It’s 11,000 words on 60 pages, teems with glossy colour photographs and begins with a request to “consider the environment before printing this document.” 

Last week, federal Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer released “A Real Plan to Protect Our Environment,” billed as a blueprint for reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and strengthening environmental protections, “without taking money out of Canadians’ pockets.” 

An accompanying video featured Scheer strolling along a forested path in Stanley Park telling viewers “climate change is a global problem requiring a global solution” and taking aim at the Trudeau government’s “tax grab” — the much-maligned carbon tax. 

The Conservative’s environment plan, Scheer explained, focuses on “big polluters, not commuters” and “technology not taxes.” 

Catchy phrases aside, what exactly do those 60 pages say? And how realistic is Scheer’s “real plan?” The Narwhal dives in. 

Carbon tax has not failed, says political science professor

The plan has three planks: “Green Technology, Not Taxes,” “A Cleaner and Greener Natural Environment,” and “Taking the Climate Change Fight Global.” 

The green technology section expands on Scheer’s favourite bugbear: the “failed Trudeau carbon tax.” 

The plan says the carbon tax has failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pointing out that Canada is falling behind in meeting its Paris Agreement pledge to cut emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. 

“It [the carbon tax] hasn’t worked in British Columbia,” Scheer told Global News. “Emissions went up and it stopped being revenue-neutral.” 

But UBC political science professor Kathryn Harrison said peer-reviewed studies show B.C.’s carbon tax has reduced consumption of transportation and home heating fuels and increased purchases of fuel-efficient vehicles. The studies also show the tax has not harmed economic competitiveness, she pointed out.

“There’s lots of good evidence that the carbon tax has reduced B.C.’s emissions below what they would have been,” Harrison told The Narwhal. “[But] it is still the case that B.C.’s emissions have only levelled off.”

(Notably, that’s before a huge spike in B.C. emissions from the LNG Canada project, which will ship fracked natural gas to Kitimat for export.)

A revenue neutral tax means that all of the revenue earned via the tax is returned to taxpayers via other tax cuts and rebates. In B.C.’s case, the carbon tax was originally offset with equivalent decreases in corporate and personal income taxes, as well as a new tax credit for low-income earners. 

But those tax cuts haven’t kept pace with steady carbon tax increases, meaning that B.C.’s carbon tax is no longer revenue neutral. 

Plan is ‘devoid of detail’ 

Instead of a carbon tax, Scheer’s climate plan puts many of its eggs in a green technology basket. A green home tax credit, a green patent credit, a green technology and innovation fund and a green hub for innovators are among a flurry of promises. 

But the plan sidesteps the math, failing to provide estimates of how much Canada’s emissions would drop with all those green goodies. 

“I think it is a plan that is designed to appeal to a subset of voters who want to be convinced that Canada can step up and do its part without actually doing anything,” said Harrison, who studies environmental, climate and energy policy.

“It’s devoid of detail.”

The plan would set emissions targets for major emitters, defined as companies that emit more than 40 kilotonnes of carbon a year, down from the current 50 kilotonnes. 

Companies that exceed limits would be required to invest a set amount of money for every excess tonne in what Scheer, in the Stanley Park video, called “home grown emissions-reducing technologies” — which he said could then be shared with the world’s highest-emitting countries to lower global emissions. 

But once again there are no estimates of how much Canada’s emissions would drop with the new targets, no analysis explaining why the plan really is Canada’s “best chance” to meet the Paris targets, as Scheer claims, and only a vague trust-me assertion that future green technology developed in Canada will reduce global emissions.

“At this time we need political leaders who are going to put forward more detail and make the case to voters for what their plan can accomplish, what it’s going to cost and why their plan is better than the other parties,” Harrison said. “And I don’t think the Scheer plan has done that.”

No mention of ban on single-use plastics

The “Cleaner and Greener Natural Environment” section of the plan claims the Conservatives will “protect air, water, land and wildlife.” 

But again, the devil is in the details and details are scant. 

There is no mention of a ban on single-use plastics, for instance. Earlier this month, the Trudeau government announced a ban on single-use plastics — which could include straws, cutlery and bags — starting in 2021 at the earliest.

