Jordan Welcome to the last episode in our series examining the party platforms on issues that matter most to you, our listeners. We saved the number one issue, and it isn’t even close, for last.
News Clip 1
There is nothing new about a heat Dome. But what is trapping heat in Western Canada is bigger, hotter, and longer lasting than any heat occurrence before. Part of a pattern of increasingly extreme events that can be attributed to global warming.
News Clip 2
Record rainfall across Germany and Belgium last month, you may remember those pictures. That was made up to nine times more likely by the climate crisis. Meanwhile…
News Clip 3
A sweeping new report says the climate is changing at an unprecedented rate and without swift and drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, the world is on track for catastrophe.
Jordan
There is no point in me writing another little monologue on climate. There is no point in our leaders offering their own nice little monologues on this crisis. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that it’s not too late to talk about this issue. It’s that it was too late to just talk about this issue years ago. Now it’s time for action, or… you heard the clips. So what are the climate plans? Which ones are ambitious enough? Which ones are actually doable? How much of a difference will they make? And finally, since we’re talking about talking about it, why did the issue that dominates just about any list of the threats to our health and safety and wellbeing, get so little attention on the campaign trail?
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Fatima Syed is one of the best climate reporters in the country. She’s the occasional host of this podcast. She also hosts another podcast, and she is now a member of The Narwhal’s new Ontario bureau. Hello, Fatima.
Fatima
Hi, Jordan. Sorry for my Insufferable bio.
Jordan
It’s good. It gets longer every time. I think that means you’re doing a good job.
Fatima
We’re trying.
Jordan
So start with this then. You cover climate all of the time unless you’re covering something else. But how much air time has climate gotten during this campaign? And is it more or less airtime than you expected?
Fatima
So it’s gotten 23 minutes of airtime officially in the first and only English language debate that this 36 day chaotic campaign has allowed for. So it’s definitely not been enough. And it’s worrying, actually, that they haven’t talked about it more because the election started just a week after a bombshell IPCC report, which I talked about on the show that basically said that the impacts of climate change are irreversible, and we need to step up with more ambition and more sincerity to get the world ready and accustomed for more severe climate changes in the future.
Jordan
So why hasn’t it gotten more airtime? Is it just that it is irreversible and that makes it really depressing to talk about at a time when you’re trying to drum up enthusiasm? It doesn’t jive with how important voters think this issue is and how much party leaders talk about it.
Fatima
So my theory is that the pandemic is the more top of mind crisis than the climate crisis itself. And that’s why it’s sort of been bumped to second place, which sounds so stupid because I’m kind of like weighing two very urgent time sensitive crisis on the same scale. And it’s also stupid because the pandemic and the climate crisis are linked, right? When the pandemic froze the world and everything came to a stand still, we saw exactly the devastation that the climate crisis had created in the world. We saw how the skies cleared in the most polluted cities. We saw just how much damage we’ve done to the natural world around us. So that’s my theory that the pandemic has taken more of a precedence than the climate crisis. And I think the leaders have failed to show how closely the two crises are tied together.
Jordan
You mentioned the IPCC report. What have we learned since the last time we did an election and talked about climate change a little under two years ago? What have we learned about, I guess, both good and bad, if there is any good, about how we should be tackling this?
Fatima
Well, okay let’s start with the good. The good things that we learned is all the things that are possible to do. Canada put in place a carbon price. And I’m sure we’ll get into this a little bit into the conversation. But after much battle and much political drama and legal drama, we got a carbon price. And so we are seeing slowly the impacts of effective policy when it comes to reducing emissions. So we are seeing the merits of climate policy. We are now in a world that doesn’t deny anymore that climate change is a thing that needs to be tackled seriously. That’s encouraging. The bad is, of course, we’ve also got new data in the form of the latest IPCC report that shows just how much damage we have done to the world around us and how much work still needs to be done.
We have progressed to a more certain discourse about climate change, but at the same time, we are still struggling to match that with concrete and effective policy action.
Jordan
Well, let’s talk about the policy then, because the Liberals ran pretty much last time on their climate plan, and won. So have they delivered on the promises in that plan so far?
