CONSERVATIVES NEED ELECTION-WORTHY GREEN PLAN.
This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its most dire report yet on the state of the planet. It proposes five possible scenarios. In the best case, the earth warms between 1.4 degrees by the end of the century; worst case, it bakes at an additional 4.4 degrees. The solution, according to the IPCC, is simple: A “death knell” for fossil fuel use.
That is not simple at all, however, for countries that rely on these fuels not just to power their vehicles, but their economy. And that includes Canada. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, oil and natural gas production contributed $105 billion to our GDP in 2020, supported more than 500,000 jobs in 2019 and provided $10 billion in average annual revenue to governments between 2017 to 2019. Over the next six years, the oilsands industry will pay an estimated $8 billion in provincial and federal taxes. Which helps explain Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson’s response to the IPCC report: “What we’re doing is saying it’s got to be part of the transition, but part of the transition is being able to raise the revenues that enable you to actually make the investments that are required to go there.”
In other words, you can’t fight climate change without cold hard cash. You can’t build out alternative energy sources. You can’t develop carbon capture technology. You also can’t mitigate the effects of climate change, some of which will not be reversible, at least in our lifetimes.
It’s a fact many environmentalists — and politicians — conveniently ignore. Instead, the Liberals’ opponents are zeroing in on the cash the government has spent on the oil and gas sector. “Justin Trudeau spent over $20 billion of public money to buy and build a pipeline. Just last year, the Liberals gave the oil and gas sector $18 billion in subsidies,” reads a news release from the NDP.
The prime minister’s purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline was always going to be a tough circle to square with the progressive crowd. Add to that the ongoing meltdown of the Green Party, and this dissonance threatens to become a more significant problem. In the 2019 election, 47 ridings were decided by a margin of five per cent or less of the vote. If the NDP can siphon Green votes, it could help them break through in Ndp-liberal swing ridings. It could also split the vote enough to allow Conservatives to “come up the middle” in ridings in the Greater Toronto Area, as they did in the 2011 election in which Stephen Harper won a majority.
Recent polling has revealed that the NDP may be more of a threat to a Liberal majority than the Tories. The party is enjoying a boost, notably in the 18-29 age group, where Nanos Research pegs the Liberals at 36.6 per cent support, the NDP at 26.5 per cent, the Conservatives 20.7 per cent, and the Greens at 7.5 per cent. While younger voters traditionally turn out less than older voters, that can change with the right motivation, such as dissatisfaction with the incumbent government.
While the Liberals and NDP battle for the progressive vote, the Tories have their own contradictions to cope with. At the party’s March 2021 virtual convention, 54 per cent of delegates spurned their leader and rejected adding the phrase “climate change is real” to the party’s policy book. This, a day after Erin O’toole promised that the Tories would have “a serious and comprehensive plan on climate change to reduce emissions” in the next election.
O’toole cannot anger his oilpatch base, but he needs to appeal to the pragmatic voter who understands the link between the economy and the environment, who agrees that technological development, not energy deprivation, is the clearest path forward to solving the climate crisis. With the Liberals now treading that turf, the Conservatives need to get out their own green plan — one that eschews “death knells” for balanced solutions.
CAN’T FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE WITHOUT COLD HARD CASH. — TASHA KHEIRIDDIN