Alberta placed fossil fuel insiders on board backing Danielle Smith's renewables pause

“This is a [board] captured by an incumbent industry,” Drew Yewchuk, a lawyer who works with the University of Calgary’s public interest law clinic, said. “Their board is stacked with people who are in favour of the gas industry and are very familiar with the gas industry, and it has a competing industry in renewables. That is a problem for the fairness of the [operator].”

Experts generally agree it is good to have industry experience on boards since it gives them more insight and background, but not necessarily when that experience is coming from a single corporation.

“It’s not unusual for there to be appointments from the relevant sectors. To have three people from the same company who have a direct interest in the matters dealt by the board, does start to look a little bit funny,” Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University said in an interview. “The whole thing is just bizarre.”