Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
SaskPower Critic Aleana Young. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
REGINA – Usually when the public galleries of the legislature are filled with union members, it’s almost always because they’re not happy with the government. But on May 11, 26 union members and two mayors were there not to take issue with the government, but with the opposition.
The NDP opposition has been hammering the Saskatchewan Party Government on its coal refurbishment plan, saying it will cost too much. One NDP MLA even suggested on May 11 that more day cares could be built if the coal-fired power plants were not refurbished.
Prior to Question Period, Minister of Crown Investments Corporation and Minister Responsible for SaskPower Jeremy Harrison was joined by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, United Mine Workers of America, mayors of Estevan and Coronach, all of which supported the government plant.
Both unions have published open letters taking issue with the NDP’s stance on coal-fired power. Here’s the one from UMWA, and here’s the one from IBEW.
After Question Period, NDP Shadow Minister for Jobs, Economy & SaskPower Aleana Young took to the microphone in the Legislature rotunda – and there were no union members standing behind her.
Here is the verbatim transcript of Young’s scrum, with most of the questions being posed by Pipeline Online. You can read Harrison’s scrum here. Question Period devoted most of its time to the issue, and the full text of that will be published Wednesday morning.
Young starts off by asking for an apples-to-apples comparison. Pipeline Online did just that last week here. And this is the grid comparison in that article, referenced in the first question:
If the NDP are to replace coal with natural gas, as they say – and you include the exact same factors they included in their press release, you get this:
| 1500 megawatts | Coal (leaked document) | NDP (new build) |
| Capital | $11.4 billion | $10 billion (4x$2.5B/plant) |
| Transmission | $1.4 billion | $1.4 billion (carried over) |
| Fuel cost | $13 billion | $11.2 to $16.8 billion |
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Questions
Aleana Young: We saw again on full display, a lack of transparency from this government. Just this morning, Minister Harrison confirmed again that this $26 billion figure is accurate. 13 billion for fuel, $11.4 billion for capital, $1.4 billion for transmission, $393 million for sustainment capital. And that’s great, because, of course, these aren’t our numbers. These are SaskPower’s numbers.
We FOIed every document we could think of related to this decision, looking for the rationale, looking for the business case, looking for the information that that would help inform such a drastic shift in costing from $900 million to $2.6 (billion) to again, the full cost from 2025 to 2050 of $26 billion. And you saw this morning, of the 1500 pages received, nearly all of them were entirely redacted.
This is not the behavior of a government with a good story to tell. If there is a case to be made for what is a generational decision, what is going to set up the community of Estevan for the choice between coal and nuclear, the government has the opportunity to provide these documents fully to the public.
I am happy to do an apples to apples comparison between the government’s documents and the figures provided, again, through SaskPower’s own internal board documents. But this is a government that is afraid of transparency. They are afraid of accountability, and they are hiding behind 1500 pages of nearly entirely redacted documents. With that, I’m happy to take any questions.
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Pipeline Online: I did an apples-to-apples comparison, using the same methodology you used from the leak document, and I compared that to new build for four Aspens, transmission being the same and fuel costs based on 2022 gas prices. And I came up with a total value of between $22.6 and $28.2 billion, which is in the same scope as what you’re saying the Saskatchewan Party is saying. Have you costed your plan fully out?
Aleana Young: Yes. And I mean, I haven’t seen your numbers, Brian, I’m taking out your word here, live in the scrum.
If you look at SaskPower’s annual report from last year, and you look at the cost per gigawatt hour, coal is twice as expensive as gas, yes, absolutely. Is there volatility in gas pricing? Like yes, we all know this, right? It was part of the business case decision that was made for the carbon capture plants a decade or 15 years ago.
But if you look at again SaskPower zone information, not the NDP numbers, and you look at the cost for Aspen, if you look at the cost for retrofitting the plants in Estevan, which we all know was the plan up until very recently, for some of these units, refurbishing them to gas, not building greenfield, and you look at the cost for fuel again, in SaskPower’s most recent annual report, the cost for coal, according to SaskPower, is twice as much as it is for gas.
