OTTAWA—The federal government is forcing provinces to move too fast on clean electricity.

Or it’s making regrettably slow progress.

Those two perspectives emerged from different places Tuesday, illustrating the political push and pull over federal policies to clean up Canada’s electricity grids — with the Liberal government fielding criticism in the middle.

In Regina, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe took a swing at Ottawa’s incoming plans to make provincial energy grids run with “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, meaning any remaining pollution would need to be offset.

Moe released his own plan to accomplish the goal 15 years later, by 2050, and to continue burning fossil fuels for power generation until existing plants are scheduled to wind down as currently planned.

He also criticized the federal proposal as “unrealistic and unaffordable,” publishing a document that claimed electricity bills could more than double and that his province could fail to provide enough power to residents if it was forced to convert its grid to net-zero by 2035.

The federal plan is still in the works, but early proposals have signalled the new regulations could allow natural gas plants to continue beyond 2035 to back up renewable power or operate for a “short” period beyond that date if they are in operation before 2025.

The measure is a key part of Ottawa’s plan to address the costly threat of climate change, and to create a clean electricity supply for industries that want to operate without carbon footprints in the coming years.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, a spokesperson for federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Ottawa wants to work with all provinces on this goal. Ian Cameron pointed to recent federal spending to help provinces achieve this, such as a new tax credit the government expects to cost $6.3 billion over the next five years to help pay for new clean electricity projects and money to refurbish a hydro dam in Saskatchewan.

Cameron also noted that all G7 countries have pledged, like Canada, to hit net-zero electricity by 2035 — making clean power key to attracting business investment in the coming years.

“The global race to net-zero is well underway, and a clean, reliable and affordable grid is the backbone of any prosperous net-zero economy,” Cameron said. “It is our shared responsibility to ensure that Canada does not fall behind.”

Meanwhile, supporters of that goal also raised concerns on Tuesday, this time blaming federal regulations for making it too difficult to build clean power in Canada.

Speaking on Parliament Hill Tuesday, the head of Electricity Canada — an Ottawa-based lobby group for power utility companies — made a different pitch. While acknowledging provinces like Saskatchewan, which have long relied on natural gas plants for large portions of their electricity generation, will face greater challenges hitting the 2035 target, Francis Bradley argued Canada needs to move faster to build clean power plants.

To Bradley, government regulations are too complex and onerous to meet the urgency of cleaning Canada’s electricity grids, with only 12 years — or 4,613 days as of Tuesday, as Bradley put it — until 2035.

“Electricity, in theory, is primarily a provincial responsibility. But there are 90 federal statutes and laws that actually come into play, and everything from environmental assessment reviews to the Fisheries Act to migratory birds,” Bradley said.

He called for changes so that electricity projects could go through a single review process that is clearer and simpler and designed to avoid lengthy wait times that can stretch up to 10 years.

“We need to build things faster,” he said.

Some provincial governments have similarly criticized federal regulations for blocking clean energy development. In a statement to the Star last week, a spokesperson for Energy Minister Todd Smith said Ontario believes “the largest barrier” to clean power in the province is the federal government’s project assessment law, which the Liberals revamped to much criticism from Conservative politicians, who claimed it would slow down or block future developments.

In Nova Scotia, some proponents of tidal energy projects in the Bay of Fundy, which has the highest tides in the world, have blamed federal fisheries regulations for blocking their construction. Last week, the Canadian subsidiary of a company called Sustainable Marine Energy said it would declare bankruptcy because fisheries regulations made it impossible for its tidal energy projects to continue in the region.

In an interview Tuesday, Nova Scotia Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton said the province believes there was “no reason” to delay the company’s project. He said his government continues to speak with the federal Fisheries Department about the situation, and that during a roundtable discussion Tuesday, Ottawa committed to striking a “task force” to study the issue.

A spokesperson for federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray confirmed that the task force would include officials from Nova Scotia and the tidal energy industry in order to simplify the regulatory process.

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