Climate
Crossroads

The Problem

Our home is actively being destroyed by the fossil fuel industry, which knows, and has always known, exactly what they are doing.

The Promise

The NCP will immediately do everything in its power, whether regulatory, fiscal, or legal, to tackle the climate crisis and hold to account the people in power responsible.

The Plan

Short Term: The Redwater Strategy

Immediately upon forming government, the NCP will submit an Order-in-Council ending all fossil fuel and other resource subsidies, be it tax credit, grant, royalty adjustment, Crown loan, or infrastructure subsidy. The Government of Saskatchewan will also immediately drop any and all Carbon Tax lawsuits against the federal government.

The Minister of Environment will be instructed to update the Liability Management Ratio (LMR) for all oil and gas companies to 2.0. Any company below 2.0 will be ordered to post a cash remediation bond sufficient to cover the gap between its current standing and the new 2.0 standard. The purpose of the 2.0 standard is to ensure that company assets are worth at least twice their estimated cleanup liabilities. Only cash collateral will be accepted. Letters of credit, corporate bonds, unsecured guarantees, and other non-cash instruments will not satisfy this requirement.

While interprovincial pipelines fall under federal jurisdiction, provincial environmental assessments of pipeline corridors, land access permits, and extraction operations remain within provincial authority. The Government of Saskatchewan will coordinate with federal regulators where required and pursue parallel federal accountability through the Climate Crisis Lawsuit.

Saskatchewan is simply regulating a harmful substance and protecting our environment. This is something directly within provincial rights.

Companies must post 25% of these cash bonds within 90 days and the remainder over 12 months, with the province holding a security interest in the assets during the payment period.

Should the oil majors agree and pay the bonds, that bond money will be held in the Saskatchewan Financial Group exclusively for future remediation costs. However, any interest or investment income generated by these holdings will be entirely remitted to the Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund.

• See Policy 17 - Financial Sovereignty for more.

If a company fails to meet its cleanup-bond obligations, the Province will treat that failure as evidence that the operator is unable to meet its statutory environmental duties. In that event, the Government of Saskatchewan will move to protect the public interest, preserve continuity of essential energy supply, and prevent the transfer of environmental liabilities onto the public.

The Province, now in receivership of the assets through the SNRC, will offer to grant new licenses to the oil majors to operate their assets once again, but with the following new restrictions:

• They must clean up orphaned wells starting immediately.
• They must make ongoing direct payments to the Energy Veterans Transition Fund.
• And, finally, they must agree to a 15-year sunset on all Oil and Gas operations in the province.

The 15-year sunset will include a structured phase-down: extraction permits will decline gradually by 6.67 percentage points per year, with priority given to completing cleanup of legacy sites. New exploration permits will not be issued.

The 15-year sunset on oil and gas operations in Saskatchewan shall occur regardless of whether existing operators comply with the new cleanup-bond regime. Compliance with the new regime will determine whether an operator may continue to participate in that transition under a provincial licence, not whether the transition itself takes place.

The sunset is not optional, negotiable, or contingent on industry consent.

Operators who meet the new requirements may continue to operate during the 15-year phase-down under stricter licence conditions, including mandatory cleanup obligations, ongoing contributions to the Energy Veterans Transition Fund, and full acceptance of the statutory extraction decline schedule. Operators who refuse or fail to comply will not stop the sunset. Their assets may instead be suspended, placed into receivership, or transferred into temporary provincial operation to ensure continuity, cleanup, and orderly closure.

Workers employed at assets transferred to provincial operation will be offered immediate employment with the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Corporation or the Saskatchewan Century Corps at equivalent wages, with full eligibility for Energy Veterans benefits after the sunset period, or earlier if they leave before the sunset ends.

If assets are transferred into provincial receivership or temporary provincial operation, the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Corporation will operate them for no longer than the same 15-year sunset, with the goal of maintaining continuity, retaining the workforce, and preventing environmental abandonment. The Province will establish a dedicated contingency operating and transition fund for this purpose, to be replenished where possible through posted bonds, operating revenues, and future recoveries from liable parties.

The NCP is confident the oil majors will agree to this new operating license agreement. However, if they truly will not work in the best interests of their customers, the Government of Saskatchewan will not permit any gap in energy supply to Saskatchewan residents, Ottawa, or our American trading partners. Contingency operations plans will be activated within 24 hours of any operator abandonment, with full continuity guaranteed. We would never let our friends go cold.

The oil and gas companies may ask for a stay or injunction (a pause) so they can hold the Government up in court. We will argue that doing so allows them to only further harm the province while declaring bankruptcy at the end of the lawsuit anyway. This is the only way we ensure they pay for their mess, which they have freely admitted they are not able to do.

They will try to use shell companies. To prevent this, the Province will institute a 5-year look-back period. If a company transferred assets or paid dividends while its true LMR was below compliance requirements the parent companies and individual directors will be personally and jointly liable for the cleanup bond.

