The Alberta Energy Regulator efforts this week at damage control are nonsensical. It’s difficult to overstate the consequences of the predicament that the regulator – assumed to guard the public interest, but long since captured to serve industry – has plunged the province with a staggering unfunded liability for oil and gas cleanup.

The conventional oil and gas industry is leaving a massive mess in Alberta. Regan Boychuk traces how it happened and shows how industry - not taxpayers - should be made to pay.