Scheer in the eye of climate storm
Environmental plan unlikely to boost support
There is calm in the eye of the hurricane of spin and counterspin in a general election. Andrew Scheer has been travelling around the country visiting ridings that were lost to the Liberals or NDP in the last election. He has been making a policy announcement in the morning, taking reporters’ questions ( which he handles with aplomb), before speaking at modest, informal campaign rallies in the evening, most often in pubs. He comes across as affable, authentic and intelligent. On this evidence, things are going pretty well.
But leaders’ tours can be echo chambers. Despite Justin Trudeau’s adventures in fancy dress, polls show the Conservatives and Liberals are tied in support — which likely means Scheer is losing in terms of seat count. He must dream of the Liberal leader being caught on camera clubbing a seal. Short of that, Trudeau appears Teflon.
The Conservatives remain in reasonable shape. They have the most stable base of support — including the people who are coming out to the rallies. At Crabby Joe’s in London, Ont., Scheer was given a rousing reception, not least when he said he would cancel the carbon tax.
But Scheer and his party are almost nobody’s second choice. The Conservative leader seems to have hit a ceiling of support and his environmental plan is unlikely to make things better.
Many of the events over the past two weeks have been low key, in part because the Conservative Party has become a pariah for many young people.
They don’t think the Conservatives have anything to say to them, beyond rejoicing in the intent to repeal the carbon tax. Scheer routinely contends carbon pricing has been “proven to fail” citing a recent rise in emissions in British Columbia — and ignoring contrary evidence from northeastern U. S., the U. K, Sweden and B. C. ( emissions there increased 1.5 per cent in 2016 but on a per- capita basis, they have decreased steadily since the carbon tax was introduced).
The Conservative leader was in Quebec’s Saguenay region to visit a hardware store and re- announce his house renovation tax credit, which offers a 20 per cent credit on income used to install insulation or replacement windows, up to a maximum of $3,800.
The measure was first included in the environmental plan Scheer unveiled in June, to considerable criticism.
On Wednesday in Jonquière, he got his retaliation in first by attacking Trudeau for signing on to new 2050 targets of zero net- emissions, when he still has unfinished business on his 2030 targets. “Justin Trudeau wants to talk about 2050 because he knows he can’t hit 2030,” he said.
There are plenty of other flaws in the Liberal environment record to feast on. Trudeau has not explained how he plans to keep Canada’s oilsands and LNG plants growing and still meet his targets, beyond relying on growing U. S. shale production to put the Canadian resource industry out of business.
In the meantime, if current policies are maintained, Canada will fall 79 megatonnes short of its Paris targets. Trudeau has not committed to increasing the carbon tax above the $ 50 per tonne planned for 2022, even though the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that amount will need to double to $102 per tonne by 2030 to meet the goal of emissions levels 30 per cent below 2005 levels.
But the Liberal plan is a model of transparency compared to Scheer’s policy document. The Conservatives have said their plan is the “best chance of meeting our Paris targets” — which falls short of a firm commitment to that agreement. The plan contains no carbon tax, fuel standards — in fact it contains “nothing that costs anyone anything”, in the words of environmental economist, Andrew Leach. Instead, facilities that emit greenhouse gases will have to invest a certain amount to offset those emissions above a certain cap. But there is no information on the investment amounts or the cap. Scheer said emphasis will be placed on “taking the fight global” and getting credit for Canada’s clean exports. But these are just words. No receiving country is going to hand Canada emissions credits, unless they are compensated handsomely.
It makes it hard for anyone who believes that manmade climate change is a clear and present danger to vote Conservative. Many first and second time voters appear to have decided they will not.
As the Scheer tour has proceeded around the country, it has started encountering climate change protesters. A visit to a café at the University of Waterloo’s Cambridge School of Architecture was abandoned at the last minute, as 20 or so people holding climate action signs gathered near the front of the bus.
Scheer’s party has been reduced to peddling blatant misinformation to voters. A new ad suggests that $ 2 a litre gas is “just around the corner” if Trudeau is re-elected — a calculation based on increases to carbon tax and fuel standard. But, according to the PBO, a doubling of the carbon tax to meet Canada’s targets would add just 23 cents to the price of gas by 2030 — hardly “just around the corner”.
It is understandable that a campaign which decided to go all in on affordability felt it could not back carbon pricing. It is a gamble that may yet pay off and lead the Conservatives back to government. Campaigns matter and we are not yet half way through.
But there is little evidence anecdotally or in the polling to suggest uncommitted voters are flocking into the fold.
Over the summer, I asked one of Scheer’s senior advisers whether he was worried that the long- term viability of the party is at stake, if many younger Canadians view the Conservatives as untouchable. He said he was more focused on the October vote. Such is the nature of politics in 2019.