#Elxn44: ‘All Platforms are Not Equal’ as Party Leaders Debate Climate

Our continuing coverage of Canada’s federal election September 20 carries the #Elxn44 tag. You can use the search engine on our site to find other stories in the series.

Climate held its position as a top-tier issue in last night’s English-language debate, parties tussled over their campaign pledges, and Calgarians declared climate action their top concern in upcoming federal and municipal votes as Canada’s national election campaign entered its last 10 days.

The debate, moderated by Angus Reid Institute President Shachi Kurl, featured a full segment on the climate crisis, devoting far more time to the topic than in any past election. It still generated more heat than light.

“That was the longest exchange we’ve ever had on climate change in a Canadian election debate,” tweeted Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart. “Some good questions, but not enough time to get beyond the surface in the answers or let the leaders really engage.”

While the leaders talked, climate analysts and campaigners reacted and fact-checked in real time on the #LetsTalkClimate hashtag. “Friendly reminder to anyone who needs to hear this,” tweeted Climate Action Network-Canada. “All climate plans are not equal. A plan to achieve disaster isn’t useful. You can have strong targets AND a strong plan. It’s not either/or.”

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau spent much of his time during the climate segment defending his government’s record on carbon pricing, instituting a ban on single-use plastics, and protecting coasts, rivers, and oceans. He asserted a couple of times that Canada is on track to exceed its original promise under the Paris climate agreement to reduce emissions 30% by 2030, adding that experts had given the Liberal climate platform the highest rating among all the parties (More on that later in this post).

“We had a lot of catching up to do,” Trudeau said, after a decade under a Stephen Harper government that didn’t take the climate crisis seriously, championed and deregulated fossil fuel development, and vilified climate and environmental campaigners. “But what we were able to do in six years is put a national price on pollution,” the Liberal leader added, “and right now, we are on track to exceed the 2030 targets that were set at the beginning of Paris.”

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said his party is proposing to roll back Canada’s updated Paris target because a less ambitious goal will be easier to achieve. He argued a couple of times that cutting back Canadian oil output will only drive up production in “bad actor countries” like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia—despite the International Energy Agency’s call for drastic production cuts across all countries, and polling that shows two-thirds of Canadian oil and gas workers interested in careers in clean energy.

O’Toole added that carbon reductions shouldn’t cost jobs in communities and sectors that “deserve an economic recovery as much as anyone else”. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh replied that the cost of climate inaction is a world of fires, flooding, and heat waves, where Canadians lose their lives and the town of Lytton, British Columbia burns to the ground. He stressed a green recovery plan that would create jobs with investments in clean energy, electrified transportation, and building retrofits, stressing that it’s governments’ responsibility to deliver the plan that workers need.

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet called for a cap on fossil fuel production and challenged O’Toole to repeat his statement during Wednesday’s French-language debate that he would never support a fossil fuel pipeline through Quebec. A smiling O’Toole declined to repeat the words in English.

Green Party leader Annamie Paul said Canada can be a renewable energy superpower, but risks being left behind in a “global green rush” that amounts to the “greatest opportunity we’ve seen in our lifetimes”. If Denmark, Greenland, and “other cold countries” can end oil and gas exploration, she said, Canada can, too. She called for climate cooperation across partisan lines, urging Canadians to elect MPs from all parties who are prepared to fight climate change as an existential challenge.

Earlier in the week, the Green Party released a largely uncosted campaign platform that called for a fossil industry phaseout, cancellation of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and all new pipeline and exploration projects, a C$250-per-tonne federal carbon price by 2030, an oil and gas fracking ban, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and a guaranteed livable income, CBC reports.

“Our platform is what this moment calls for,” said Green leader Annamie Paul, who issued a prepared statement in lieu of a live platform launch. “Many of the tragic events that unfolded during the past 18 months revealed gaping fault lines in our society, vulnerabilities that, if not addressed, will leave us in a perilously weak position to face the immense challenges of the 21st century.”

On the same day, veteran climate hawk Avi Lewis released a list of 31 Green Party members who endorsed his NDP candidacy in the British Columbia riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky. “This is the most important day of my campaign so far,” he tweeted. “In this riding, we either unite the environmental vote or we get the disastrous status quo.”

On Lewis’ campaign website, the endorsers—including renowned environmentalist David Suzuki, wild salmon defender Alexandra Morton, former Green Party nomination candidate Amanda Ladner, former insurance executive Robyn Allan, and former Bowen Island mayors Lisa Barrett and Bob Turner—acknowledged the widespread anxiety over the climate emergency. “In this election the federal Green Party is in disarray: its resources are exhausted and the leadership in turmoil,” they wrote. “But in this riding, there is an indisputable climate champion on the ballot.”