And the plans says only that Scheer will “prioritize funding for environmental compliance and enforcement” of Canada’s environmental laws. It makes no mention of repealing Bill C-69, legislation vociferously opposed by the Conservatives. 

The bill, passed last week after the Senate attempted to make sweeping changes, revamps Canada’s environmental laws after they were gutted by the former Conservative government.

A Scheer government would lead a conservation assessment “to identify the best opportunities for expanding our protected area network, including parks, marine protected areas, national wildlife areas and migratory bird sanctuaries,” the plan says.

Canmore-based scientist Laura Coristine said she did “a double take” when she read about plans for a conservation assessment.

“It’s a nice aspirational statement,” said Coristine, whose research focuses on biodiversity and climate change. 

“But it slows down the process. It’s like reinventing the wheel. It simply says we’re going to go back to where we were five years ago and do it all over again.” 

In May 2018, Coristine and 16 other Canadian and international scholars sent a policy brief to Scheer, other opposition leaders, federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, outlining how Canada can prioritize the protection of areas with the greatest potential to reduce biodiversity loss. 

A huge amount of work on identifying the best opportunities for designating additional protected areas also occurred through the Pathway to Canada Target 1 process, a new approach to conservation in Canada that aims to meet a commitment under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, Coristine noted.  

The commitment requires signatory countries to legally designate 17 per cent of land and inland waters as “protected areas” closed to industrial activity. 

As of 2017, Canada had protected a mere 10.6 per cent of its land and inland waters, compared to 54 per cent in Venezuela, 30 per cent in Brazil and 17 per cent in Australia. 

The Conservative’s plan promises $15 million over three years to complete a national wetland inventory and to “study the feasibility” of an incentives-based program to protect critical wetland habitats. 

It also says the Conservatives will protect migratory birds but only mentions waterfowl — in the context of hunting them — and omits any details about how a Scheer government would tackle the country’s growing number of at-risk species. 

More than 600 plant and animal species are listed under the federal Species at Risk Act, with many more species listed in individual provinces and territories.

“The loss of species, loss of biodiversity, wildlife that is disappearing from our landscape — that is a huge and fundamental issue that Canada needs to address,” Coristine said. “To not reference it is problematic.”

Coristine pointed out that Canada and the rest of the world face two big issues right now: climate change and loss of biodiversity.

“An action plan should really be about what we are going to do.”

Plan focuses on global emissions, not Canadian emissions

And then there’s “Taking the Fight Against Climate Change Global,” a euphemism for side-stepping responsibility for our own carbon emissions. 

“The World Needs More Canadian Energy” says a t-shirt on a man chatting with Scheer in a photo. 

Another photo features Scheer watering a tree he has planted at a refinery in Jamnagar, India.

“At the end of the day if there are increased CO2 measures in other countries we don’t do the world any favours,” Scheer told Global News. 

“Molecules of CO2 don’t have passports. They don’t worry about borders. Let’s realize that If we bring in a carbon tax and chase away jobs and investment only to see that pop up in other countries we’re not going to do the planet a favour.”

The Conservative plan states that Canadian energy can be used “to replace dirtier foreign energy sources,” pointing out that natural gas, such as LNG, is a cleaner source of fuel than coal. 

“By promoting LNG, we can support a key driver of the Canadian economy and reduce global emissions at the same time,” the plan says. 

Harrison said the argument is “very selective” because it picks the cleaner fossil fuel, “not the dirtier fossil fuels that we’re currently exporting in greater quantities.” 

“It’s also a problematic argument because the fact is that the Paris agreement as it’s currently written … assigns responsibility to the countries in which the emissions occur.”

There is also much debate about whether LNG is indeed cleaner than coal when methane emissions from fracking and liquefaction are added to the equation.

“It’s possible for liquefied natural gas to be a cleaner fuel than coal but it’s not automatic,” Harrison pointed out. “It depends on the details of how that natural gas is produced and especially on methane leakage.” 

