TRUDEAU EKES OUT WIN ON CLIMATE

Stephen Harper as prime minister rarely met with the premiers together in one place at one time, so as to avoid being tackled and relieved of his wallet, phone and sneakers. His successor had to be thinking, as he whiteknuckled his way through a First Ministers’ news conference Friday, that the old man hadn’t been all wrong.

In the end Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eked out a win — a national carbon-reduction plan agreed to by 11 of 13 provincial and territorial leaders, whose jurisdictions comprise more than 90 per cent of the population. The deal, despite Saskatchewan and Manitoba opting out, puts the Liberals a step closer to meeting their principal economic goal for this mandate, a new oil pipeline linking Alberta with the Pacific Ocean. But it was a close-run thing. It could still very easily go off the rails.

Let us remind ourselves, first, that such gatherings are inherently theatrical and symbolic. Indeed the entire federal-provincial climate strategy is more an exercise in political symbolism than a quantifiable process that will result in the preservation of Canada’s environment for “our kids and grandkids,” as the talking point tells us incessantly.

That’s not a knock against the plan but a fact: Climate is global. Nearly a third of the world’s emissions in 2015 were produced in China. Another 15 per cent or so came from the United States — with India, Russia and Japan together accounting for a similar volume. India’s share, now at about six per cent of the world total, will grow as its economy modernizes. Likewise Brazil and Indonesia. The 2015 Paris Accord, as Stephen Lewis himself has noted, is aspirational. It contains no binding targets backed up by penalties for non-adherence.

So Canada’s relatively mature, slow-growth economy, which accounted for 1.7 per cent of total emissions last year, could go carbon-free tomorrow and not make a globally significant dent. Though Canadians may not enjoy the idea, the outcome one way or another will be determined in Beijing, Washington and Mumbai — not in Ottawa, which is a bit player.

The accord reached Friday is not so much a question of environmental levers, in other words, but rather of perceived moral leadership, of “Canada doing its share,” ambitious conservative to be seen bashing Ottawa for its pusillanimous levying of a carbon tax, while his government gets to keep the proceeds, or dole them out and be the local hero.

Wall asked rhetorically at the presser what the point could be of imposing such a tax if a premier, (i.e. him) is able to counter its effect on behaviour by returning all the revenue to those taxed. The point, obviously, is that Trudeau can reap the benefits of putting a national GHG reduction plan in place, while forestalling any regional revolt by de facto allowing provinces the leeway to mitigate the effects, should they wish to. Wall can stay and leave at the same time, which has to make this attractive for him, whatever he may say publicly.

The wild card — as with Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the flip side of this federal plan — was and will remain B.C.’s Christy Clark. There is debate about what, if any, concession she managed to extract with her dramatic 11th-hour declaration that B.C. was out of the framework agreement, followed shortly thereafter by news the province was back in. She has claimed B.C. may get a pass on the projected $10-atonne increase in the tax in 2020. Ottawa has said otherwise.

What Clark did confirm, without a doubt, is that she understands the outsized power she now holds in the federation, and de facto over the Trudeau Liberals, by virtue of B.C.’s access to the Pacific — and thus, Asian markets. Clark has an election to win in May. Odds are she’ll continue to hedge on Trans Mountain and on this climate framework, despite federal efforts to win her support, because doing so is to her immediate benefit.

The lesson for Trudeau: In a decentralized federation, premiers don’t score points by accommodating the prime minister. Not for the first, time, Harper will be thinking, as he scans the headlines: I could have told him that.