Canadians think about climate change

Canada burns and the election heats up. Trudeau's still trying to figure out if he's a climate warrior.

The summer of 2021 is changing the way Canadians think about climate change, but both main parties are struggling to define their message — and uphold Canada's international commitments.

By ZI-ANN LUM

Justin Trudeau unveiled his party’s climate plan to fast track a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 at a campaign event Sunday, and he was nearly drowned out by a cacophony of screaming protesters and their air sirens.

The Canadian prime minister pledged a re-elected Liberal government would see the greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s oil and gas “decrease every year,” a goal he said would be guided by “achievable milestones” every five years.

Trudeau had a cheeky response to protestors at the Cambridge, Ontario campaign stop, riffing that “Sirens in the background may remind us that this is a climate emergency.”

Canada is in the throes of a pandemic election that will see voters go to the polls on Sept. 20, after a summer of climate extremes.

Hundreds of sudden deaths were recorded in British Columbia after a record-breaking heat wave stretched emergency services and made poorly ventilated homes unlivable. Severe droughts and hundreds of wildfires have also taken their toll. Lytton, B.C. hit 49.5 Celsius/121.1 Fahrenheit on June 29 — the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada.

The next day the village was gone, burned to the ground.

The summer of 2021 is changing the way Canadians think about climate change and the urgency around it. For the first time in a Canadian election, there’s a buffet of climate change policies on offer for voters. But whichever party forms the next government, the upcoming COP26 summit risks exposing Canada as a straggler in a climate crisis era.

Meanwhile, Trudeau is taking criticism from all sides on climate. Conservatives accuse his government of making “arbitrary” decisions that will hurt the economy, while climate scientists and progressives are skeptical Canada has the right plans in place to actually make a difference.

“Many Canadians have understood climate is a challenge, but a challenge for the future,” Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a mid-August interview at his North Vancouver office.

“Increasingly people are aware, with the forest fires that are happening in Canada, with the flooding in Europe, with the terrible fires in Greece, that it's here with us now,” Wilkinson said. “The effects are actually only going to get more significant, and we need to act and we need to act with urgency.”

The day after the interview, the wildfire smoke was so thick the haze blocked out the view of the North Shore Mountains behind Wilkinson’s office. Covid-19 masks worked double duty to filter fine particulate matter and the acrid smell of omnipresent smoke outside.

Air quality in Vancouver that day was recorded as the worst of any major city in the world.

Still, climate has yet to emerge as a breakthrough topic of debate during Canada’s election, as other issues have dominated the campaign so far.

Despite pledging billions to build out electric vehicle infrastructure and investments in renewables and carbon capture, utilization and storage, Trudeau’s green credentials are challenged by the government's decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018 to ensure its construction, and its support for the now-quashed Keystone XL pipeline and Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline. Aid continues to flow into fossil fuels, despite a 2009 pledge by the world’s leading economies to phase out “inefficient” subsidies and Trudeau’s rhetoric to reform public financial support for the sector.

With polls now showing Conservatives in a dead heat with Liberals, the 2021 race appears to be slipping back into pre-pandemic trends that shaped the election two years ago.

Trudeau’s team is trying to portray the Conservatives as a political home for climate deniers and “dinosaurs.” But Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has muddied the waters with his party’s detailed climate policy, a suite of offerings designed to placate the business community and show progressive voters the Conservatives have evolved.

But O'Toole’s reluctance to condemn climate disinformation from one of his own incumbent MPs who warned of a looming “climate lockdown” is a liability for someone who, in his first speech as federal leader, appealed to past Liberal and NDP voters to “look at the Conservative party again.”

Regardless of which frontrunner wins, Liberal or Conservative, Canada will head to COP26 hamstrung by piecemeal plans for the country to do its global fair share on climate action.

Biden’s EV goal inspired by Canada, minister suggests

Urgency will be the theme at the United Nations’ upcoming COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow. It will also be one of the first high-level opportunities for a new Canadian government to change or reinforce the country’s reputation of being a climate laggard.

Canada hasn’t hit a climate target in 30 years. It is the only G-7 country to increase its overall emissions since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Trudeau’s incumbent Liberals have set a target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In April, the federal government increased the country’s emissions reduction goal from 30 to 40-45 percent below 2005 levels before 2030. That new target, called Canada’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), was formally submitted to the United Nations ahead of COP26.

Trudeau’s main rival, O’Toole, pitched his party’s climate plan one week before the federal government upped its target. The Conservatives’ plan is based on the old target: 30 percent emissions reduction below 2005 levels before 2030 — a goal that was previously set under former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government.

At a campaign event in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador last week, O’Toole said that the old target would make a comeback under a new Conservative government.

“It will meet the Paris objectives. It's not changing the Paris objectives,” he said.

Also included in the party’s climate plan is a pledge to study a border carbon adjustment (finance department consultations were launched earlier this month) and to “stand up for Canada in the world by insisting that major polluters like China clean up their act.”

Lowering Canada’s targets, as O’Toole is proposing, would require formally submitting a new nationally determined contribution to the United Nations, which would make the country in “non-compliance” under the Paris Agreement. NDCs are not considered a legally binding obligation, but backpedaling a climate target would invite criticism at home and internationally, including at COP26 where countries will be under pressure to agree on a plan to deliver on increased climate ambitions, not dial them back.

Canada’s increased 40-45 percent emissions reduction target ranks among the lowest of G-7 countries. The target is on par with France’s ambition to cut 1990 level emissions by 40 percent by 2030. The U.K., host of COP26 this year, is on the other end of the goal-setting spectrum, setting sights to make a 78-percent cut below 1990 levels by 2035.

Queen Elizabeth II, Canada’s Head of State, is among the dignitaries confirmed to attend November’s climate talks in Glasgow.

