surveillance may become the most dangerous front of all. Recent federal lawful-access proposals have raised alarms among major technology companies, including Apple and Google, which have urged stronger judicial oversight and encryption protections. Reuters reported that these companies were concerned that the legislation could lead to secret government orders and potential pressure to weaken privacy protections. Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, proposes making social media platforms illegal for those under 16. This likely means age verification for everyone, yet another large step toward centralized control. The federal government says this is about safety and law enforcement. Of course, it does. Every expansion of state power now arrives wrapped in the language of safety. But free people should be very cautious when the government asks for greater access to private communications, greater secrecy, greater technical authority, and greater trust.Finally, there is the media itself. This is the issue that ties all the others together. When the government funds media, regulates digital platforms, shapes news distribution laws, supports selected outlets, and then benefits politically from the resulting narratives, Canadians have every right to be, and should be, skeptical..That does not mean every journalist is corrupt. It does not mean every story is propaganda. But it does mean the information environment is compromised. When the same political class that wants to control Alberta’s economy also influences the media ecosystem that explains Alberta to the rest of the country, we should not be naïve about the results.Alberta’s grievances are minimized. Federal overreach is softened. Independence is mocked. Polling is promoted when it discourages the movement. Government talking points are repeated as if they are neutral analysis. Alberta’s anger is described as emotional, while Ottawa’s control is described as responsible leadership.Enough of this. The issue is not one law. It is the pattern.Speech. News. Energy. Electricity. Carbon pricing. Major projects. Firearms. Privacy. Media. In every case, Ottawa is gaining more influence. In every case, Alberta is expected to adapt, comply, pay up, and be quiet. And in every case, the justification is dressed up in respectable language by people who will never live with the consequences the way Albertans do.Many Albertans see the direction of travel. More federal control, regulation, managed opinion, and climate ideology. More Ottawa.Much less provincial authority. Less freedom, less open debate, less practical economics. Less Alberta. The facts are strong enough. Ottawa is expanding its reach into areas that matter deeply to this province and to the character of its people.We need to speak more clearly, organize more seriously, and stop apologizing for defending our own province. Alberta has every right to resist federal control, to demand self-government, to ask whether Confederation still protects our future or whether it has become the mechanism by which that future is slowly taken from us.This is no longer about one policy fight. It is about who gets to decide what Alberta becomes. To those Albertans who are actually paying attention, the answer should be obvious.

MACLEOD: Every road leads to Ottawa — how Ottawa’s power keeps expanding at Alberta’s expense

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