CALGARY—It’s no secret that Canada is phasing out coal.

With climate change marked by warmer weather and unpredictable storms, Canadians are increasingly looking to lower-carbon energy options, and a greener economy is on the horizon.

The first hurdle is coal-fired electricity generation, which currently powers around 9 per cent of Canada’s electricity, according to Natural Resources Canada. The federal government and several provincial governments have put in place a number of “just transition” plans since 2016 to help the Canadian economy deal with the effects of phasing out the long-standing industry.

And though the current Alberta government has promised to halt the previous NDP government’s phase-out plan, it’s in Alberta that the majority of federal and provincial transition plans have been implemented.

These transition plans are intended to financially support coal workers who have been impacted by the phaseout. The programs provide income assistance and cover some relocation costs. Some help coal communities invest in green energy and retrain their local workforce.

But a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says these programs are only helping a small fraction of the population affected by the coal phaseout, questioning whether the programs are as “just” as their name makes them out to be.

According to researcher Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, who co-authored the report with Zaee Deshpande, Canada’s coal transition plan primarily benefits white, Canadian-born men, because the majority of coal workers belong to that category. However, the transition doesn’t just impact coal workers, said Mertins-Kirkwood. It impacts the indirect jobs created by the coal industry, such as in the food, construction and health-care sectors, and these lower-paying, less-secure jobs are disproportionately filled by women, Indigenous people, immigrants, and people of colour.

“If you shut down … that coal plant or that coal mine, it’s not just the coal workers who lose their jobs, it’s everyone,” he said. “It’s the people who make lunch for coal workers, it’s the people who build houses for coal workers, it’s people who provide health care to coal workers.”

Mertins-Kirkwood said only a small proportion of coal workers have taken advantage of these transition programs, since many don’t need the help as much as someone in a peripheral job might.

“So there’s this really disproportionate impact of the transition programs where … almost everyone who can access them, who’s benefiting from them, tend to be high-income, Canadian-born white men,” he said.

According to Mertins-Kirkwood, there are two parts to the green transition: the phasing out of old energy industries, and the investment in new energies. The phaseout is the one that costs people jobs and money — requiring transition funds and, in the case of coal, wiping out communities where lives have been built around the industry for generations.

Many of these communities are reluctant to let go of coal, said Mertins-Kirkwood, and for good reason — their family and community are tied up in coal, and after generations of hard work, suddenly they’re being pushed out and handed a subsidy instead.

“It’s really difficult to have these conversations,” he said. “They have literally powered … their provinces for a long time. And instead of being treated with gratitude for that work, they feel kind of demonized today, and that’s absolutely unfair.”

But the green energy industry has the potential to create more jobs than the phaseout destroys, said Mertins-Kirkwood, and that’s something that doesn’t get enough attention. Many of today’s coal workers will be poised to work in geothermal or wind or solar if enough support is given to help them retrain, he said.

However, both the phaseout and the investment in green infrastructure will ignore and further disadvantage marginalized groups if a few key changes aren’t made, he said.

“If current employment patterns continue, the benefits of massive new infrastructure investments — hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades — will not be shared with women, Indigenous workers, racialized workers and immigrants in proportion to their share of the overall workforce,” the report states.

The report has several important recommendations. One is to expand the eligibility criteria for transition plans to include people in peripheral jobs who are equally affected by the coal phaseout. Another is to make more direct public investments in alternative industries in former coal communities.

Thirdly, the report recommends the government make more effort to help marginalized people get into the new green workforce, through financial investment in training programs and doing more to make the new industries accessible to those workers.

“Right now, it’s just really hard if you’re not a Canadian-born white man to get into these industries,” said Mertins-Kirkwood. “We’re going to be creating a lot more jobs than are lost as we transition to a greener economy, so it’s important we make sure that people doing those jobs are more representative of the overall workforce.”

Though coal isn’t as big an industry as oil and gas — the federal Just Transition Task Force estimated 3,000 to 3,900 jobs would be affected by the transition — Mertins-Kirkwood said the phaseout of coal will serve as a blueprint when it comes time to move away from oil and gas. The oil and gas industry bears many similarities to the coal industry, including when it comes to the demographic of its workers. And, like coal, it must eventually be phased out, the report states. Therefore, Mertins-Kirkwood said it’s important to make sure the phaseout is done right.

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He stressed that the report is not meant to vilify the current just transition plans in place. They’re a step in the right direction, he said, but need improvement so they can benefit everyone affected by the coal phaseout.

Alberta is a global leader in the transition conversation, said Mertins-Kirkwood, whether it is aware of it or not.

“It’s really become a model for the rest of the world. So that’s something that we can take pride in,” he said.

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