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Last chance to scrap the cap: Minister Schulz

Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz issued the following statement on Alberta’s official response to the federal government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap regulations:

"For too long, we have watched this federal government ignore the needs of Canadians while attacking our economy and our energy sector. The proposed emissions cap is not just bad policy, it's an economic wrecking ball aimed at the heart of Canada’s economy.

“Numerous reports have already pointed out the many ways that this cap will cost Canadians, including a production cut of at least one million barrels a day of oil and gas and up to 150,000 jobs lost from coast to coast. Despite this, the federal government released draft regulations in November that set us on a course for disaster.

“Alberta has submitted detailed analysis showing, once again, that the proposed federal oil and gas emission cap is in reality an ideological cap on oil and gas production. The 35 per cent cut to emissions by 2030 is not achievable or realistic, and families across Canada will pay the price. Global emissions will increase under this cap and here at home, parents will lose their jobs, businesses will close, costs will rise and government revenues that support schools, hospitals and critical services will be cut.

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From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids