O’Toole to tackle climate change, environmental issues
Party’s approach on topic may have been a factor in poor election results
OTTAWA— Erin O’Toole is expected to put significant emphasis on climate change and environmental policies in the Conservatives’ next election pitch in a bid to broaden the party’s appeal beyond its traditional base.
Addressing the climate crisis has not been a central part of the modern Conservative party’s electoral pitch. But two senior Conservative sources suggested that could change in the next federal election, with one calling a credible environmental plan an “entrance exam to respectability” with voters.
Public polling — including in the crucial suburban ridings around Toronto — supports that conclusion. But it will be a tricky line for O’Toole to walk, after being elected leader partly on a promise to champion Western Canada’s concerns.
“It has to be serious, it has to be robust, people have to believe that we take this seriously,” said one source, granted anonymity.
“It’s not so much that there are large, enormous numbers of accessible voters who vote according to this issue (alone),” the source added, but that if the Conservatives don’t offer a credible environmental plan to voters, “you don’t get a hearing on anything else.”
The Conservatives under Andrew Scheer were criticized for their environmental proposals in the party’s 2019 platform, which offered a climate change plan with no targets and instead focused on eliminating the Liberals’ carbon levy, replacing it with tax credits and federal investments in clean tech.
While Scheer’s team argued its plan would offer Canada’s best shot at hitting the 2030 Paris goals for greenhouse gas emissions, that argument was hampered by not having any details about how much the plan would reduce them.
On the 2019 campaign trail, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals were happy to contrast their party’s environmental plans with those of the Conservatives. That’s a point of contrast that Conservatives are expecting again, with the government shifting focus to making Canada carbon neutral by 2050.
There are signs that O’Toole is anxious to avoid climate as a wedge issue in the next election. In a meeting with Trudeau last week, O’Toole said he was
willing to support the Liberals’ “net-zero” legislation “provided it supports Canadian industries, including our world-leading oil and gas industry,” illustrating the balance the Conservatives are trying to strike.
“Mr. O’Toole raised the fact that collaboration between Canada (and) the United States on environmental standards provides an opportunity to make meaningful environmental progress with the world’s second-largest emitter, and to protect the economic viability of our industries, including
Canada’s energy sector,” read the Conservatives’ summary of the meeting.
Even when campaigning for the leadership — and appealing to the rock-ribbed Conservative base — O’Toole said the party needed to improve its pitch on addressing climate change. “The fundamental thing that I think we were out of step on in the last two elections was the environment. I’ve said that many times,” O’Toole told the Star in July.
There is some evidence that the party’s perceived weakness on the environment was at least one factor in the Scheer campaign’s disappointing results in Ontario. A Leger poll conducted for Canadians for Clean Prosperity found that of 905 area residents who considered voting for the Conservatives in 2019 but didn’t, 63 per cent said they could not vote for a party that didn’t have a strong plan to address climate change.
“The Conservative election team since the early part of (Stephen Harper’s governments) said there are sword issues and there are shield issues. There are issues where we can win … and there’s issues that we can lose, and if we don’t address those losing issues correctly, we will lose,” said Ken Boessenkool, a former Conservative adviser who teaches public policy at McGill University.
“I don’t think climate change and all of the issues around it are an issue where Conservatives can win an election,” he said, “but if they don’t have it addressed, they can lose an election and they will continue to lose elections unless they address it.”
But Boessenkool cautioned the O’Toole team about developing a comprehensive climate plan before the Supreme Court rules on Ontario and Alberta’s challenges to the Liberals’ carbon levy. Boessenkool expects the provinces to lose that challenge — which may force premiers Doug Ford and Jason Kenney to take stronger environmental action at home, rather than leave their provinces’ policies up to Ottawa.
“Suddenly Alberta and Ontario (would be) faced with the question: What do we do? Do we allow Justin Trudeau to collect billions of dollars from our residents and let him decide how to redistribute that money back to our residents?” Boessenkool said. “It’s my view that Ontario and Alberta and Saskatchewan will get much more serious about what they’re doing in their provinces on climate … And that may solve the problem for Erin O’Toole.”