Guilbeault says clean electricity rules would ‘save lives’ in resignation letter

Former Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages Steven Guilbeault at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa on Monday June 16, 2025. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick) (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

In resigning from the Carney cabinet Thursday, MP Steven Guilbeault wrote a three-page letter in which he says, among other things, that the Clean Electricity Regulations — which Alberta will no longer need to follow — have the potential to save lives. A medical association agrees.

It’s not every day a minister walks away from a government while stressing that a regulation he’s preparing to scrap in one province could save human lives.

“I am aligned with him 100 per cent,” said Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, pointing to Health Canada data estimating that air pollution, caused in part by fossil fuels, leads to more than 17,000 premature deaths each year.

In his resignation letter published Thursday, Guilbeault writes that “the proposal to exempt Alberta from the application of the Clean Electricity Regulations, in exchange for rules on industrial carbon pricing and the completion of the Pathways project, is in my view a serious mistake,” and he notes that “this regulation will save lives by reducing air pollution.”

Guilbeault is “absolutely right to point out that this regulation can protect health. It’s time to see these kinds of regulations as health measures, not as economic restrictions,” said Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers, noting that “in recent years, we’ve had a wide range of studies showing we have underestimated the health risks linked to air pollution.”

Air pollution is “harmful to almost every organ in the body, and some studies attribute 20 per cent of the burden of air-pollution-related illness to cardiovascular disease,” explained Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers, who is president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment.

The physician listed a wide range of other illnesses linked to air pollution: “We’re talking about lung disease, but we also have data on early dementia, kidney disease, skin disease, fertility issues, impacts on fetal growth and therefore a higher risk of complications during the perinatal period, and we’re talking about endocrine and metabolic issues, obesity, thyroid-function issues — the list is extremely long and increasingly well-documented.”

A plan aimed at decarbonizing the electrical grid

The latest version of the Clean Electricity Regulations, announced by Guilbeault in December 2024, sought to minimize the use of fossil fuels in electricity production in Canada and would have required the country to fully decarbonize its electricity by 2050.

Canada’s electrical grid is already largely “clean,” with 85 per cent of electricity coming from non-emitting sources. But four provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — still rely on natural gas and, in some cases, coal for between 30 and 85 per cent of their electricity supply.

In his resignation letter, Guilbeault also refers to the social and health-care costs associated with using fossil fuels to generate electricity.

The Clean Electricity Regulations, according to the former minister, could “generate more than $3 billion in savings in the health-care system.”

The Canadian Press was not able to speak with Guilbeault on Friday, but a report published last April by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) estimates that the Clean Electricity Regulations alone could lead to at least $3 billion in health-care savings by 2050.

Replacing power plants that burn fossil fuels with renewable energy production reduces air pollution and, of course, contributes to the fight against climate change.

The Clean Electricity Regulations have the potential to “reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 182 million tonnes,” the former minister wrote in his resignation letter.

By Stéphane Blais

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 28, 2025.