Plan based on uncertain and expensive technology

As for the Canadian technology and products that will ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions in other countries — which the Conservatives would brand as ‘Clean Canada’ — the plan states that Canada is a “global leader in carbon capture and storage technology.” 

It posits that if China fitted just 100 of its 3,000 coal plants with carbon capture and storage it could eliminate the equivalent of nearly half of the emissions produced by Canada’s economy. 

Yet carbon and capture storage (CCS) experiments in Canada have been uneconomical and the future of such technology is highly uncertain, Harrison pointed out. 

“It’s hard to understand why CCS would be the way to go when the price of renewables has declined so dramatically in recent years and when it hasn’t been successful despite lots of investments in Canada [and] in Australia at the scale we would need at this point.” 

Harrison said it would be prudent for Canada to start to transition its economy away from fossil fuels and towards lower carbon industries, so we will be less vulnerable as other countries move away from fossil fuels.

Given the Conservatives’ focus on economic considerations, “there’s lots of economic modelling that suggests that the economic benefits of action on climate change outweigh the costs,” she said. 

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On Saturday night, Andrew Scheer was elected as the next leader of the federal Conservatives.

At 38 years old, Scheer was the youngest of the 13 candidates in the race (he’d previously served as the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons in the country’s history, as well as a short-lived Opposition House Leader).

Despite his age, Scheer sported some of the most traditionally conservative policies of the bunch, including on the environmental and climate change front.

Here’s a quick rundown on some of the things that Scheer plans to do if his Conservative Party wins the 2019 election, as well as some other key facts to know.

Scheer Wants To Repeal Carbon Pricing

There’s a good reason that Clean Prosperity gave Scheer a ‘D’ in its pre-election “environmental policy report card.”

The main reason for this is his commitment to repeal mandatory carbon pricing, which will hit $50/tonne in 2022 under the federal Liberal plan.

Scheer’s website — which has since been taken down, but can be accessed via the WayBack Machine — argued that carbon pricing “raises the cost of everything and puts jobs at risk while doing little for the environment.”

This contrasts the positions of conservative economists and politicians such as Gregory Mankiw and Preston Manning, as well as a recent analysis of the B.C. carbon tax that indicated the policy had reduced emissions by between five and 15 per cent since implementation in 2008.

Instead of carbon pricing, Scheer pledges to “support a sector by sector approach to reduce greenhouse gases in cooperation with industry and the United States.” It’s rather unclear what that means.

Scheer’s Ties to Ultra-Right Conservatives

Scheer’s campaign team includes some famous faces from the Stephen Harper era.

That includes campaign manager Hamish Marshall — who created and hosted websites for Ezra Levant’s Ethical Oil website, which his wife served as head of — and digital director Stephen Taylor, former director of the National Citizens Coalition (a job Stephen Harper also once held).

As noted by Sean Craig of Global News, Scheer also has associations with The Rebel, a far-right media outlet headed up by Levant, which Marshall serves as a director of.

Scheer has granted The Rebel three one-on-one interviews since late 2016.

Scheer also holds strong anti-abortion views.

Campaign Life Coalition released a statement congratulating Scheer on the win, noting that it demonstrates the “strength of the social conservative movement and importance of pro-life and pro-family voters.” He scored the second-highest ranking from the group after Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux, both “unapologetic pro-life/pro-family candidates.”

Scheer has promised not to reopen the abortion issue. While he didn’t vote on the 2012 motion to do exactly that, he’s received support from former MPs who did, including Jason Kenney and LaVar Payne.

The Campaign Life Coalition also celebrated Scheer’s commitments to cut federal funding to post-secondary institutions that “do not respect freedom of speech” and “supporting the rights of parents as first educators of their children,” including tax credits for home schooling and independent schools.

As former Sun News pundit Michael Coren noted in a column for NOW: “This is all pretty harsh stuff, to the right of Harper and arguably even Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.”

Scheer has also voted against recent pieces of legislation to enshrine trans rights in the Canadian Human Rights Act and protect Muslim people from Islamophobia.

