Green party platform is big on ideas but falls far short on how to pay for them
Well, they get a couple of brownie points for transparency.
The Green party is the first to release an election platform with numbers attached — what Leader Elizabeth May calls a “budget” — and it promises to eliminate the deficit within five years, while conquering carbon emissions, bringing in universal child care, universal pharmacare and free tuition.
There are holes big enough to drive an electric vehicle through — numbers that changed at the last minute, other numbers that don’t add up and major policy planks that don’t have any numbers at all. Or as May herself said, “We knew there would be some glitchiness.”
But we should listen to them anyway — even if you’re a stickler for fiscal integrity — because the country is in need of as many ideas as possible when it comes to reconciling climate change with fiscal and economic policy.
Rather than a budget, the Greens’ document is a menu of notions that deserves some attention if Canada is actually going to have any hope of meeting its emissions targets and putting the national economy on a solid footing to move toward decarbonization. That’s where the rest of the world is moving slowly but surely, and there is a consensus among our political leaders that Canada should be competitive in that future.
If Canada is serious about reducing net emissions to zero by 2050, or even a significant reduction by 2030, the next government will need to make some deep changes in how the fiscal levers are used.
Our traditional economic mainstays are already in play. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned on Wednesday that harvesting seafood and other coastal industries are poised to disappear because of warmer oceans. The International Energy Association projects a flattening out of demand for oil within a decade, and McKinsey and Co. analysts see demand peaking and then declining in the 2030s.
If there’s a mainstream political consensus that climate change is upon us, that it will disrupt our traditional economy and that Canadians should have the ingenuity to fully participate in a global shift to a low-carbon economy, then every platform should be scoured for ideas that could be agreed and acted upon.
The Greens’ thinking on a “just transition” for displaced workers could be a good place to start. As workers face dwindling employment prospects in fossil fuels over the long term, the federal government would work with unions, employers and employees to ensure retraining at a local level, pension and income support, and personalized help finding a new job. The Greens put the cost at $400 million a year, but in this case as in others, it’s the idea that counts.
May is also pushing the concept of a national energy grid and emphasizes — glibly — that she has a bit of common ground with the Conservatives on this front. The Greens would cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline and other fossil-fuel subsidies, and then put several billions of that money toward a national grid for renewable energy transition. Andrew Scheer also wants a national energy grid, and while his corridor would be oiland-gas-centric, it would include electricity and telecommunications. The two parties come at this from very different perspectives but share conceptual ground.
Electric vehicles, big investment in public transit and widespread electrification also offer ample possibilities for common ground. Environment-friendly retrofitting of homes and buildings is already a plank for the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP and the Greens in one way or another.
For sure, elections by nature encourage division and discourage collaboration, but they do force into the open a wide range of policy options. The Greens have finally tried to rationalize the cost of some of their ideas that could serve as a basis for action.
But there’s no denying that the Greens’ first attempt at setting fiscal parameters around its aggressive environmental vision has failed, according to the objective guidelines set by Kevin Page and his team at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.
Page was almost apologetic as he issued the failing grade on Wednesday, acknowledging that the Greens don’t pretend that they will win the next election. The party is proposing such a major overhaul of taxation and social programs, along with dramatic rampup in environmental policy, that the effects on the economy would be profound — and very difficult to measure, he said.
“Every one of these changes has a big behavioural impact.”
The party is, however, asking to be taken seriously and holds out hope of holding the balance of power in the next government. One hopes any sway they have will come in the realm of ideas, not budgeting.