Scheer’s pipeline politics not on Quebec’s radar
It is not a Maxime Bernier-led breakaway party that stands to most damage Conservative prospects in Quebec in next year’s federal election, but rather some of leader Andrew Scheer’s own promises.
In a keynote speech to his party’s national convention on Friday, Scheer laid out part of his 2019 battle plan. As expected, it borrows heavily from Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s successful recipe, starting with a frontal attack on Justin Trudeau’s national carbon-pricing policy.
One of the first acts in office of a Scheer-led government would be to abolish the federal carbon tax that Ottawa will apply to provinces that fail to come up with measures of their own to meet the emissions-pricing targets set in the national climate change framework.
In line with his Prairies allies, Scheer would pursue a proactive pipeline agenda. It would include a renewed push to resurrect the plan to connect Western Canada’s oilfields to the Atlantic Coast. Last year, TransCanada nixed its planned Energy East pipeline rather than submit it to stringent new climate change standards put in place by the federal regulator.
Scheer argues those standards are designed to stifle the development of new pipelines in Canada. A Conservative government would lower them.
The CPC leader did not talk much about his party’s visceral aversion to carbon-pricing or his desire to see the Energy East project rise out of its ashes when he campaigned successfully in a byelection in Chicoutimi-Le Ford last June. It would not have been a great selling point for his party.
Given their recent internal distractions, chances are Conservative strategists have not been paying a lot of attention to the ongoing Quebec election campaign.
If they had, they would have noted that, in sharp contrast with comparable provincial jurisdictions such as Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Alberta, the desirability of either carbon pricing or new pipelines is not on the electoral radar.
That’s because there is not a party bent on watering down or eliminating the province’s carbon pricing policy on the Quebec ballot. None of the parties represented in the National Assembly is proposing to follow Ontario’s suit by doing away with the province’s cap-and-trade system. Regardless of who leads the government after Oct. 1, Quebec will not be pulling out of the federal climate change framework.
The province set out to put a price on carbon a decade ago and no party is looking to turn the clock back on those efforts. In Quebec, advocating for carbon-pricing policies makes for good politics; promoting pipelines not so much.
Last spring, an Ipsos poll done for La Presse reported that 66 per cent of Quebecers would find it acceptable to slow the province’s economy to protect the environment and mitigate the impact of climate change. The same poll found solid public support for Quebec’s robust environmental movement.
Back when Energy East was still on the books, the Parti Québécois asked the National Assembly to come together to oppose the project. At the time, the ruling Liberals and the Coalition Avenir Québec joined forces to defeat the PQ motion. But TransCanada’s announcement that it was killing the pipeline inspired more relief than regret in both parties. Premier Philippe Couillard commented that the decision did not amount to much of a loss to Quebec.
Since that announcement, none of the provincial parties has stepped forward to champion a revival of the project. Of the four main leaders, the PQ’s Jean-François Lisée is the only one who has cause to dream of seeing the pipeline bid resurface. He would relish the opportunity to campaign against it.
As Scheer sets out to turn next year’s federal campaign into a plebiscite on Trudeau’s climate change policy, he should expect little or no help from Quebec’s political class. And if he becomes prime minister, he may be hard-pressed to find any support for bringing Energy East back to life in the province’s capital.
The Conservative plan to retreat from carbon pricing while making it easier for pipeline promoters to pass the federal regulatory test would turn a hard-to-sell project into one that no Quebec premier intent on his political survival would touch with a 10-foot pole.
That includes the leading CAQ. If he does win the election later this year, François Legault has no intention of becoming a one-term premier; a blip on the radar that only appeared long enough for the other two main parties to regroup and get their respective acts together. The CAQ may be the most pipeline-friendly option on the Quebec ballot, but Legault knows a poison pill when he is presented with one.