Claude Béchard, Quebec Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife, turns west when he looks for a Canadian path back to prosperity. “Energy will pull us out,” he predicts.

“Absolutely,” Béchard declared in an Alberta Oil interview. “I think it’s the key – the solution – to get out of this economic situation. We all know these projects will get back on track. We are the sources of the energy of the United States.”

Alberta and Quebec are natural allies at all levels, he suggests. “We will be one of the greatest sources of economic development in Canada.”

On the grand scale of export growth, Hydro-Quebec’s Romaine River hydroelectric project is a French-Canadian counterpart to mammoth oil sands schemes. The $6.5-billion plan calls for generating 1,550 megawatts by building four dams. Like bitumen mega-mines, the power scheme is big enough to alter the landscape and arouse international environmental opposition. The Romaine project’s new reservoirs would flood 280 square kilometers of northeastern Quebec forest, an area twice the size of all Fort McMurray oil sands tailings ponds combined.

On a moderate scale of innovative fossil fuel production, Béchard points out that Quebec and Alberta connections are poised to grow. Calgary firms are embarking on drilling for natural gas, using rock fracturing technology imported from Texas, in geological shale beds south of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City.

He has no qualms about appearing to climb into economic bed with the energy source that green factions brand as “dirty oil.” He poses for photographs to send back home from a delegation he leads at an annual winter oil sands buy-sell forum in Edmonton, smiling for the cameras despite Quebec voters’ reputation as the country’s most united in their willingness to halt fossil fuel projects deemed liable to increase carbon emissions.

“People have to know what’s happening here. We all have some things like that – some perceptions we have to fight,” Béchard says while taking a break from helping Quebec manufacturers and service contractors court oil sands developers. “The people of Quebec know Alberta is committing $2 billion to become more clean and green [with carbon capture and storage projects]. We invite people to go into Quebec and explain that. And environmental issues are part of where we could be helpful, for instance in water management and treatment. There’s nobody better than our businesses who are working here to make Alberta greener.”

Besides technical expertise, Quebec innovations on display in Edmonton include an organizational style made to order for lean times. The approach creates strength in numbers and cuts costs without resorting to disruptive mergers or takeovers. Clusters of firms band together, without changing their ownership or identities, into co-operatives that resemble staunchly independent western farmers’ combinations for marketing, supply procurement and credit.

Compared to sending separate agents to events like trade fairs, assembling a structure of shared services such as sales, promotion, administration and contract bidding does more than save money, says Donald Morin, a founder and president of Coop Multi Metal. “You gain power to bid and be able to be competitive.”

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