Scheer has boxed himself in on climate change policies

In his zeal to define all taxes as bad and appeal to the populist he knows is residing in all of us, Andrew Scheer has boxed himself in on climate change.

We are all acquainted with the Conservative leader’s loud and active opposition to a federally-imposed carbon tax. He and his MPs repeat their anti-carbon-tax mantra every chance they get, and they have several premiers on their side fighting the Liberals’ carbon-pricing plans in court.

Politically, they have had some success. Despite losing two court challenges, they have squeezed the Liberals hard enough to make them promise not to raise the price above $50 a tonne — the target for 2022.

Scheer has now added another Liberal emissions-curtailing measure to his list of verboten polices: clean fuel standards.

The federal government is in the midst of designing regulations that would make fuel less polluting over time. The plan takes aim at the transportation sector, which is responsible for about 25 per cent of Canada’s emissions. The regulations would require fossil fuel suppliers either to produce cleaner fuel or to buy credits from those that do.

Bad actors would be punished and good ones rewarded; fossil fuels would become more expensive, and low-carbon fuels, such as biofuels, electricity, hydrogen or propane, more attractive by comparison.

According to Scheer, this plan amounts to a “secret fuel tax.”

“Your secret fuel tax will undoubtedly increase the cost of gasoline by at least another four cents a litre, a fact you continue to hide,” Scheer writes in a letter to Justin Trudeau this week. “It is also an unprecedented tax that will apply to all fuel sources, including the fuel used for manufacturing and home heating, which will make Canadian businesses less competitive and gas more expensive.”

It’s true that the anyone involved in using high-carbon fuel would pay a price. Except it’s not a secret and it’s not a tax.

For sure, the government would be involved in setting the standards and administering the compliance system. But it wouldn’t be collecting the proceeds, which is the basis for anything called “tax.” Instead, the government would be enabling consumers and companies to cross-subsidize each other for finding more efficient ways of fuelling up. It’s not unlike the system that Scheer has proposed for large emitters, which would see polluting companies pay into a fund that could be used to develop green technology.

As for the “secret” part, the reality is less that the cost is being hidden than that it is largely unknown. Experts have estimated the cost to be four cents a litre for traditional gasoline by 2030. But they also point out that since the regulations act as an incentive for companies and consumers to behave differently, prices will fluctuate and alternatives will be found.

If we switch en masse to electric vehicles, for example, the cost per litre of gasoline becomes less relevant. Or if we figure out a better way to mix biofuels into gasoline, the price would respond accordingly.

The clean fuel standard is not as efficient at reducing emissions as, say, a carbon tax. But the two measures complement each other.

But now that Scheer has branded both the clean fuel standards and the national carbon pricing system as unacceptable tax hikes driven by Liberal greed, he has removed two basic tools from his tool kit to cut emissions, something he has committed to doing if elected prime minister.

Since Conservatives are severely allergic to anything that touches the consumer, a Conservative climate strategy would put a huge burden on business — both in terms of inventing and perfecting new technology.

But a government shouldn’t be telling companies what to do, they argue. Instead, a government should open the door to private sector innovation by offering incentives for great new ideas.

But while their faith in the ingenuity of the private sector is inspiring, what if it doesn’t measure up? The large emitters — oil and gas producers mainly in the Conservative heartland of Alberta, and manufacturers — would carry the biggest burden of all, no doubt devising a way to distribute some of the burden to consumers.

In Scheer’s world, that’s a tax.