Environmental positions show divisions between parties

With the Ontario election now just days away, all four major parties have now tabled their platforms. While the campaign has focused heavily on the personalities of the party leaders, a review of the platforms makes it clear that environmental, energy and climate change issues are central points of division.

Electricity issues have been at the core political discussions for the past decade. Yet only the NDP and Greens seem prepared to raise fundamental questions about the direction of the province’s electricity strategy, particularly the Liberal government’s proposed “life-extension” of the end-of-life Pickering nuclear plant and the enormously expensive refurbishments of Darlington and Bruce nuclear facilities. The Greens have been alone in having the courage to question the viability and wisdom of the Liberal government’s “Fair Hydro Plan” rate cuts, which transfers major costs onto future ratepayers.

The divisions are perhaps even deeper over the issue of climate change. Here the Liberals, NDP and Greens are in agreement around the need for carbon pricing and low-carbon transition strategies, with the Liberal and Green plans around the latter being the furthest developed. The Liberals are alone in addressing the need to adapt to an already changing climate as well. In stark contrast, the PCs promise not only to repeal the existing cap and trade carbon pricing system but also to reduce the provincial gasoline tax by 10 cents/litre, and to mount a constitutional challenge to the federal government’s national carbon pricing plan.

Similar divisions emerge around land use and transportation. The Greens, NDP and Liberals all promise further protection of prime agricultural lands and drinking water sources. The Liberals and NDP also promise to halt the loss of provincial wetlands. The PCs propose to revive the recently abandoned proposal for a Brampton-to-Guelph highway through the Greenbelt. All of the parties make major commitments around transit, although the PCs are overwhelmingly focused on subway expansions in Toronto.

The NDP emerges well ahead of the other parties in its thinking around the development of a comprehensive provincial food strategy. The Greens introduced the idea of payments to farmers for providing ecological services like habitat protection and source-water protection. The NDP and Liberals are strong on the protection of supply management in the dairy and poultry sectors and, along with the PCs, on addressing issues with the provincial farm risk management (i.e. insurance) program.

The NDP stands out again in proposing significant improvements to the province’s control of air and water pollution, with specific reference to issues in Hamilton and Sarnia. The Liberals, for their part, make an innovative proposal for the labelling of presence of toxic substances in consumer products.

As is the case with climate change and land use, the divide between the PCs and the other parties around economic strategy is stark. The Greens, Liberals and NDP all present variations on the theme of strategies to address the economic transitions the province faces focused on specific sectors that are seen to be important to Ontario’s future. Cleantech, manufacturing, information and communications technologies, and film, television and digital media all come up in these strategies. The PCs, on the other hand, present a simplistic strategy of corporate tax cuts and deregulation straight out of Mike Harris’s 1995 “Common Sense Revolution.”

The NDP, PCs and Greens all emerge supporting resource revenue sharing with First Nations and northern communities, but only the Liberals and NDP present detailed strategies around reconciliation with Indigenous communities.

The debates around the province’s direction on environmental, energy and climate change issues are now profoundly connected to the parties’ overall strategies around the role of the provincial government itself and the long-term direction of Ontario’s economy and society. Ontario voters will need to look beyond the personalities of the party leaders and consider the choices that they will be making on June 7 in these more substantive terms.