The Government anticipates legal challenges and will vigorously defend Saskatchewan's authority to regulate environmental liabilities, license conditions, remediation obligations, and continuity-of-service requirements within its jurisdiction.

The Province will not suspend or weaken safety and environmental enforcement because of litigation. If operators or other governments choose to obstruct Saskatchewan's lawful climate and liability measures, the Province will respond by fully enforcing every available safety, integrity, remediation, and environmental review power within its jurisdiction.

Long Term: The Act and The Lawsuit

The NCP will introduce the Saskatchewan Climate Crisis Act.

This Act will grant every Saskatchewan resident the right to a healthy environment, as determined by independent scientific consensus. Any breach of that is a violation of their rights, dignity, and Saskatchewan law.

If any provision of this Act is found to be unconstitutional or otherwise invalid, that provision shall be severed and the remainder of the Act shall continue in full force and effect.

Regardless of litigation outcomes, the regulatory measures in this Act — including the right to a healthy environment, SEEA's ongoing monitoring, and the phase-down of fossil fuel operations — remain in force.

Similar to the fight against Big Tobacco, the Rules of Civil Procedure will be updated so they can no longer be used against the Government when trying to seek climate justice.

As such, the Saskatchewan Climate Crisis Act will modernize provincial civil procedure and evidentiary rules, to the fullest extent permitted by law, so that climate accountability claims cannot be defeated simply because harms are diffuse, cumulative, delayed, or statistically distributed across time and geography.

These reforms will include burden-shifting where the Province establishes prima facie knowledge and contribution, express admissibility of aggregate and climate-attribution evidence, market-share apportionment where direct causation cannot reasonably be proven product-by-product, and strong enforcement mechanisms for unpaid judgments and bad-faith asset shielding.

The Saskatchewan Environmental Economics Agency (SEEA) will be established with a mandate to provide an accurate and full economic breakdown of all the externalities related to fossil fuels. The damages done to the Saskatchewan environment, Saskatchewan residents' health, crop yield changes, as well as the expected costs of remediation now and into the future as climate change worsens.

SEEA will have the power to compel any and all records, testimony, and proprietary data from any company operating in Saskatchewan's fossil fuel sector, with penalties for non-compliance equivalent to contempt of court.

Once SEEA confirms its work is complete and ready, the Government of Saskatchewan, using the SEEA's data, will bring forth the most comprehensive lawsuit in the history of this province, suing the fossil fuel industry and Ottawa for willful and extraordinary damages, deception, neglect, and in the case of Ottawa, gross regulatory negligence.

The Government of Saskatchewan will be seeking full compensation for past, present, and projected future climate damages, which preliminary estimates suggest could reach into the trillions of dollars over the coming decades. That money will, by law, go to the Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund.

Financial institutions that provided material financing to fossil fuel extraction while in possession of knowledge about climate risks, and failed to disclose those risks to shareholders and the public, may be named as defendants under theories of aiding and abetting, civil conspiracy, or securities fraud.

The Government of Saskatchewan will reserve the right to name the federal government as a defendant where the evidence supports claims of regulatory negligence or other actionable misconduct. The scope of any such claim will be determined by the evidentiary record and the legal advice of counsel, not by political convenience.

The Government will pursue enforcement through all available domestic and international mechanisms, including asset seizure within Canadian jurisdiction, reciprocal enforcement treaties, and coordination with other jurisdictions pursuing similar claims.

We are seeking full compensation, which could amount to trillions over the coming decades. We expect vigorous defence and lengthy litigation. Regardless of final recovery amounts, this lawsuit will establish accountability and force disclosure of industry knowledge that the public deserves to see.

The Lawsuit:

The precise pleadings will be drafted by counsel with expertise in climate litigation, mass torts, public-interest law, and complex commercial recovery. The following outlines the expected scope of the action.

The defendants will be broad and representative, not exhaustive. They may include major fossil fuel extractors, pipeline and transport companies, industry trade associations, financial institutions that materially financed fossil fuel expansion while concealing or disregarding known climate risks, and, where the evidence supports it, governments or regulators whose negligence materially contributed to Saskatchewan's damages.

The action will seek full public disclosure of internal records, research, communications, and decision-making materials concerning climate knowledge, climate denial, delay strategies, risk concealment, and the offloading of environmental and health costs onto the public. Saskatchewan will use every lawful procedural tool available to compel truth and disclosure.

