Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi and International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr were in Edmonton on Tuesday to announce new funding supports for Canada’s energy sector.

The federal government will provide $1.6B in funding, which will be divided among a number of different programs.

“Today, our government is taking critical next steps with new measures to protect and promote Canada’s natural advantage. Measures that reflect our belief that Alberta’s energy sector is not just the historic backbone of our economy but a key part of our country’s future,” said Carr.

The money will go towards helping companies invest in clean growth, loans and other supports to help businesses find new markets, away from the United States.

Export Development Canada will make $1B in commercial, financial support available to exporters for investment in technology, to explore new markets and to shore up working capital.

Higher risk, small energy businesses will be able to access $500M in new funding, over three years, from the Business Development Bank of Canada to help them weather market uncertainty.

‘This funding will assist companies looking to make capital investments in innovative technologies, address working capital challenges that they face and diversify with confidence into new markets,” said Sohi.

Investment in training and technology are also part of the support package.

“Nothing is more important than building pipeline capacity to expand to non-US global markets,” said Sohi. “Our focus is to make sure that Alberta’s oil and gas sector remains a source of well-paying jobs for middle-class Canadians.”

Pro-pipeline rallies have been popping up in Alberta in recent weeks and thousands of people have gathered to call on the federal government to do more to get Alberta oil to market.

On Monday, almost 3000 people rallied outside Calgary's City Hall to ensure their message was heard.

Members of city council and the mayor supported the pro-pipeline rally and declared the oil price differential a crisis.

"It is insanity for us to take a non-renewable resource and sell it at a giant discount into the world market. That cannot happen. It cannot happen anymore," said Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

The federal announcement also includes measures for services and programs to assist workers who have been negatively affected by the oil crisis.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley was in Calgary on Tuesday for an announcement on urban renewal and spoke to reporters afterwards about the federal funding.

She says Calgarians have been hit hard by the instability in the oil and gas industry over the last few years and they have been working hard to come through it.

“There’s still more to be done though, we know that. We know that people here are still hurting but what’s really important to know is that folks in this city get oil and gas. They get the industry and so therefore what that means is the federal government needs to listen to folks from Calgary,” said Notley.

Notley said that the province didn’t ask to go further into debt to address the oil price problem.

“What we asked for was for them to remove the handcuffs. Folks here in Calgary and across Alberta can make a profit out of oil and gas and they can not only do that, they can share it with the rest of the country but they need Ottawa to take the handcuffs off so that can happen and so what we have said is we need support for that. We need rail, we need long-term support for getting that pipeline built and in the short-term, we had some good ideas for how to keep people working until we could get rail up and running.”

She said they can only assume that the federal announcement is a first step and there is more to come.

“I anticipate that there must be more to come because quite frankly that’s what this industry and this province and this city deserves for the many, many years it has given so much to the rest of Canada,” she said. “There’s no question that as far as I’m concerned this is only the very, first step of what we anticipate had better be many steps because it’s absolutely not what we went to the federal government identifying to them that the industry needed.”

She said the funding will help some small producers get access to capital but it was not exactly what they were looking for either.

Notley said the whole world wants Alberta’s product and the issue is not finding a market but getting it there.

“We need help moving our product and I don’t know that we could have been much more clear about that. That’s why our government is acting right now to get more rail in place so that we can get our product to that market and that’s why we’re going to keep fighting for the pipeline as well.”

It is estimated that the province is losing $80 million a day because of a backlog of oil sitting in warehouses.

The Alberta government has announced a mandatory production cut to take effect Jan. 1, 2019, as well as plans to purchase 7,000 rail cars to transport oil.