Fatima
So to be fair, the Liberals do have a lot to be proud of, and whether you like their policy choices or not or think that they should have done more or less, the Liberals have done more to advance climate policy than any other previous Canadian government, federal or provincial. They’ve implemented, as I mentioned, this broad based carbon pricing program in the face of huge political opposition. Flashback to ‘The Resistance’ that infamous Maclean’s magazine cover of the five Conservative politicians who opposed, “Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax” and took it to all court levels and took it to the top of the Supreme Court and lost. And that’s huge.
That was a huge price because every economist who focuses on climate change says that carbon pricing is the most effective tool that a government can employ to tackle the climate crisis. The Liberal government has done some more things, too. They’ve regulated methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. They’ve put net zero emission targets in law. They’ve also set Canada’s most aggressive 2030 and 2050 emissions targets. So they’ve done good stuff. They’ve advanced the file.
Think back to when Stephen Harper was struggling to put climate change policy on the agenda. And Justin Trudeau comes in and goes to Paris and says, “Canada’s, here, we’re ready. We’re going to do the work.” That was a big deal. So they have a good track record. The question now is can they continue boosting that track record?
Jordan
So what is in their platform this time that’s different from last election? And is it more aggressive? To your earlier point, we’ve seen just how much more damage has been done since the last time we did this.
Fatima
So it’s definitely not more aggressive. And the reason is because they haven’t really announced many new policies with details that make me feel assured in the knowledge that if re elected, the Liberal government will meet their targets. And I should say here that the Liberal government does acknowledge that there are challenges. Oil and gas emissions are rising. We still have to figure out transportation emissions, electrical vehicle policies. And then the biggest thing is just transition, right? How do we get the oil and gas industry to move towards green jobs?
Canadian emissions have increased by 21% since 1990, more than almost every other developed country in the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that our future climate policy is going to also suck and emissions are going to keep increasing. And that’s the Liberal selling point. They’re saying that we are going to commit ourselves to reducing emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, and we’re going to reach net zero by 2050. Those are ambitious targets.
But at the same time, the Liberal’s have bought pipelines. They purchased the Trans Mountain Oil pipeline at a time when emissions really needed to be decreased. But they’re saying they’ve got a plan despite that. They’re saying they’re going to put a cap on oil and gas, they’re going to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, that they’re going to create a clean electricity standard so that there’s more renewable energy coming into our homes and businesses. And they’ve promised green jobs.
Again, all these promises lack a lot of detail about implementation, and that’s what I struggle with. Why are the Liberals shying away from what they’ve accomplished and what they intend to achieve if they really do have what Justin Trudeau calls “the best climate plan among all of Canada’s parties.” Then why aren’t they just coming out and telling us how they’re going to do it? Because they do have the track record to back it up. And that concerns me. So, for example, the Liberal platform doesn’t include their planned increase in carbon pricing, which is something they’ve promised since they proposed it. Are they afraid to be more aggressive? Are they afraid that voters will shy away if they say that the carbon price needs to increase to $170 by 2050? There’s things in their budget that aren’t in their platform, like $1.5 billion for a clean fuels fund that would support the production of fuels like hydrogen, which are clean and don’t produce emissions. There’s no mention of carbon capture, which is something the budget has but the platform doesn’t. So there’s all these discrepancies that make me question, like, are you actually serious about climate? And if you are, why are you struggling to convey it?
Jordan
That’s a really good question. And before we move on to the Conservative and NDP platforms, I want to ask you one thing quickly because you’ve mentioned targets a few times. I think one talking point that Canadians may have heard in the limited amount of time that climate change got in the debates and elsewhere is the Conservative point that the Liberals have never actually met any of these targets. And I know that campaign speak can be purposefully obfuscating, to say the least. But I’d like you to parse that. How fair is that as a criticism?
Fatima
The thing about targets is that they’re attached to a time period. So the Liberals initially said that they’re going to meet 30% reductions by 2030, which is what the Paris Agreement codified for all countries around the world. Now they’re saying 40-45% in that same period. There’s still time. 2030 isn’t here yet. And you have to track progress year by year, month by month.