Despite his age, new Conservative leader Andrew Scheer sported the most conservative policies of the bunch https://t.co/iOyyqevvwQ #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/nlH5Y0h61G

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 30, 2017

Scheer Is Very, Very, Very Pro-Oil Industry

As Prime Minister, Scheer pledges that he would approve TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, which would carry 1.1 million barrels of oil from Alberta to Quebec and New Brunswick.

That’s unqualified support — support he’s pledged regardless of any issues that could be uncovered via environmental assessments or consultations with Indigenous nations.

That same approach is featured in his promise to “prioritize federal infrastructure projects that enhance access to natural resource reserves.”

He’s also pledged to eliminate corporate welfare, including bailouts and subsidies. The obvious example is Bombardier, which has received billions in public dollars in recent decades.

However Scheer has not promised to end the annual awarding of $3.3 billion in subsidies and tax breaks to oil and gas companies in Canada.

In another twist, Scheer pledged to “show Canadians where their oil comes from,” including requiring gas stations to display at the pump when oil comes from “foreign countries.”

According to Scheer, “this would allow Canadian consumers to make the choice to purchase Canadian-sourced, ethically produced oil.”

Sound familiar?

Scheer Has Strong Caucus Support

Unlike other high-profile leadership candidates like Kellie Leitch and Michael Chong, Scheer concluded the race with significant caucus support.

A month before the vote, Scheer sported formal endorsements from 24 current MPs and eight senators, as well as dozens of provincial MLAs and former MPs. Only Erin O’Toole, who placed third in the race, boasted more in total.

This matters a great deal when it comes to successfully leading the party. After all, we’ve seen plenty of examples of what happens when a party dislikes its leader, often resulting in fierce infighting and the creation of huge opportunities for other parties to fill the gap. If Scheer can build on his current caucus support, he could present a strong challenge to Trudeau in 2019.

Funding Massive Projects While Somehow Eliminating the Deficit

A major Conservative attack point against the Liberals is that they’re increasing the country’s deficit beyond what they promised during the election.

It’s a fact. The Liberals promised three years of “modest short-term deficits” of less than $10 billion for the first three years, and a balanced budget in the fiscal year of 2019-2020. But as of the last federal budget, it’s predicted that Canada will hit a deficit of $23.4 billion in 2019-2, dropping to $18.8 billion in 2021-22.

While the verdict is still very much out on whether that even matters given record-low interest rates and a huge infrastructure deficit, it seems a reasonable thing to point out that the Liberals are planning to break another major promise.

So what’s Scheer’s solution? Well, to balance the budget in two years. Unless he plans to raise income taxes or reverse his former leader’s controversial decision to cut the GST from seven to five per cent (which cost the country around $14 billion per year), the only option would be to cut close to $20 billion in annual government spending.

Yet Scheer has consistently pointed to the exporting of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as as a means to reduce global emissions, a process which costs billions in public funding.

Also left unacknowledged is the fact that Canada’s only operational “clean coal” plant, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit #3, relies on a patented Shell scrubbing system — a privately owned technology that can’t be sold off by the government.

In other words, Scheer’s plan to publicly fund the design and retailing of CCS technology would require billions in public funding, rather than making private large polluters pay via carbon pricing.

That sure sounds like picking winners and losers.

He’ll Need To Build Broad Support To Have A Shot

A pre-convention poll conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of the Globe & Mail found that only 4.1 per cent of the general voting population thought that Scheer would make the best prime minister out of all the candidates.

That’s right, 4.1 per cent.

That’s compared to Maxime Bernier, who received 17.4 per cent, and Michael Chong, who received 10 per cent. A massive 33 per cent of people polled answered “not sure.” When asked if they were more likely to vote for the Conservatives if led by Scheer, only 16.6 per cent responded “somewhat likely” or “likely.” That’s almost half as much as Bernier received.

Of course, there’s plenty of time left until 2019, meaning plenty of opportunities for the Liberals to break more major promises or the NDP to pose a challenge from the left. Nothing is set in stone.

But such numbers suggest that Scheer’s got a lot of work ahead of him to convince ordinary Canadians to vote for him.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.