Mike Morrice knew that running for the federal Green Party wasn’t the “politically advantageous choice.” In its almost 50-year history, the party has won, at most, three seats and almost seven per cent of the popular vote. But it was the political choice Morrice felt allowed him to hold onto his integrity. 

“Green values are my values,” said the newly elected Green member of Parliament for Kitchener Centre — the first-ever Green MP elected from Ontario — before listing them one by one: social justice, participatory democracy, ecological wisdom. As one of just two Green MPs to claim victory in September’s federal election, Morrice plans to bring these values to the House of Commons. He wants to be “a respectful listener” of all ideas across party lines; “a reasonable, sober second point of view” during debates; and, most of all, a climate champion who can “align with climate science and call for decisive climate action.” 

Morrice is a new Green voice in federal politics at a time when the role of Greens in federal politics is unclear. This was the first federal election in which every party with seats in Parliament presented a credible climate plan for consideration — a fact longtime Greens and other political observers say was largely due to the Greens’ sometimes uphill battle to push the issue into the spotlight for years. But while the Greens have succeeded in making the climate crisis more than just a “Green” issue, internal divisions spurred by disagreements over how equity issues fit into the party’s mandate kept them from capitalizing on that victory in the election. Now, the battered party must figure out its role in Canada’s political discourse to survive.

If ever there was an election for Canada’s Greens to have a breakthrough moment, it was this one. The summer saw the country’s West Coast experience the deadliest heat wave on record. On its heels came the second report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a stunning glimpse into the irreversible, “unequivocal” impact of the climate crisis and the urgent need for mitigation efforts. The report helped fuel a surge of climate-centred parties in places like Germany, where the Greens won nearly 21 per cent of the national vote in its September election, and are in talks to form a coalition minority government. The same month, Norway’s Green Party won three seats, two more than it previously had. 

But although the IPCC report was released just a week before Canada’s election was announced, the Canadian Greens didn’t experience the same momentum. Not only did they lose one seat in parliament, they saw their national vote plummet from 6.5 to 2.3 per cent, the lowest voter share in more than 20 years. 

Political experts and party insiders are quick to note that European countries have a proportional representation electoral system that allows more Greens to get elected, while Canada’s first-past-the-post system remains an uphill battle for smaller parties that have to fight for resources and funding, as well as votes. Even so, the months-long turmoil the Canadian Greens remain embattled in certainly didn’t help.

The election-season controversy was spurred by an internal dispute over the party’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which saw Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin cross the floor from the Greens to the Liberals in June. Noah Zatzman, an adviser to outgoing Green leader Annamie Paul, accused unnamed Green MPs of displaying antisemitism — comments that Paul, a Black, Jewish woman, did not repudiate in spite of many internal calls to do so. By the time the election was officially called in August, things were so messy that the party was unable to organize a full slate of candidates. 

Paul came second-to-last in her riding of Toronto Centre with less than nine per cent of the vote, then resigned a week after the election, deeming her party’s treatment of her as racist. Her resignation speech said, in part: “For those Green Party members who have taken great pleasure in attacking me, in calling for assaults against me, in calling for organization against me and suggesting that I’m part of a conspiracy against the party: you may take small comfort for a moment but please know that there are many more people like me than you and you will not succeed in the end.” (A spokesperson for Paul said she was not available for an interview.)

The issue of diversity and inclusion was already a source of tension well before the election, often dividing longtime members, who put environment above everything, from newer ones who believe that equity issues, including environmental racism, must be part of a broad, successful climate movement. The environmental movement has long been criticized for a lack of diversity in both leadership and membership, and the Green Party of Canada isn’t exempt. 

In April, the Toronto Star reported that Zahra Mitra, the party’s diversity co-ordinator, had filed a “scathing condemnation” of high-ranking officials who denied discrimination in the organization and hampered efforts to make it more inclusive. Mitra said the party has a “very real problem with racism.” In August, another internal report obtained by The Globe and Mail advised that “there is systemic racism at the governance level of the party, which needs to be, but is not being, addressed.”