I haven’t seen your document.
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Pipeline Online: I’m looking at capital, $10 billion, which would be four times $2.5 billion per unit, transmission, the same $1.4 billion, and a fuel cost of $11.2 to $16.8 billion. So that basically comes in very similar to what the document you have mentioned.
I wanted to ask you, in regards to greenfield, in regards to if you did have to go greenfield, how is site selection, for time and cost? Because time is a big factor. How is site selection, environmental assessments, civil dirt moving, foundation, erection of steel, fitting out, closure, pipeline, tie in a new switch yard, which is difficult to get transformers, new transmission times four plants, how is that cheaper than retrofitting the existing plant by rebuilding the coal?
Aleana Young: This is part of the reason we’re here today asking the government to fully release 1500 pages of information. We know this information exists in SaskPower. We know that this was the plan up until last year. Everyone knows that the government has the opportunity to make these documents public. It’s quite straightforward.
We know there were gas plants canceled that SaskPower had in development. You can go through RM minutes across this province, and you can see where SaskPower was out, engaging with communities where there were gas plants. We know those contracts were canceled. We know that there was a clear plan, because this was SaskPowers plan, until last year, to turn some of those coal units into natural gas plants. They were out publicly talking about this like, this isn’t, this isn’t somehow news.
They have made a decision to change, and what we’ve said to them is, this is a big commitment. This is a lot of public money, regardless of where you fall on whether we should be generating electricity from coal or natural gas or uranium or wind or solar, we are talking about at least a billion dollars of public money every single year, just for the coal portion of our fleet.
The government has the opportunity, and I would welcome them making these documents public, and they refuse to do that. That is not the behavior of a government with nothing to hide. That is not the behavior of a government who is interested in accountability and transparency. Again, with over the lifetime, $26 billion of public money, that is a major commitment. As I said, that is going to set up the community of Estevan in particular for a real, challenging choice between coal and nuclear, which again, is not something that the government of Saskatchewan wants to talk about how they are going to build out their SMRs, which are already three years behind schedule, in the same place at the same time, with the same workers training the same people who are working on the plants to work on the new plants with the same small tax base.
If the choice the Sask Party and Scott Moe are setting us up for is between coal or nuclear, and we care about energy security, and we care about generational job security for the people in those communities, building out the future of generation, which means nuclear power. I think that’s a better choice.
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Pipeline Online: So there’s one last question here regarding you’re talking fuel costs, and you said that the SaskPower plant said for 2 billion for coal. By my math, yours would be 11 to 16 billion for natural gas. The fundamental difference is almost all that upstream cost of coal is spent in Saskatchewan, whereas nearly all the gas would be supplied by Alberta – Alberta royalties, Alberta oil companies, Alberta drilling companies, Alberta pipeline companies and almost all that money go to Alberta, would not be coming back.
Aleana Young: I heard Minister Harrison again go out publicly and say that the cost of coal yesterday was $0 today is $0 tomorrow is going to be $0. Fundamentally, that is untrue, and we know that. It is clear in SaskPower’s annual reports, year after year after year, and you can see the price of gas in there. It goes up and down. It fluctuates. The cost of coal has continued to increase. Don’t take my word for it. I know you know this better than probably anyone in the province. It’s right there in SaskPower’s own annual reports, again, in their submissions to the rate review panel, this is included, and in this document, again, you see $13 billion for fuel costs out to 2050. And again, that’s assuming that these plants are operating at full capacity from now until 2050 which, if you look at the construction timeline, some of these plants may only be operating for 10 to 15 years more at the most. But sorry, Brian, what was your question? I was monologuing there.
“Big Lou” digging south of Estevan on Feb. 13, 2026. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Pipeline Online: The difference being that your saying about not being free – you pay to mine the coal. That’s true. Absolutely paying that. But of that $313 million, $25 million is in royalties, which goes back to us. So the coal itself, the rock itself, we’re not paying for that rock, because we own the rock, but we are paying mine the coal, and that’s a distinction that the minister has made.
