O’toole drops plan to end fossil fuel subsidies

Candidate vows real plan to tackle climate change

OTTAWA • Conservative leadership candidate Erin O’toole has removed a promise to end fossil fuel subsidies from his policy platform, taking the language out just a day after releasing it publicly.

The initial platform, published Wednesday morning, promises O’toole will have an environmental plan that “ends fossil fuel subsidies, a form of corporate welfare.”

As of Thursday evening, that’s been replaced with a vague promise that says his plan “simplifies the tax code to create confidence in the resource sector and support its actions toward emission reduction.”

O’toole addressed the change in a series of latenight posts on Twitter.

“One thing I’ve received a lot of questions about is a line in the climate change section of the platform, so I’ve made a change to make it clearer,” he wrote.

“What has not changed is my commitment that with me as leader our party will present Canadians with a real plan to tackle climate change in the next election. The fact that Canadians did not feel we took this issue seriously enough was a big reason why we lost the last election.”

He concluded by saying the party needs a leader “who will show Canadians that a Conservative can be a champion of the oil and gas industry while protecting our environment. That’s the kind of leader I will be.”

The size of Canada’s subsidies for the oil and gas sector differs based on how they’re defined, who is calculating them and what they include. Environmental groups often estimate them in the range of $2 billion to $4 billion annually, but some go much higher.

A 2019 federal auditor general’s report said the subsidies can include items such as grants, government loans at favourable rates, resources sold by government at below-market rates, research and development funding, government intervention in markets to lower prices, and tax expenditures.

O’toole’s promise to end the subsidies had been coming under fire from other Conservatives, including from his chief leadership rival Peter Mackay.

“Some of Mr. O’toole’s platform does not sound like it was written by someone running to be the leader of our Conservative Party,” Mackay said in a message to supporters Friday morning, adding that “Canada does not subsidize fossil fuels.”

It is also possible O’toole’s platform promise had put him offside with his highest profile endorsement, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

In a Globe and Mail story published June 5, Kenney reacted to international agencies calling for the end of fossil fuel subsidies by calling such subsidies a “myth.”

“In the past there were policies designed to incentivize economic activity in oil and gas, but that’s true of many industries,” Kenney said in the story. “There simply is no subsidy program here.”

There does not appear to be any other changes to the environmental section of O’toole’s 50-page platform.

The platform promises to scrap the current national carbon tax, saying it pits one part of the country against another. “If provinces want to use market mechanisms, other forms of carbon pricing, or regulatory measures, that is up to them,” it says. “The federal government will be there to support them.”

But the platform still tables the option of implementing some kind of national carbon pricing mechanism for large industrial emitters, as opposed to one that consumers pay directly. O’toole’s plan would make “industry pay rather than taxing ordinary Canadians, by forging a national industrial regulatory and pricing regime across the country,” it says.

The platform also promises “a plan to get to net-zero emissions in the oil and gas industry through the use of technologies like electrification generated from sources such as nuclear and wind and carbon capture, with the government providing incentives similar to those that were used to stimulate the early development of the oilsands.” (Net zero means any carbon emissions would be completely offset by other carbon-removing measures. The Canadian government’s official goal is to be net zero nationally by 2050.)

In its intro, O’toole’s platform defends the idea of a Conservative government putting forward robust environmental policy.

“Despite what our political opponents and some special interest groups may claim, Conservative governments, both federally and provincially, have a long record of practical and successful environmental initiatives,” it says. “It was on our watch that Canada successfully tackled acid rain, expanded our national parks, and removed many dangerous chemicals from the biosphere.”

CAN BE A CHAMPION OF THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

WHILE PROTECTING

OUR ENVIRONMENT.