And just this week, Kayne Alleyne-Adams, the Green Party’s 20-year-old youth co-critic, resigned: both Black and bisexual, Alleyne-Adams said it was due to the “un-countered vitriol” he experienced.“Since joining the party, I have been sexually harassed by a senior campaigner, subject to racist and queerphobic language from prominent members and former candidates, I also witnessed an unwieldy level of antisemitism from candidates, former candidates, campaigners and prominent party members,” Alleyne-Adams wrote in his resignation letter. “One former leadership candidate publicly approved of a call for me to be ‘hunted and investigated’ for my ‘constant whining about racism.”

“I think a Green Party can play an important role in federal politics. I think this Green Party as it is now, forged in the Elizabethan era, cannot represent the values that it strives to.”

Kayne Alleyne-Adams, former Green Party youth co-critic

Reactions to Paul’s resignation highlighted the two factions. Two weeks after her speech, former Green leader Jim Harris accused her of using racism as an excuse for her electoral performance. The same week, current Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner put out a statement promising to “stand firmly against racism, sexism and antisemitism in all forms” and laid out his plan to combat these issues within the provincial party. 

Trevor Hancock, the Green Party of Canada’s co-founder and first leader in the 1984 election, is one of the veterans who worries that the party has lost its clear focus on climate and ecological issues in its attempt to consider social issues like housing and long-term care. Hancock is concerned the Green Party is no longer playing its key function in Canadian politics, which he sees as “questioning the basic model of our way of life.” He worries that the Green Party no longer talks about the rights of nature. 

“There’s very little we are talking about right now that we weren’t almost 50 years ago,” said Hancock, who lives in Victoria. “We have to advance a more radical agenda. We can’t just be the NDP with a green tinge. We have to present an alternative that is first and foremost based on the idea of reducing our carbon footprint by 70 to 80 per cent. The starting point has to be our ecological party and then what sort of social and economic system fits into that.”

Adrian Currie disagrees. In 2020, Currie, a longtime Green Party member and volunteer, became the first Black man elected to the party’s federal council. Currie, who lives in Toronto, believes the party is young, still-evolving and building traction along the way, that “people need time to think and consider voting Green.” To do that, his focus is clear: “Show voters how moving the conversation along, itself, is very powerful.”  That includes highlighting the party’s success at attracting its most diverse slate of candidates ever, in the 2021 election. “In 2019, we were the least diverse,” Currie said. “We went from having zero people of colour in the federal council to four. We’re growing as a party and bringing different ways of looking at policies and issues.” 

Despite this progress, Alleyne-Adams believes the party’s divisions are deep. He left a Liberal campaign to join the Greens because their core values aligned with his, and because he was inspired by Paul’s leadership race, during which she addressed social justice issues that no other leader was — such as defunding the police and guaranteed livable income — while also pushing the climate conversation. 

“So many Canadians are on the brink of financial or other hardships,” he said. “All parties, including the Green Party, need to offer solutions to that to ensure we can stand strong against the climate crisis. It’s very difficult to get someone that can’t afford their rent to buy an electric car.” 

Alleyne-Adams believed the racism and queerphobia he saw upon joining would die down after Paul was elected as leader, but his list of concerns only grew. Green Party Facebook groups are still not moderated to monitor vile language, and Black communities remain unaddressed in the Green Party policy book. He got the distinct impression that certain factions were relieved at Paul’s resignation, pleased not to have to deal with the so-called diversity issue anymore.

“A party is most divisive when it is most divided,” he said. “I decided to pull out when I saw that nothing would change.” 

With Paul’s departure, the Greens’ key voice remains the same leader who helped found the party: Elizabeth May. “I don’t see how I ever get to retire from this. It’s not just a job, it’s a movement,” May told The Narwhal in late September, weeks after Paul’s resignation. 