The lawsuit will seek full compensation for Saskatchewan's past, present, and projected future climate damages. Representative categories of damage may include:

• Public health costs, including respiratory illness, heat-related illness, smoke exposure, mental health harms, cancer-related treatment, and other climate-related health burdens.
• Emergency response costs, including wildfire response, flood response, evacuation support, disaster logistics, and long-term recovery.
• Public infrastructure costs, including road repairs, bridge reinforcement, flood protection, grid hardening, and climate-related damage to public assets.
• Public insurance and compensation costs, including climate-related SGI losses and other publicly borne damage payments.
• Agricultural damages, including crop-insurance payouts, soil degradation, drought and heat losses, reduced yields, and climate-related remediation.
• Water-system damages, including treatment costs, scarcity mitigation, contamination response, and adaptation infrastructure.
• Forestry and ecosystem damages, including wildfire remediation, pest and disease management, and loss of ecological function.
• Economic damages, including lost productivity, lost output, and lost future tax revenue caused by climate disruption.
• Indigenous and Treaty-rights damages, including harms to traditional lands, practices, harvesting, and the practical exercise of Treaty rights.
• Dignity and social harms, including wrongful death, severe psychological injury, eco-grief, solastalgia, and other profound harms caused by climate destruction, pursued where legally appropriate through public-interest and parens patriae claims.
• Damage to the land, water, and air of Saskatchewan through public and private nuisance.
• Profits wrongfully retained by defendants through unjust enrichment while externalizing their true costs onto the public.

The Province will pursue every viable cause of action supported by the evidence and the law, including negligence, failure to warn, misrepresentation, fraud, nuisance, unjust enrichment, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and any other available claims.

Where appropriate, Saskatchewan will seek declarations, injunctions, restitution, disgorgement, compensatory damages, punitive damages, enforcement orders, and post-judgment seizure of assets located within Saskatchewan or otherwise reachable through lawful enforcement mechanisms.

This lawsuit is not symbolic. It is intended to recover what can be recovered, expose what was hidden, and establish, on the public record, who knew what, when, and what they chose to do anyway.

The Funding

The upfront cost of the Saskatchewan Climate Crisis Act, the Saskatchewan Environmental Economics Agency, the liability enforcement regime, and the Climate Crisis Lawsuit will be funded through the General Revenue Fund.

The Province will also establish a dedicated contingency operating and transition fund for any assets placed into provincial receivership or temporary provincial operation through the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Corporation. This fund will be used to maintain continuity of operations, retain workers, prevent environmental abandonment, and manage the transition during the 15-year phase-down. Where possible, this fund will be replenished through posted cleanup bonds, operating revenues, cost recovery, and future recoveries from liable parties.

Any proceeds from posted cleanup bonds will be held exclusively for remediation and environmental liability purposes. Any interest or investment income generated by those holdings will be remitted to the Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund.

Any proceeds recovered through the Climate Crisis Lawsuit will be placed directly into the Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund to support long-term climate recovery, remediation, adaptation, and intergenerational public benefit.

What It Means For You

It means holding those responsible to account.

It means protecting your rights, your land, your home.

It means the dignity of a healthy environment.

FAQ

• What is the Redwater Strategy?
• It is the short-term plan to immediately end fossil-fuel subsidies, raise the Liability Management Ratio to 2.0, require oil and gas companies to post full cash cleanup bonds, and begin a managed 15-year sunset on oil and gas operations in Saskatchewan.


• Will oil companies be forced to leave?
• No. Operators may continue under a new licensing framework, but only if they meet the new cleanup-bond requirements, begin orphan-well cleanup, make ongoing payments to the Energy Veterans Transition Fund, and accept the 15-year phase-down. If they refuse, their assets may be placed into provincial receivership or temporary provincial operation.


• What happens to oil and gas workers?
• Workers at transferred assets will be offered immediate employment with the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Corporation or the Saskatchewan Century Corps at equivalent wages, with full access to Energy Veterans benefits during and after the transition.


• What is the Saskatchewan Climate Crisis Act?
• It is the law that will recognize every Saskatchewan resident's right to a healthy environment and create the provincial legal framework for climate accountability, regulatory phase-down, and climate-related litigation.


• What is the Climate Crisis Lawsuit?
• It is Saskatchewan's lawsuit against major fossil-fuel companies and other liable actors for deception, negligence, and climate damages, built on the evidence gathered by the Saskatchewan Environmental Economics Agency. The Province will also reserve the right to name the federal government where the evidence supports claims of regulatory negligence or other actionable misconduct.


• How will liability be determined?
• The Act will modernize civil procedure and evidence rules, to the fullest extent permitted by law, so that climate harms can be proven through aggregate evidence, climate-attribution evidence, burden-shifting where appropriate, and market-share apportionment where direct product-by-product causation cannot reasonably be shown.


• What happens if a company refuses to post the cleanup bond?
• The Province will treat that refusal as evidence that the operator cannot meet its statutory environmental obligations. In that event, Saskatchewan may suspend licences, move assets into receivership or temporary provincial operation, and act to protect the public interest, maintain energy continuity, and prevent environmental abandonment.


• Where does the lawsuit money go?
• Any proceeds recovered through the Climate Crisis Lawsuit will go directly into the Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund for long-term climate recovery, remediation, adaptation, and public benefit.