Steven Guilbeault is gone, but oh, the wreckage he leaves behind.
No single politician, apart from ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, did more to create today's separatist movement in this province.
The former environment minister's extremist climate policies, coupled with massive expansion of federal power, imprinted a fixed belief that Liberal Ottawa despises Alberta and can never be trusted.
Prime Minister Mark Carney's program is appealing for many, but the separatists don't believe a word of it.
Hundreds of thousands of Albertans now reject Canada. In some extreme cases, they hate Canada.
They would have us join America or establish an independent Alberta with help from across the border.
Their rejection of Canada is that profound.
They forced an Oct. 19 referendum out of Canada's most uncomfortable premier, Danielle Smith.
For millions of federalists in Alberta, among whom I proudly count myself, this is a difficult, painful time.
Federalism will carry the vote but the deep split in Alberta will not heal soon, or easily.
Guilbeault and Trudeau bear heavy responsibility for a Canadian crisis that is now international news.
They imposed policies that could only be seen as an attack on the major energy province.
The Impact Assessment Act, the emissions cap, the electricity regulations, the planned "just transition" of workers away from oil and gas, all were intended to suppress Canada's most lucrative export industry, and Alberta's economy.
Trudeau made Guilbeault the environment and climate change minister on Oct. 26, 2021. For four years his centralist extremism fostered Alberta counter-extremism.
He resigned the portfolio on Nov. 27, 2025 but the damage was done.
Upon quitting as an MP this week, he still made it clear that he was bitterly opposed to Carney negotiating with Alberta.
The nadir of Guilbeault's wackiness came in 2024, when he stated that Ottawa didn't want new roads in Canada.
"The analysis we have done is that the network is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have" he said.
"And thanks to a mix of investment in active and public transit, and in territorial planning and densification, we can very well achieve our goals of economic, social and human development without more enlargement of the road network."
Tell that to the people of northern Alberta, who've been begging for twinning dangerous Highway 63 for years.
In fact, tell it to just about any rural community in Canada.
Guilbeault also said electric cars wouldn't really solve anything, even as Trudeau threw billions into battery plants.
This was a story of expanding radicalism that threatened disaster for the second largest country on earth.
Guilbeault's climate extremism was never a secret.