So the NDP has said several times during this campaign that, “hey, emissions have actually increased since the Liberal government signed Paris Agreement.” Sure. Technically, that’s correct. But we don’t have 2020 data yet, and the increase in emissions has been marginal. It hasn’t been too massive. Emissions in Canada have actually kind of levelled off. So we kind of have to put the data in perspective. And this is why we talk about ambition and sincerity a lot when we talk about climate change. If we are going to achieve the targets by the time that we’ve specified by the deadline that we and the world have given us, then we need to be ambitious. So every single climate policy that we enact will reduce emissions by marginally more than what we did previously. So we can achieve that deadline with flying colours. So when these parties talk about like, oh, well, they haven’t met them yet. Okay, but the deadline hasn’t arrived yet, either. What are you going to do to ensure that you meet the deadline sooner than they are or better than they are? That’s my follow up question.
Jordan
So I’ll ask that question of you. What is the Conservative platform’s plan to meet those targets? And how much of an improvement is it? Because I know we had this discussion in 2019 with multiple climate experts, basically about the Conservative Party having no plan on climate, and now they’ve got one. How good is it?
Fatima
That’s the best part about the Conservative climate plan that they have one. Remember when Andrew Scheer unveiled a climate plan that had no targets for greenhouse gas reductions? Their last climate plan did nothing that disrupted the status quo. That showed no seriousness. The fact that the Conservative Party has a plan, and we’re now at a point in Canada where all parties have put forward real climate plans with credible policies is amazing. It’s incredible. Can we just take a minute and celebrate that? Because that’s huge. We have a Conservative party that is trying to address climate change. That’s amazing for us.
Jordan
Now, how are they trying to address it?
Fatima
Exactly. The problem is that the Conservative’s targets are really low. They’re not ambitious at all. They want to achieve the Paris targets of 30%. Now, maybe before the second IPCC report came out, I would have said, sure, let’s do it because that’s what the Liberal government was also aiming for. But now we have another, like, massive bombshell scientific report with decades of research and data that says 30% is not enough. We gotta go higher. We’re now at the point where Joe Biden and the United States are aiming for 50%, the European Union is aiming for 55%. If Canada is a leader in climate change, we gotta go more. We got to do better. And the Conservatives committing to 30% is actually a step backward from now our new target. I’m concerned about that. And then the other problem with the conservative plan, of course, is that I don’t know how seriously they’re going to address oil and gas. A section of the platform titled Support for Western Canadian Jobs, outlines how the Conservatives would undo the changes assured by recent legislation that modernized how Canada reviews major resources projects. And that also bans oil tankers from BC’s North Coast. So they’re kind of like opening the door to more oil and gas development. They’ve also said they’re going to make oil export pipelines a priority. They’re going to implement a federal natural gas export strategy.
So these things worry me because, again, not to sound like a broken record. The IPCC report basically declared the end of status quo for oil and gas. And the Conservative climate plan throws a lot of room to the oil and gas industry. And we should be worried about it.
The one other interesting in that I want to up is that the Conservative Party actually agrees to a carbon pricing system, which is really cool because they’ve opposed it for the longest time, and that’s huge. The problem is that they have a lot of stipulations to their carbon pricing plan. So to start with, in a recent sit down with the Toronto Star’s editorial board, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole actually said he would keep the Liberal carbon price. The platform says that he would scrap it. So there’s a little confusion there and he would give provinces the option of choosing his plan or the Liberal carbon price, which again is weird and confusing. They’re suggesting a pricing system that is similar to the Liberals in cost, but that would max out earlier, so it would Max out at $50 per ton and wouldn’t increase beyond that. Whereas the Liberals are pitching that it would increase to $170 per ton of greenhouse gas emission in 2030. The Conservatives will also replace the system we have right now, where every single Canadian gets a $300 check in their tax return for the carbon price. They want to create a personal low carbon savings account. Think of this like an optimum card. So every time you buy something at shoppers, you gain points, and then you can use those points to buy whatever you want.
Jordan
People love optimum cards.