May agreed that internal unrest was a strong contributor to the party’s poor showing in this election. “If the leadership transition went as I hoped, we could have had 12 MPs in parliament,” she said. But she also blames what she sees as the media’s “sole” focus on the unrest as a factor.  May wished that news coverage had pushed back against claims that the Green climate plan was unfeasible, but overall, she has “no worries about the future of our party’s growth.”

Post-election, both May and Morrice have individually tasked themselves with explaining the flaws in the other parties’ plans to the public — something they both recognize the party failed to do during the election. But again, May’s focus on the need to push for adequate climate plans in her conversation with The Narwhal is very different than the approach offered by the Greens’ newest MP, Morrice, who mentioned the importance of intersections several times, and said that tackling climate change means recognizing its links with social issues like housing, poverty and racism, within the party and beyond it.

“Just because I’m not confident in the current iteration of the Green Party doesn’t mean I’m not confident in a subsequent iteration of it,” Alleyne-Adams said. “I think a Green Party can play an important role in federal politics. I think this Green Party as it is now, forged in the Elizabethan era, cannot represent the values that it strives to.”

If there’s one thing that the factions of the party agree on, it’s that the Green Party has set the federal agenda on climate. Angela Carter, a University of Waterloo political science professor, said the Green Party “is moving the goalpost in climate conversation in the country.” While there’s now agreement across parties that Canada needs some kind of carbon-pricing program, that wasn’t always the case. 

Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, said the Greens’ early adoption of carbon pricing played a role in normalizing discussions about how to do it. “There will be room for that in the future and a need for that in the future,” Harrison said. 

But she believes leading that discourse will be harder now that the Greens aren’t dominating the topic. Things shifted with the release of the Liberal climate plan in December 2020. “This was the first time any government in Canada could credibly meet Canada’s targets,” said Harrison, adding that this sidelined the Greens because they weren’t offering something “qualitatively different.” While the Green plan was more ambitious in terms of scale and speed, it was essentially proposing to do the same things as every other party. 

With the substance of the plans being so similar, the issue becomes which party is most able to actually implement one. This practicality is likely why several scientists and environmentalists chose to endorse the Liberal climate plan this election year, especially given the turmoil among the Greens. 

“I was very, very sad they blew this moment. I had this fundamental hope that the Greens represented the different approach we needed,” said David Suzuki, who endorsed Green candidates like Paul Manly in Nanaimo-Ladysmith this year, but also supported Avi Lewis, the NDP candidate in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. “The dominant parties are all anthropocentric; they see humans as the central. We need to change to an ecocentric perspective to get off this destructive path.”

Suzuki said he wants to support “climate champions, and it doesn’t matter from what party.” For years, he believed that a “green party” would limit environmental conversations to just one political entity. He was eventually won over by the Greens’ promise to let candidates vote on issues as they wanted, and has endorsed a full Green slate in the past. 

This year, however, he was disappointed by the internal turmoil. “The minute Annamie failed to fire Noah [Zatzman] immediately … that’s when I said the Greens are not the party I thought they were,” Suzuki said. 

Both Carter and Harrison said discounting or even dismissing the Green Party outright would be a huge loss for the Canadian political system. The fact that all the federal parties have a climate plan of varying degrees of ambition doesn’t mean they will all follow through, or still care come next election; the Greens can hold other parties accountable. 

Carter said the Greens are the only ones trying to push the debate to the next step, by arguing that pricing alone is not enough, trying to push targets (and ambition) higher and constantly alerting Ottawa to the urgency of phasing out fossil fuels. She thinks the Greens’ presence is forcing the NDP in particular to foreground the environment in their political agenda. “The Greens are keeping the pressure on,” she said.

But even if there’s a need for the Green Party to further Canada’s climate discourse, the question of whether they’re poised to meet that need moving forward remains. “Every political system has its ups and downs,” May said. “Greens have been part of the political landscape since the early 1980s. We will be back much more forcefully in the next election.”