U.S., Canada stress ‘North American’ approach to climate targets

In the past year, the Canadian government has banned new thermal coal mining projects; committed billions to constructing electric vehicles infrastructure and building retrofit programs; pledged to work with the Biden administration on a critical minerals strategy “to make Canada and the United States global leaders in all aspects of battery development and production”; and promised that all new light-duty cars and trucks sold domestically by 2035 will be electric.

Canada’s environment minister believes Canada’s EV goal has already made an impression on the White House.

“I think that influenced some of the thinking in the United States, where they came out and a few weeks later and announced a 50 percent number by 2030 — which will be a more ambitious number by 2035,” Wilkinson said. The dynamic between governments is good, he added. “It actually helps us both to do more and to be more aggressive.”

Juggling environmental and economic policy will be a high-wire balancing act for the next Canadian government. Canada is home to the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and the industry accounts for a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Production is expected to increase 20 percent by 2040.

It’s a politically fraught area of policy because of the impact on jobs, trade and regional economies. According to Statistics Canada, oil and gas contributes 5.3 percent to the gross domestic product on a national level; and 21 percent provincially for Alberta and 25 percent for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Canada is warming two times faster than the global rate, and a significant factor is human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, according to government data.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report included data modeling, which gave a glimpse into what could be in store for Canada’s future. In all scenarios, modeling showed western Canada will continue to experience higher-than-normal temperatures, especially in the Arctic, risking extreme drought conditions that may contribute fuel for wildfires. In central Canada, more precipitation is expected as temperatures continue to climb, increasing the risk and frequency of severe flooding.

These changes in climate have physical, financial and emotional costs if there is no mitigation.

The 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta was a disaster that cost C$3.8 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. And before 2009, insured losses from catastrophic severe weather events averaged C$400 million annually. After 2009, the cost of insured losses related to events such as flooding jumped to C$1.4 billion every year.

‘We need new targets’: cabinet minister

Climate policy will be a prime area for further U.S.-Canada collaboration after four years of trade volatility under President Donald Trump. This was evident in the roadmap President Joe Biden and Trudeau announced in February, identifying shared interests for policy development including a critical minerals strategy to “target a net-zero industrial transformation, batteries for zero-emissions vehicles, and renewable energy storage.”

But having a net-zero-by-2050 goal isn’t enough to drive climate ambitions faster, according to a former environment minister in Trudeau’s cabinet. Scientists agree. The latest “reality check” report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that unless there are “immediate, rapid and large-scale” cuts in emissions, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed a 1.5 degree Celsius rise.

“We all need to dig a lot deeper,” outgoing Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna said in an interview a week before the official start of the election. “We need new targets.”

McKenna said Canada’s increased emissions reduction target is “in line with the science” and acknowledged it may not be enough. “We may need to go further,” she said. Climate math is easy, she said. “Emissions need to go down. That's all that needs to happen.”

An alliance of Canada’s largest oil sands producers, Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Cenovus Energy Inc., Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, pledged to move toward net zero by 2050.

But it’s easy to throw around “net zero by 2050,” McKenna said. It is harder to make plans and commit actual funding to reduce emissions.

“It's not a get out of jail free card.”

When asked, Wilkinson neither explicitly agrees or disagrees with McKenna. “We are at the present time less focused on raising our target yet again because we just raised it — but on encouraging other countries around the world to establish targets and plans,” he said.

Right now, he said, there’s a plan to raise $100 billion in aid annually from G-7 countries for climate-vulnerable countries to mitigate events exacerbated by high-emitting nations. Canada and Germany have been tasked by U.K. COP26 President Alok Sharma to corral the aid money.

Next frontiers of climate policy

Climate change is increasingly on the top of agendas for world leaders and voters.

One key area of policy that is poised to receive more attention over the coming years is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which gives countries an option to meet their climate targets through “voluntary cooperation” measures, such as international carbon markets.

Article 6 provisions were proposed to address the issue of carbon leakage, or when companies move their operations to jurisdictions with laxer emissions rules. Emissions-intensive production such as steel, cement, power, aluminum and fertilizers are expected to be the first wave of industries to be impacted by new carbon border tariffs.

Supporters of the idea argue the tariffs will improve uptake of aggressive climate policies, though some in Europe have raised concerns about the potential trade impacts, warning the cost of tariffs could crumple some industries.

The European Union is the closest to having a system in place and operational by 2026. House and Senate Democrats proposed a plan last month. Canada’s angle on this new frontier of climate policy remains at an exploratory stage, publishing a background paper and launching consultations in early August. With G-7 economies moving toward a carbon pricing mechanism, there’s a broad consensus one is needed in Canada — but the devil’s in the details.

Canada’s elections are historically fought in the center. It’s the sweet spot on the political spectrum that O’Toole has been moving his party toward for the past year.

O’Toole unveiled his climate plan in the spring which included a carbon tax with a maximum price of C$50 per tonne, lower than the Liberals’ C$170 per tonne by 2030. The plank earned the Conservative leader both praise and scorn from party members, including a faction of “pissed off” farmers.

But O’Toole’s support for a carbon tax could give his party some cover on trade if Conservatives form the next government. Under the Democrats’ proposed carbon border tariff, POLITICO learned the U.S. would exempt Canada from the fee if the country’s climate policies are determined to be “as ambitious” as America's.

High-profile Liberal ministers including Wilkinson, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault have revved up their attacks in recent days against Conservatives in a bid to define the O’Toole’s climate approach as one that would take Canada backwards.

With just under three weeks left, leaders are now readying for a set of high-exposure leadership debates that could set a tone and tenor different from the campaign’s sleepy start — minus the caravans of rowdy protesters following the prime minister.