Also the "notoriously poisonous" part is just... not true.

There's bad faith outrage grifters and climate denialists who promote that idea, but the most common solar panel designs do not contain lead or cadmium.

And even the ones that do, solar panels are 100% recyclable. They shouldn't be going to landfill anyway, every single component in them except the glue that holds it together can be remanufactured into more solar panels.

Edit: To answer the inevitable followup question: "where are all the recyclers then?"

Solar panel recycling isn't a big business yet because the things are so damn resilient, with expected lifespans of 25-50 years or more.

The first generation of modern solar panels aren't even halfway through their service lives yet. Today the only dead panels are ones that suffered accidental damage, the supply of EOL panels that could be recycled is zero and will be for a while. We shouldn't expect to see recycling start to happen on a commercial scale until the 2040s or 2050s.

My understanding is that it’s the thin film variant that’s “famously poisonous”, the Cadmium Telluride ones. But that’s not the type that almost any field full of solar is made up of.

Nobody is opposed to a recycling fee. If you actually read the article you will see it's 2.5x to 100x the recycling fees imposed anywhere else in the world. And accompanied by a disinformation campaign from the government.

Notably the same province has a massive abandoned oil & gas well problem that they have failed to deal with for decades at this point.

The same government also effectively banned the use of renewables to power datacentre projects in Alberta, forcing them to use natural gas only.

I think that's because it's adding to the cost of solar, effectively making it an barrier to entry; when other provinces or states have financial incentives to install solar panels instead.

This measure sounds a bit disingenuous since Alberta has such a large petroleum industry and this type of measure targets in particular renewables, it looks like a punitive tax. If the problem really is recycling costs, make them payable on recycling (like, again, many products such as used drywall or oil)