That can’t happen if the federal Greens don’t evolve into their new role, said Schreiner, who believes the party’s mandate should be arguing to “meet Canada’s climate commitments and exceed them.” For that to happen, federal Greens have to explain how political systems can do that “in a way that protects people, communities and the economy” and advance political discourse to a new level of sophistication.

Schreiner also had a few recommendations for the federal Greens to “do some soul-searching, heal internal divisions, get serious about electing Green MPs, and put forward a detailed plan. Canada needs Greens, but we need to prove it.”

Updated October 21, 2021, at 12:38 p.m. PT: This article was updated to correct a rounding error

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Annamie Paul was a diplomat in Europe when Stephen Harper was elected as Canada’s prime minister almost 15 years ago. 

“Everything changed almost overnight,” she recalled, explaining how Canada’s foreign policy quickly pivoted to align “very strongly” with the United States’. 

That same year, Elizabeth May was elected as the leader of Canada’s Green Party — a position she retired from this year to make way for a new leader. 

Paul was reminiscing in a conversation with The Narwhal on Nov. 5, as ballots were still being counted in a tight U.S. election. A day earlier, the U.S. government formally withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement, making it the only country not committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the planet from warming up more than 2 C. 

The new leader of the Green Party was hopeful that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, would win and reverse that given their strong climate agenda. 

Paul — who won the Green Party leadership race on Oct. 3 — has a strong grasp of foreign affairs, due in part to her many years working as a diplomat and lawyer across Europe and Africa. Her worldly perspective shows in the way she talks. When asked about an issue, she answers in three parts: impact on a community, impact on the country and impact on the world. 

Paul worked for many years as a diplomat and lawyer in Europe and Africa. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna/ The Narwhal

Paul is the first Black woman and second person of Jewish faith to lead a federal party in Canada. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna/ The Narwhal

She made history when she was elected: the first Black woman and the second person of Jewish faith to lead a federal party. It’s fitting that many of her goals are about broadening the public perception of the Green Party. She figured that even if she lost the leadership race, the party’s members would benefit from seeing “a strong GTA [Greater Toronto Area] candidate coming from a racialized group.” She wants to increase cross-party cooperation and help rebuild Canada’s leadership role in international institutions. 

Her goals may be difficult to achieve quickly. For one thing, Paul does not have a seat in Parliament, after losing last month’s by-election in Toronto Centre, the riding where she grew up. 

When she decided to run for party leadership, Paul thought she’d at least be travelling the country and sharing her ideas. Instead, she’s “hoarding” her family’s carbon budget and sat down with The Narwhal on a Zoom call to talk about her vision for her party and the country. 

What do people not understand, or misunderstand, about the Green Party?

We have three members of Parliament and they all come from the coast, one from New Brunswick and two from British Columbia. The largest number of our members come from Ontario — something a lot of people don’t know about our party. One thing that I’m really keen to do is to amplify the areas where we have not been really associated with in the public view. 

We have for a very, very long time led the way on progressive policies related to social programs. We were talking about a guaranteed livable income many, many years ago, and creating a much more complete set of universal programs, including things like post-secondary education or pharmacare. These are very long-standing Green policies. I think we have an opportunity [with] a new leader [to help make it] easier for the public to imagine that those other things are things we would be concerned about. 

“Our concern for the climate flows out of our concern about other things. If you’re concerned about climate, you have to be concerned about social justice, about our social safety net,” Paul says. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna/ The Narwhal

Usually, when people talk about us, they say we’re very concerned about the climate. That’s where it ends for them. What I’ve been saying, and will continue to keep saying, is that our concern for the climate flows out of our concern about other things. If you’re concerned about climate, you have to be concerned about social justice, about our social safety net. These things are all interconnected. 