Fatima
They do. The problem here is that to get points, you kind of have to buy gas, and then you can use those points to buy green things like bikes and other renewable things. So it’s kind of weird because you kind of have to purchase more fossil fuels to get more points. And isn’t that counter…?
Jordan
Shouldn’t it work in the other direction where you have to do green things and then you get points that you can spend on gas and stuff?
Fatima
Right? So I have many questions about this personal low carbon savings account and how it will work. So it would be interesting to see how they would actually implement it. The last stipulation I wanted to mention about the Conservative carbon pricing plan is when it comes to industry, the Conservative said they won’t increase the price for them as the Liberals do, unless their trading partners will do the same. And trading partners specifically mentions the United States and the European Union. That’s a little worrying, because that means that under Conservative government, we might delay how strong our approach is to industry unless the US or Europe moves to, which doesn’t really bode well for us because we’re taking lead and not really leading. And that would be weird.
Jordan
The final question I’ll ask you about platforms is the NDP’s. I’ll ask first, what’s in it and how aggressive is it? And then Secondly, how realistic.
Fatima
So the NDP has a higher target, 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. But their plan is not detailed enough to assess whether their policies would lead to these reductions and meet this target. The example I like to use, because I think it’s a very metaphorically apt, is their 2021 climate platform uses the same picture of Jagmeet Singh in a canoe that they use in their 2019 climate platform. And all their policies are basically the same as their 2019 platform, too. They want industry to pay for their emissions, they want to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and they want to provide energy efficiency subsidies. And they refused to say what their carbon price would be, but they want one. And notably, Jagmeet Singh refuses to answer what he would do on pipelines. Like, he literally cannot say whether he would sell the Trans Mountain pipeline or keep the pipeline. All he’ll say is that he opposes it. So there’s very little detail. Ambitious target, very little detail. Scientists and climate experts have said that it’s really not a feasible climate plan at all.
Jordan
We haven’t really talked yet about the Green Party, which is interesting because this is a climate episode, and I know that they are unlikely to form government and may have only at best, a seat or two in the house. But what is their plan like? And is it sufficiently more aggressive than the Liberals? Because I think for a long time the Green Party has owned this issue and has been way out in front. And I guess what I’m looking for more than anything is: are they still way out in front or have the other parties made up that ground?
Fatima
They’re not way out in front anymore. And I think the reason is that the other parties have now caught up to climate change. We talked about this early on the conversation. We are at this amazing moment where every single politician in this country cannot deny that they have to do something about climate change and that’s spectacular. So the Greens are left with this problem where it’s like, okay, we owned the climate change file for the longest time. What do we offer in terms of policy and ideas and perspectives that is different from the others? And so far, the only thing they’ve offered is a higher target. They want to achieve 60% emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030. That is amazing, ambitious, but it is not backed up with a detailed plan that helps us understand how exactly we reach that target. It’s very vague. They want to do many of the similar things that the other parties are pitching, like, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, like get 100% renewable energy by 2030. Like, facilitate a just transition in the oil and gas sector so there are more green jobs. So it’s a lot of the same things. So when I’m looking at the green plan, I’m like, okay, what are you offering that’s different? Is it expertise? Is it ideas? And I’m not seeing that there unfortunately. So they’re going to have to grapple with how to reinsert themselves in the climate conversation in a way that will either strengthen the other parties’ plans by pushing back and questioning and offering new analysis or actually offering new, innovative ideas of their own that could influence government climate policy.
Jordan
I want to ask about how we can mark progress on this issue when we talk about 2030 targets or beyond. It can seem really difficult to judge how well a past government has done or even what this next government does over the next few months or even years. What will we be looking at as bellwethers for progress on climate?
Fatima
If every subsequent year emissions are reducing and we are taking steps to better adapt to the changing environment? I think that’s progress and I know that sounds very vague and wishy washy and not like data centric at all, but I genuinely believe that it’s very hard to measure a thing when you’re facing a monster, right? Like climate change is just so immense and so destructive when it happens in the form of extreme weather and extreme natural changes, that progress is just are we taking steps to protect people? We saw an entire village destroyed in B.C. this year because of wildfires. For me, progress would be if we ensure that another village isn’t destroyed next year when wildfires are sure to happen again, because we’ve invested in better infrastructure and better policies. We’ve prepared ourselves for the extreme climate crisis to come. That’s progress. And again it sounds broad and wishy washy, but that’s how it should be.
