Alberta’s opposition New Democrats are condemning another sole-source contract awarded to a close associate of the United Conservative Party government.
A recently released document shows David Yager, a longtime oilpatch executive, journalist and Conservative activist, is being paid $70,000 to review the Alberta Energy Regulator. The information is contained in the government’s quarterly disclosure statements.
The disclosure reveals little about what Yager has been asked to review. It refers to a ‘review’ of the regulator – one of Alberta’s most important public bodies – and gives an end date of February.
Neither Alberta’s energy ministry nor Yager were immediately available for comment. A spokesman for the regulator said it had no comment.
Rules posted on the government’s website say sole-source contracts can be issued when “it can be demonstrated that only one supplier is capable of meeting the requirements of a procurement.”
NDP critic Kathleen Ganley questioned Thursday whether that rule was being applied in this case.
“In a province full of energy experts, one wonders what the job is if the outcome is predetermined.”
Ganley said there has been no information about what the review will consider or about the process for public input. The regulator adjudicates some of the province’s most far-reaching and contentious issues, including coal mining, oilpatch cleanup and tailings management.
Ganley called Yager a conservative “partisan”.
Yager’s website lists a long history of involvement in conservative politics, including fundraising for the former Wildrose Party, running as a Wildrose candidate, supporting its merger with the Alberta Progressive Conservatives to form the now-governing UCP, and advising Energy Minister Brian Jean.
Yager has claimed to have helped persuade Premier Danielle Smith to enter politics. He also once compared the former New Democrat government to an incurable disease.
It’s the second recent sole-source contract for Yager, who also worked on a report on Alberta’s energy future – a report that was never released.
“It looks like the premier hired an insider to write a report that would give her the answer she wanted,” Ganley said. “It’s incredibly troubling.”
In an article written in 2019, Yager laid out his vision for a revamped regulator.
“That the AER should ensure that the industry cleans up after itself is part of its mandate,” he wrote. “How it achieves this needs to be reviewed.”
Yager said court rulings that prioritise environmental liabilities over creditors in bankruptcy have put energy companies under pressure.
“Troubled companies can’t borrow to keep up with (the regulator’s) decommissioning deposits,” he wrote. “Is this what the (regulator) should be doing at a time when many companies are in financial difficulty?”
Yager argued that the regulator’s role had expanded to include environmental and social issues. These issues should be decided elsewhere, he wrote.
“Alberta’s energy regulator was not created to make policy decisions, nor should it be allowed to do so.”
He said industry critics were uncompromising and that attempts to find a middle ground were doomed to fail.
“While the stated mandate is not to say ‘no’, the increasingly long, costly, convoluted and uncertain path to ‘yes’ makes a review and possibly an overhaul of the agency essential.”
Ganley said any review of the regulator must not only be conducted in public, it must be published.
“The [regulator] does some pretty important things.”