What do you want people to understand about you? 

I try to educate first. We all come to issues from different perspectives and different levels of understanding. I try to approach those discussions not assuming that the person has perfect knowledge of the issues. The key is to respectfully disagree. 

I’ve already had some occasions to disagree publicly with the leader of the Bloc Québécois because of his views on systemic racism, on the use of the N word, and his comments recently about Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism being used as a cudgel. These are views I absolutely don’t agree with, and I’ve had to publicly call him out for them. One thing I learned during the leadership race in particular is that silence emboldens hate. 

Speaking of disagreements, we’re looking at a probable change in American leadership. What kind of impact do you see a Joe Biden presidency having on U.S.-Canada relations and Canadian climate policy?   

I hope we have a really robust and ongoing conversation with them about the climate and how we can work together. There are some early encouraging signs. During the campaign, Biden spoke about his interest in introducing carbon tariffs, for instance, which would be very, very, very impactful given the size of the U.S, economy. It’s something that would almost certainly lead us to introduce one of our own. 

There have been some discouraging signals as well, though, like when Biden and Harris both said they would not end fracking. That was something that was very disappointing for us because we want to see that happen. 

Paul holds a pragmatic attitude toward working with the U.S. under president-elect Joe Biden. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

So it’s kind of a mixed bag, but I believe that we could have productive conversations. They both have spent significant time in this country so there is a good foundation for those conversations. But where we don’t agree, Canada needs to feel that it can go its own way: we still have to have an independent foreign policy, we still have to have an independent climate policy and we still need to be able to strike out on our own path when it’s clear that the United States is doing the wrong thing. We also need to build coalitions with other international actors as a counterweight to any of the decisions that might not either favour Canada or might not be in the best interest of the global community.

In your opinion, what are the challenges facing Canada in 2021?

There are two tracks that we need to be working on at the same time. One is completing our social safety net. We were left really dangerously exposed as soon as the pandemic hit. People in Canada have made it very clear they do not want to end up in this situation again. That’s going to require us to do the work that we have delayed and delayed and delayed on things like reforming our long-term care system, bringing in a guaranteed livable income, bringing in universal pharmacare and creating a true national strategy for affordable housing. 

The other one is the climate emergency, which has not changed. We have the opportunity to use these enormous sums of money that we’re going to be spending over the next couple of years as an opportunity to have a quantum leap forward in our movement towards a climate-neutral economy, to have a truly green recovery, one that lets us hit our set targets that correspond with the science and hit them maybe even ahead of schedule. 

None of the really big challenges can be dealt with simply at the domestic level. We absolutely need to have institutions and structures in place that allow us to collaborate, cooperate, negotiate with other state actors. This is the moment where multilateralism should really be coming into its own, and it’s under attack. We really need to make sure that we have those institutions working at full potential, and that’s something that Canada can help fix.

With 2020 almost over, is there a story or an experience you can share from this year that struck you and will shape your political work moving forward? 

My father died in long-term care at the end of May. [Editor’s note: his death was not related to COVID-19.]

It’s made me aware that even in Canada, where we have done a lot of things very well, we still have a lot of unfinished work in terms of protecting people.

I believe that we can do really extraordinary things if we can get the political leadership to match the courage and sacrifice the general public has demonstrated during this year. That’s what I take away from this year. We can still do big things with cross-party cooperation and agreements and an educated public that is willing to demand the quality of life we all truly deserve. If we can look just a little bit down the road past the darkest part of this moment and imagine those things in place, it should be something that gets us very excited. 

This interview has been edited for brevity.

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For an election that was sometimes described as being about “nothing”, it turned out to be an important one for climate change policy and the environment.

In the weeks leading up to the federal election, hundreds of thousands of people, stirred up by teenage activist Greta Thunberg, marched through the streets in Canada in support of action on climate change. The turnout reflected the fact that public opinion polling consistently showed that the environment, and more specifically climate change, was a top issue for Canadians.