Elsewhere, the NDP faced a rougher ride, with economist Jennifer Winter declaring the party platform long on ambition but short on substance. “The NDP proposes an emissions target of 50% below 2005 levels by 2030; setting up national and sectoral carbon budgets; continuing with emissions pricing, making electricity net-zero by 2030, and 100% non-emitting by 2040; eliminating fossil fuel subsidies; increasing the stringency of methane emissions targets; subsidies for zero-emissions vehicles; building retrofits; making new buildings net-zero by 2025; and implementing border carbon adjustments,” she writes for CBC. But she takes the New Democrats to task for only putting forward three new items—methane cuts, an earlier zero-emissions deadline for the power grid, and border carbon adjustments.

“At a time when climate change is a top issue for voters, it’s a surprise and a shame that the NDP didn’t do more to refresh and expand their climate policy actions,” she writes. And “in the parts that aren’t new, the details are still frustratingly vague.”

On Tuesday, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh promised to double public transit funding and electrify all transit across the country, while taking Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to task for failing on climate change. “Our plan is to fight this climate crisis like we really want to win it,” he said. Trudeau shot back that Singh “didn’t even try” to deliver a realizable climate plan.

The week also saw continuing debate over an opinion piece by climate modeller Mark Jaccard, published last Friday in Policy Options, that gave the Liberals top marks for “climate sincerity” in their campaign platform. Jaccard assigned sincerity ratings of 8 out of 10 to the Liberals, 5 to the Conservatives, 4 to the Greens (prior to this week’s platform release), and 2 to the New Democrats, based on how effectively their stated policies would meet their 2030 carbon reduction targets. (Those targets, in case you’re keeping score: 60% for the Greens, 50% for the NDP, 40% for the Liberals, and 30% for the Conservatives.)

Critics of Jaccard’s approach said he had focused too much on the internal consistency of the platforms, and not at all on whether any of them delivered the faster, deeper carbon cuts required to get climate change under control. They also critiqued an analysis that left out strategies or funding promises that fell outside the economic model on which it was based.

“There’s deep, deep detail in the Green Party approach that he has given short shrift,” Green candidate and former leader Elizabeth May told CBC. “We’re looking at an absolute clear risk to humanity. We will not survive hitting the target that the Liberals have promised. So a realistic plan [that] can meet a target for failure shouldn’t get you good points.”

Climate Action Network-Canada National Policy Manager Caroline Brouillette said Jaccard ended up giving higher credit to a campaign pledge with a lower emissions reduction target. “A plan that is really great but that gets to a non-1.5°-compliant target would only mean that either Canada is not pulling its weight internationally…or that we’re headed above that 1.5° threshold and therefore towards catastrophic warming,” she said.

Pembina Institute federal policy director Isabelle Turcotte said it was a mistake to look at cost and effectiveness in isolation from other factors.

“At a very high level, we’re not surprised to see the Liberal plan would rank the highest,” she told CBC. “In my own analysis, looking at the Liberal platform, I do find that it has a lot of strong elements, a comprehensive approach to tackling climate change.” But “if we truly want to have a full picture, let’s take a look at the cost of inaction,” a “very high cost” that she said is “difficult to capture”.

Jaccard countered that “it’s misleading to tell Canadians we can magically eliminate 50% and more of our GHG emissions in just nine years, without enormous cost and disruption.” He added that “the NDP score even lower than the Greens on climate sincerity because it is not credible that they would destroy Canadian industries as the means to achieve their target.”

Clean Energy Canada, Oxfam Canada, and Passive House Canada issued election guides. Stand.Earth said 136 candidates had signed its pledge to cancel the Trans Mountain project, and Toronto-based TEAM Climate 2021 published a pledge form urging candidates to support the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Assembly of First Nations released [pdf] its campaign platform and Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, compared this year’s election campaign to the moment in 2005 when then-prime minister Paul Martin signed the Kelowna Accord, a $5-billion plan aimed at improving the lives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. Martin’s minority government fell and was replaced by Stephen Harper, who promptly cancelled the accord.

“We are at a similar point in time, where we are just coming off of a federal budget that dedicated more funding to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis than any other federal budget before,” Obed told CBC. But “we could see all of this progress stopped immediately,” he warned, citing “stark” differences in the parties’ approaches to reconciliation.

In Calgary, meanwhile, a poll released yesterday by Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, Calgary Climate Hub, and Clean Energy Canada found that 63% of the city’s population “believe Calgary’s future as a vibrant city is at risk if we do not become a leader in addressing climate change,” Global News reports. Climate emerged as a top issue for Calgarians in the federal election, as well as a municipal vote coming up October 18.

“Calgarians are worried about the future, as 53% do not believe that Calgary is on the right track to be a better city 10 years from now,” the polling report said. “The data indicates that all levels of government need to invest in Calgary’s economic and environmental future to build a resilient city that supports individuals, families, and small businesses through the transition.”