Jordan
When we put this question to our listeners about which issues they cared about most. This was number one by quite a lot, and I’m sure part of that is the selective bias of the people who listen to this show, but it’s pretty clear this is the top one, two or three on almost everybody’s issue list. So if you’re a single issue climate voter, what can you do to best make sure that your ballot is doing as much as possible for this crisis?
Fatima
I think if you’re voting with climate change solely in mind, you have to consider which party comes with the most ambition and the most sincerity to tackle the climate crisis. And I’m not going to give who I think that is here. That’s not my job as a journalist. I think my job is to present what all of them are offering and then let the voters decide. But I would take a minute and really consider track records. I would consider future potential of each leader and each party and what they could do to move quickly and aggressively and ambitiously and seriously on this file because it’s not even that time has run out. It’s that the world around us has changed and we’re not ready to cope with it, and we need a government that will make us ready to cope with it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the IPCC report and all subsequent climate change discussions is that there’s no point being horrified every time we reach another record breaking temperature or a record breaking thunderstorm or another Hurricane. That’s to be expected. The data, the analysis, the scientists are telling us this in plain simple terms. We’re going to see more of that. The question now is that do we have leaders that will prepare us for us for it? Will they strengthen our infrastructure? Will they create adaptation plans? Will they create more natural spaces to mitigate some of those impacts? How are they actually approaching this file is going to be the end all and be all of climate policy in the future in any country, especially Canada.
And if you’ll indulge me, Jordan, I want to give a quick example. Norway just had an election about climate change, and specifically, it was about the future of the oil and gas sector. Norway’s Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer. They’re the world’s third largest exporter of natural gas after Russia and Qatar. And they just ousted their conservative Prime Minister, who had done incredible things on the climate change file. She had ensured that electric cars account for 70% of new vehicle sales in that country. She had an ambitious tax on emissions that were set to triple by 2030, she had put her emission goals in line with those of the European Union. Their electrifying their fleet of ferries. Oslo has basically become car free. She had done a lot of work on the climate change file, but after the IPCC report, voters wanted more and they wanted someone who could seriously tackle the oil and gas sector, which makes up for 14% of the country’s revenues, employs 7% of the workforce, and has helped create a $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund, which is the world’s largest. And so they elected a centre-left government who will now have to make a coalition because it’s a minority government with a Green party that has experienced a 30% increase in membership since the IPCC report came out and whose entire stance is anti oil. This is a major moment for that country, and the voters in Norway are taking the IPCC report and climate change so seriously that they are demanding so much more of their government and electing accordingly. As Canadians, in this election, we have not talked about climate change enough. Our leaders have not talked about climate change enough, and the conversations we’re having are far, far behind from the ones we need to be having.
Because it’s not just about what we’re going to do. It’s about how we’re going to do it. And we’re still not even at the how, we’re still debating the what. We still haven’t had a serious conversation about the oil and gas industry. So my advice to a voter is elect someone that you think will have that serious conversation about the how because it’s time. It’s more than time. We saw the hottest summer of our lives. And if that doesn’t sway you, I genuinely do not know what will.
Jordan
Fatima, thank you so much as always for this.
Fatima
Thanks for having me Jordan.
Jordan
Fatima Syed of the Narwhal, of the Big Story Podcast every once in a while, of the backbench, of a whole bunch of places.
That was the Big Story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. Check out our elections section while you’re there. If you can’t get enough of policy and partisanship, talk to us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. I am apparently tweeting on that account on election night. So come and follow me. Come and enjoy it with us. Enjoy might not be the right word, but we will be there. You can also [click here!] to write us an email. And you can follow us or subscribe to us or like us or whatever it is they let you do in whatever podcast platform you choose to do it in.
Stefanie Phillips is the lead producer of The Big Story, Ryan Clarke and Joseph Fish are our associate producers.
I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings, thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. Get ready to go vote on Monday. We’ll talk then.