All the party leaders, except Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, joined the marchers to highlight their commitments to action on climate change. The Greens may have hoped the momentum might buoy them to a strong election outcome, perhaps even official party status.

Even though the election provided the Greens with what was in some ways their best outcome ever, in the end they fell short, leaving a complicated landscape ahead.

Widespread support but not seats

The Greens obtained nearly 1.2 million votes — the greatest number in the party’s history — and 6.5 per cent of the popular vote, falling slightly short of their 2008 record.

But support for the Greens, which is widely distributed across Canada, is notoriously inefficient at being translated into seats. That reality proved true again in this election.

The Greens held onto two seats in British Columbia and beat out a Liberal incumbent in New Brunswick — their best showing yet. But three seats is not enough for official party status in the House of Commons.

Strategic voting hurts Greens, saves Liberals

The Greens have held the balance of power in British Columbia’s NDP-minority government since 2017. But with the number of Liberal and NDP seats totalling 181 at the federal level, the Greens may have only limited influence on Trudeau’s minority government.

The Greens, however, can claim success in other ways.

Their polling numbers remained consistent — around 10 per cent — until the final weekend of the campaign. This forced the other progressive parties, particularly the Liberals and the NDP, to shore up the environment and climate change dimensions of their platforms, including more ambitious climate change targets, to avoid losing potential voters to the Greens.

In Ontario, voters made last-minute decisions to back Trudeau’s government and block a potential Conservative victory. Those choices came at the expense of the NDP, and to a lesser extent the Greens, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area.

The resulting electoral map looks surprisingly similar to the outcome of the 2014 provincial election. The Liberals and NDP split northern Ontario and the cities and towns in the south, while the Conservatives were left with their traditional southern and central rural Ontario base. The outcome reinforces the argument that Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 election victory was an aberration, and one that Ontario voters didn’t want to risk repeating at the federal level.

What’s next?

The Green’s presence in the election, and particularly leader Elizabeth May’s role in the leaders’ debates, was instrumental in keeping climate change and environmental issues at the forefront of the campaign.

Some, including May, argue that outcome is more important than seat counts. It may also be, under Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, the best the Greens can hope for for the time being.

The election again highlighted how badly the current system works for smaller parties whose support, however substantial, is widely distributed across the country. The Bloc Québécois earned 1.2 percentage points more of the popular vote than the Greens. But with its support concentrated entirely in Québec, the Bloc emerged with 32 seats compared to the Green’s three.

In an age where the regional divisions in Canada seem to be deepening, the need to move to a system that rewards support across the nation and is less favourable to parties rooted in regional grievance seems more urgent than ever.

Both major parties have emerged from this federal election thinking the existing system has worked in their favour. This makes the prospects for reform, once part of the 2015 Liberal platform, seem even further out of reach.

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Environmental issues are top-of-mind for more Canadians than ever before in this year’s election. It’s an important issue to Canadians in every riding — and the parties know it.

In a Forum Research poll in July, 26 per cent of respondents said the environment was their top concern, leapfrogging the economy as the number one issue. In the 2015 election, the economy was by far the most important issue to voters. 

It’s also only the second election in which all four major parties openly accept the reality of climate change as something that demands our attention. Strategies vary on how to reduce carbon emissions, but at least federally, it’s no longer a question of debating the science. 

Climate change policy isn’t the only way the parties are flexing their environmental bona fides, however: conservation, transportation, and energy are on the platforms, as are lower impact but still high-profile issues like plastic pollution and green jobs. 

It all makes for a lot of platforms to scroll through. So we bring you a rundown on what environmental policies the federal parties are offering Canadians in the 2019 election.

A raging wildfire consumes the forest next to Highway 63 south of Fort McMurray. Photo: Chris Schwarz / Government of Alberta

Climate Change

Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet; its northern reaches are warming even more quickly. That has consequences for polar bears, sure, but it’s also a threat to northern roads and communities. It’s exacerbating wildfires and a biodiversity crisis. So it’s not surprising to see the issue being taken on by the federal parties. 

