It’s hard to campaign on climate ‘balance’

Voters want to help the environment without gutting oil and gas industry

Justin Trudeau may get credit for his yoga skills, but I’ve spent the week mesmerized by Jagmeet Singh’s apparent position changes on the question of pipeline approval. He initially told CBC that as prime minister he would not impose pipeline projects on provinces that don’t want them.

The NDP leader then bristled at the suggestion that this would effectively give the provinces a “veto” over endeavours that are clearly the jurisdiction of the federal government. He instead says he wants to work with provincial, municipal and first nations governments to get them to yes.

What happens when those stakeholders have been asked nicely, cajoled, pleaded with, incentivized and still say no? That’s less material to Singh at the moment; polling shows that at this stage in the campaign, it’s not likely to be his problem. Besides, in the short term, he needs to outwork the Greens for the anti-pipeline, anti-oilsands, anti-resource development vote in an election in which uncommitted voters have identified climate change as their number 1 issue, and where three parties are vying for their much-needed support.

The energy-versus-environment debate is driving a wedge among the electorate. That may be effective in terms of firing up the most fervent voters on each side, but it also represents a missed opportunity.

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives emphasize their commitment to fast-track future pipeline project court challenges to get them built sooner, and vow to kill the carbon tax. The NDP hasn’t ruled out ever approving a pipeline, but it also hasn’t ever come across a pipeline project it likes.

If we dig a little deeper, however, we find that when it comes to balancing climate action with oil and gas growth, Canadians don’t want leadership that is “either-or.” What they’d really like to see is “both-and.” In Angus Reid Institute polling conducted just before the writs were drawn, Canadians were asked which should be the bigger priority overall for this country in the coming decade.

About half said Canada should focus more on climate change. About one-third said precedence should go to the oil and gas sector. The rest said they weren’t sure.

But here’s the thing: Neither side would necessarily kill attention to or investment in the other. Among those who choose climate action, only one-quarter say the oil and gas sector shouldn’t get any investment or attention at all from the federal government.

And among those who say Canada’s next decade should be centred on oil and gas, only one-fifth say this should mean absolutely no federal investment in, or attention to, climate change efforts.

In other words, Canadians may have differing views over what goes at the top of a to-do list, but most have no desire to strike off the other action items altogether.

At least, that’s what they say. Ironically, for his sins, it’s also what Trudeau and the Liberals have tried — albeit imperfectly — to do. They bought a pipeline. And they imposed carbon pricing in provinces that didn’t have their own plans. But instead of being lauded for this middle way, their “both-and” approach has instead allowed their opponents on the right and the left to land multiple punches.

On the right, the Liberals look as if they are headed for a wipeout in Alberta, whose government has joined Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick in saying “hell no” to Trudeau’s carbon tax. Trudeau also stands to lose seats in British Columbia in places where opposition to the pipeline, and indignation over its purchase, have left-of-centre voters seething.

Meanwhile Singh, whose party was once the go-to for union members in Canada’s resource sector, cannot afford to soften his pipeline hard line for fear of seeing climate activists defect to the Greens. Scheer cannot offer more on the climate action front beyond encouraging the private sector to innovate, for fear that climate change skeptics in his own ranks will slip away to the People’s Party, which has no specific climate policy, and whose leader isn’t convinced climate change is the result of human activity. Depressingly, that’s politics.

Shachi Kurl is executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.