Two years ago, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised a “plain language law” for government laws and policies if he becomes prime minister. He wants bureaucrats and politicians to communicate simply and clearly to Canadians.
This is a good idea. He should carry it further by simplifying and clarifying the laws and policies in the first place — starting with his party’s approach to climate change.
Canada’s climate-change policies are expansive and expensive. They have divided the country, generated economic uncertainty, and are intrusive and inconsistently applied.
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Most important, they are not likely to meet stated emission-reduction goals. This last point is the legacy of every federal government’s climate plans — all 10 of them since 1990. Not one government has been honest with Canadians about what is required for sustained climate action and the trade-offs involved.
Meanwhile, climate change is already impacting the country with more and more extreme weather events.
If ever plain-speaking is warranted, it is on this topic, now. The Conservatives should move beyond “axe the tax,” then develop and clearly communicate a climate-action plan with three components: an audit of what is working and not working; new domestic targets that are realistic and honest; and co-operation, not confrontation, with the provinces.
There is one area where Poilievre has spoken plainly on climate change — his intention to repeal the federal carbon tax. This remarkably successful communications strategy has propelled his party to new polling heights. It even upended previous NDP support for the policy, federally and provincially.
His relentless attacks have put carbon pricing on life support. If he wins the next election, which he is on track to do, he will be in a position to pull the plug.
So be it. Political acceptability of government taxation is an entirely legitimate issue in a democracy.
But “axe the tax” is not a climate plan
Poilievre’s “axe the tax” mantra is his party’s only specific climate-change commitment. He has no replacement plan to reduce carbon emissions. Beyond generalizations about “technology not taxes” and more clean energy, little light has been revealed on the specifics of a Conservative climate plan.
All this is consistent with stated Conservative skepticism about Canada’s share of the global emissions problem (about 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions) and what our domestic emissions-reduction commitments should realistically be.
Added together, we are seeing some hints of what a Poilievre government might do on climate change. You could call it “the concepts of a plan.”
On its own, eliminating the carbon tax need not be fatal to ongoing emission reductions in Canada.
According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the carbon tax or fuel charge could contribute between eight and nine per cent of avoided emissions in 2030. Other measures — such as industrial carbon pricing, an oil and gas emissions cap, and methane regulations — do much more.
Conservatives could therefore “axe the tax” but keep reducing emissions — as long as they keep everything else the Liberal government is doing.
But the likelihood of that occurring is likely closer to zero than Canadian emissions ever will be.
Canadian climate policy needs a reality check on what’s working, what isn’t and what can be realistically accomplished. A new Conservative government should listen to its own rhetoric and adopt a plain-speaking approach to climate change.
If the current Conservative Party slogan of “Bring it Home” means anything, then a made-at-home climate plan should follow. Its singular focus should be this: the most emission reductions at the least economic cost.
A made-at-home climate policy should have three main parts:
A climate audit. Every opposition party taking over government undertakes a financial audit of its predecessor’s books to determine the “true” fiscal situation they just inherited. The same should go for the country’s most difficult public-policy problem — climate change.
Conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit assessment of where Canada actually stands on reducing emissions. Assess the likelihood of current and proposed measures achieving stated results. Use this as an informed basis for keeping or discarding current policies, then developing new ones.
New domestic climate targets that are realistic, practical and honest. This starts with made-at-home goals. Unrealistic targets are the original sin of climate policy in Canada. We have signed up for every UN climate goal from Kyoto to net-zero. Plans to meet these goals never fully materialized. Instead of arbitrarily applying global top-down targets and making Canada fit them, then not meet them, establish a Canadian emissions-reduction target that fits our economic reality of being an energy-producing and energy-exporting country with exceptionally diverse energy economies and realities across a large geographic space.
Here’s a “powerful way” of looking at reducing emissions, according to the International Panel on Climate Change: “The idea of measuring climate change as a function of cumulative CO2 emissions has emerged…as a simple and effective tool to understand and quantify how global temperatures respond to human emissions.”
Because it is the cumulative impact of carbon emissions causing climate change, why not focus on reducing cumulative emissions every year rather than trying to hit distant global targets? Instead of building elaborate and expensive policy frameworks to meet increasingly unattainable goals, focus on the specific amount of carbon emissions that can be actually reduced over defined periods, such as every five years, then craft measures to achieve that. This is tangible action. It aligns actions with outcomes and has built-in measurement and accountability.
Rein in federal climate overreach. Establish bilateral agreements with the provinces. Focus the efforts of each order of government on what each does best. Co-ordinate, don’t coerce. Recognize that climate-policy impacts and circumstances are different across the country and that any imposed ”one-size-fits-all” national policy has disproportionate impact on one province compared to another.
This creates inequities and division. It leads to policy gerrymandering such as the carbon tax home-heating-fuel exemption to placate Atlantic Canada and the acceptance of a lower relative carbon price under Quebec’s cap-and-trade system than elsewhere in the country under the federal carbon pricing backstop regulations.
Climate action agreements across the country would knit together a truly pan-Canadian climate-action effort that doesn’t exist now. These collaborative agreements would set out shared goals, actions, funding and accountability designed specifically for the needs and priorities of each province.
Any province that wishes to maintain a carbon-pricing system, such as Quebec’s cap-and-trade regime, could do so. Should there be merit in a national policy approach (such as with industrial carbon pricing) jurisdictions would get opt-out privileges with compensation provided they take equivalent measures.
Doing this will relieve the current acrimony in national climate policy and encourage jurisdictions to act responsibly and be mutually accountable to their respective populations. Premiers who do not act will have to justify that inaction to their voters.
The Conservative Party will have to show how it will reduce carbon emissions, not just carbon taxes. Having no climate plan is not an option. Canadian voters won’t allow it at home and international obligations won’t allow it abroad.
The prospect of a large majority gives a new Conservative government the running room to remake climate policy in Canada on very different terms.
It’s time to consider how to do so. Plain speaking and plain acting on climate change would be a good place to start.
David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and deputy minister of the Climate and Green Plan Implementation Office in Manitoba, as well as a deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, and a federal chief of staff to the prime minister and the minister of finance. He was president and CEO of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
This article first appeared on Policy Options on Oct. 28, 2024. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