Justin Trudeau won on a platform in 2015 that heavily referenced climate change while promising specific solutions to that and other environmental problems. Andrew Scheer appears eager to shed the Conservative party’s reputation for environmental backwardness, while sticking to its expected business-friendly approach. Elizabeth May’s Greens are advocating for radical overhauls to the economy. And the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is advocating for more ambitious measures than the Liberals while maintaining many of the broad strokes of their plan. 

(Note: we’ve decided that Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, not to be confused with the other Maxime Bernier’s Rhinoceros Party, won’t be evaluated in this story. That might be because they are devout climate deniers and therefore irrelevant to this conversation, or it could just be because they have never cracked five per cent in the polls. We’ll keep you updated if they come up with any innovative environmental policy…)

—————

The Liberals so far have not released their platform in full but have instead spent the summer touting and reinforcing the 50 or so specific actions they’ve taken since 2015. Chief among those is the carbon tax, which kicked in in April at $20 a tonne and will rise each year up to $50 a tonne by 2022. (Update: The Liberal Party of Canada released their climate plan on September 24).

United Nations economists say that to be effective, a carbon price will have to come much higher by 2030 — to at least $135 per tonne. The Liberals have no such plan. The carbon tax has also been criticized for being overly cautious with respect to industry, allowing for too much pollution in the name of not harming competitiveness (I wrote a whole separate explainer about that, here).

The Liberals have done other work to curb emissions, however. They’ve set a target of 30 per cent of light-duty vehicles being electric by 2030, and brought in a new fuel standard to limit the carbon content in fuels used in transportation, heating and industry. 

They’ve invested billions in public transit in order to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, but appear to have abandoned a promise to “rapidly expand” the federal fleet of electric vehicles. In their last budget, they brought in a $5,000 subsidy for new electric vehicle purchases.

The Conservatives have come late to the climate party, but they have shown up at last. The title of Andrew Scheer’s environment and climate platform, “A Real Plan,” seems to be intended as a dig at the Liberals but comes across as a marvellous self-own. Regardless, the plan is indeed real and acknowledges the reality of man-made climate change in its third paragraph. 

The party has said it supports the Paris Accord, but stopped short of committing to meeting Canada’s targets.

In contrast to the carbon tax, which the Conservatives have long branded as a “tax grab” and which they plan to repeal, the Conservatives’ climate plan is intended to be consumer-friendly, depending on new technology rather than a reduction in consumption or expensive overhauls. It would require big polluters to pay into an investment fund that would then be spent on green tech. However, it’s not clear exactly how that investment would actually meet the planned reductions.

The Conservatives do not mention transit in their climate plan, but do promise to “provide regulatory support” for an LNG facility on the West Coast that they say could lower the emissions of marine transportation. They also say they will work on developing electric vehicle technology, but make no promises on that front.

A big part of the Conservatives’ plan is to help other countries lower their own emissions, which they argue can be done for cheaper in developing countries, where more emissions-intensive industries like coal-fired power plants are more common. The Conservatives have promised to scrap the Liberals’ fuel standard. The party is also pushing capture and storage, which has been developed with some success in Saskatchewan and Alberta but not rolled out yet in any large-scale way.

The Green Party has presented the most radical plan for climate change of any party. It is symbolically heavy on urgency — for instance, establishing a non-partisan “survival cabinet” that would have the same grave mandate as a wartime cabinet — and includes the most ambitious measures to cut emissions seen yet on the federal level. The party proposes doubling Canada’s emissions reduction targets, and would raise the carbon tax as high as the United Nations says it needs to be, to $130 a tonne by 2030.