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Aleana Young: I think if the minister wants to say we’re paying $500 million potentially, or, you know, just like simple math, looking out for 25 years at $13 billion, but that’s for mining. That’s not for the actual cost of the lignite, I think people will still hear that that’s $500 million a year.
And as for this argument that the government is advancing around natural gas, and relying on Alberta, I’ve heard the minister say it so many times. I’m now confident he can’t be mistaken that we can’t rely on Alberta for natural gas, because look how well that worked out for Europe when they relied on Vladimir Putin.
Now, frankly, if there was someone comparing Danielle Smith to Vladimir Putin in the legislature, I didn’t think it would be the Sask. Party government. Natural gas is going to be an important part of Saskatchewan’s electricity grid going forward, full stop. If it wasn’t, Bell wouldn’t be building out 300 megawatts of natural gas at their data centre south of the city. If natural gas was not a safe and secure source of electricity, of energy for Saskatchewan, all of us who heat our homes using natural gas should be very, very concerned by what the minister is saying.
FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin (Alexander Nemenov/Pool Photo via AP, file)
You can talk to any end use industrial in this province, and they will tell you they are thirsty for additional natural gas. Should we rely exclusively on it? No, we shouldn’t rely on any one source of electricity exclusively in this province. We need a diversified mix. We need an all of the above approach, which is the language that my leader used in her leadership campaign, and I am so thrilled, is now de jure here in Saskatchewan. But do I think it is deeply concerning to use natural gas from Alberta as a part of our generation mix? No, and nor should the minister, because it makes up about 40 per cent of our capacity today.
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Reporter 2: The redactions in those documents, they cite advice from officials. They cite, you know, business. I’m just wondering, are you surprised that those redactions were in there? Are you just surprised at the amount of redactions?
Aleana Young: I’m disappointed. I feel like I sound like a parent. I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.
But again, it’s Saskatchewan people who should be angry. This is a generational investment. Again, this $26 billion is only for coal, which makes up less than a third of our generation right now. It’s a really important part of our grid in Saskatchewan right now. And to be clear, no one is saying we shut it down tomorrow, right? We run those plants out, some of them until the 2040s, as long as practical. Because, again, this government has made some decisions that are going to really impact our ability to do anything going forward.
But $26 billion, not a lick of accountability, 1500 pages of redacted documents. This is not a government who wants to explain this decision to Saskatchewan people, because they can’t. This was drawn up by Minister Harrison in November 2024, you can see it in the board documents, and he was trying to sneak past cabinet, the Premier, and the people of Saskatchewan. It’s a billion dollars a year just for coal. It’s like 5% of our annual budget. SaskPower’s capital spend for this year was just over a billion dollars, and that was a record spend for the corporation.
How are we going to maintain our power lines? How are we going to build out more capacity? How are we going to build SMRs? How are we going to pay people? How are we going to maintain the 10s and hundreds of 1000s of kilometers of power lines across Saskatchewan, if we’re spending basically this year’s capital budget for SaskPower, and then again, every single year going out to 2050? It’s impossible for a province with a tax base of this size, it’s setting up the community of Estevan in particular for a terrible choice between coal and nuclear. It’s hiding $26 billion of spending from Saskatchewan people, and they they won’t release the documents. Like, come on, guys, if there’s a good story to tell, tell us.
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——
Editor’s note: If your job, business, community or family are directly affected by the ongoing coal story, where will you find the most comprehensive coverage? For comparison, check out CTV and SaskToday. As of late Monday night, neither the Leader Post or Global News had posted coal-related stories from the days events.Â
Also, earlier on Monday, with regards to the Regina data centre, which is seeing a flurry of construction activity, and its relation to coal-fired power generation:
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The World Turned Upside Down: Coal workers go to Legislature to take issue with NDP’s stance on coal