Bernier takes hands-off tack on climate change
Private sector best equipped to address issue
• Maxime Bernier believes Earth’s climate is changing. However, he has “no opinion” as to the cause, and his new political party doesn’t plan to propose any specific climate policy ahead of next year’s election, instead trusting the private sector to solve the problem.
In an interview with the National Post, the leader of the fledgling People’s Party of Canada lamented the way some people interpreted his recent statements on Twitter — that CO2 is food for plants, not pollution — to mean he is a climate-change denier.
“I believe in climate change,” he said. Asked if critics are not taking him literally enough on such statements, Bernier said, “Yes.”
PPC spokesman Martin Masse explained, however, that Bernier doesn’t want to proclaim any opinions on its causes. “Mr. Bernier recognizes that CO2 can have an effect on climate change. He also recognizes that the majority of scientists believe that human activity is already having a negative impact on climate change, although a minority still believe this is not the case. As a non-scientist, he doesn’t have an opinion on this,” Masse said in a statement.
“The PPC’s focus is not on debating the science but on the measures that should be taken to lower the consumption of carbon energy. No government policy that is now being debated, certainly not the government’s carbon tax, is likely to have any effect on global climate change.”
In the interview, Bernier said he will propose no specific climate policy as part of the platform for his new party, which has yet to be formally registered by Elections Canada. He said his broader economic policies, including a flat, lower tax rate for business, would allow the private sector to find solutions.
The former Conservative leadership candidate — who in August broke from the party and its leader, his former rival Andrew Scheer, to strike out on his own — has long argued against carbon taxation. He accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being hypocritical for explaining recently on Quebec talk show Tout le monde en parle that if Canada alone took extreme measures to end all its pollution tomorrow, without action from other countries, it would have little impact.
“You can shut down our economy and the effect on climate change, it will be nothing,” Bernier said. “I think, why tell Canadians that you can change the world when you cannot?”
His rhetoric on social media has been more blunt than that: “It proves that his carbon tax will have ZERO EFFECT and is just HYPOCRITICAL VIRTUE SIGNALING,” said one post from his Twitter account this week. “But there were more media reports criticizing me for saying the obvious fact that CO2 is food for plants!”
Bernier told the Post there are “a lot of programs at the provincial and federal level” to deal with climate change. “I think that the solution will come with the private sector with new technology.”
But asked to clarify if that meant he was in favour of government programs that subsidize the development of clean energy technologies, Bernier said he doesn’t support corporate welfare in any situation. “The best program will be to lower taxes to every single entrepreneur in this country,” he said.
“The electric car, it’s not the government saying, 'Oh, we must have electric cars.' The market was ready for that. People were ready for that, so, we have electric cars. The free market ... will find solutions and they always did in the past.”
Every one of Bernier’s federal competitors have struck a different tone. The Conservative Party is expected to reveal a climate policy that offers an alternative to the Liberals’ carbon-pricing program and to the more aggressive policies proposed by the NDP and Green Party.
Tories seem confident that voters who oppose the Liberals’ carbon tax won’t vote for Bernier’s PPC for fear of splitting the vote on the right side of the political spectrum. “If you’re voting on the carbon tax, you’re not going to vote for Maxime Bernier,” a senior Conservative source said.