The Greens promise to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, ban fracking and oil imports and eliminate coal and natural gas by 2030. The latter has been criticized, along with their plan to retrofit every building in Canada to be carbon neutral, as not feasible within that timeline. Currently fossil fuels make up 20 per cent of Canada’s electricity generation, with huge regional disparities, and vacating every home in the country for retrofits would entail a scale of displacement without precedent in Canada. (Party leader Elizabeth May likened the retrofits to a WWII-level challenge but it’s also a major part of the Greens’ energy strategy — see below.)

The Greens are also planning mitigation measures, to “prepare for those levels of climate crisis we can no longer avoid,” according to the party’s platform. Those include fortifying dykes and dams against flooding, buying water bombers and assisting those who work in sectors that will be first affected by climate change. 

The Greens are the only party so far to mention rail, which they say would get new investment. The Green Party would require that all new cars sold in Canada be electric by 2030. They would increase bus service to rural areas, purchase electric buses, make employer-provided bus passes tax free and add to low-emissions transportation in cities such as bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure. The party would also oppose expansion of infrastructure that enables urban sprawl.

The New Democratic Party plans to maintain the carbon price set out by the Liberals until 2022, with a few tweaks. The party would remove the additional exemptions the Liberals added to their carbon price for heavy polluters, making them work harder to remain competitive internationally. Rebates on the carbon tax would be changed; rather than being sent out to all Canadians, the rebates would no longer be sent to the wealthiest.

The NDP also promises a Canadian Climate Bank, which would provide $3 billion for low-carbon innovation. Low-interest loans would be offered for renovations, on a longer timeline than the Greens, with plans to have all housing retrofitted by 2050.

On transportation, the NDP says it will increase funding, particularly to low-emissions transit projects. It would maintain the $5,000 incentive for electric vehicle purchases while eliminating federal sales tax on them. For electric vehicles made in Canada, the NDP says it would eventually raise that incentive to $15,000. It expands on the Liberals’ seemingly broken promise to increase the federal fleet of electric vehicles, saying all government vehicles, which includes things like Canada Post trucks, will all be electric by 2025.

Site C dam construction along the Peace River, B.C., in the summer of 2018. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Energy

Energy is the root of the climate crisis: from coal-fired electrical plants to gasoline-driven cars to bunker oil-burning ships, Canadians pump a lot of carbon into the air. But our energy system causes other problems too, like the deterioration of air quality and pollution of waterways, oil spills on land and sea, and the destruction of land for hydroelectricity.

Some of the most heated political battles in recent memory in Canada are based on energy. The Trans Mountain pipeline has pitted First Nations, the federal government, two provincial governments as well as municipalities against one another, and has divided public opinion. Likewise for the now-defunct Energy East and Northern Gateway projects. And it’s not just fossil fuels: the Site C dam is an ongoing saga that is tearing apart northern B.C. (if you’re not up to date, seriously, check out the award-winning reporting by The Narwhal’s Sarah Cox on this. It’s the best around.)

Given these struggles, the parties all have their own promises to reform Canada’s energy grid — or, in the case of the Conservatives, return it to the way it was. 

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The NDP has set a target of powering Canada with zero-carbon electricity by 2050. The interim goal is “net carbon-free electricity” by 2030. So what’s the difference there? Net carbon-free usually refers to electricity generation that includes carbon offsets (think carbon capture, planting trees or subsidizing clean energy) — whereas zero-carbon energy would mean no carbon is produced during generation. Hope that helps.

The party would abandon the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which the Liberals bought in as-is condition for $4.5 billion but which will eventually cost nearly double that to build. In the same vein, the party would stop fossil fuel subsidies, which, Environmental Defence estimates, total $3.3 billion a year. 

A final, major element of the NDP energy platform is centred around manufacturing: building components for green energy in Canada, building an interconnected smart energy grid and developing locally-owned energy projects.

The Green Party would likewise eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and go further by divesting from fossil fuels at the federal level — an example they hope other jurisdictions would follow. The Greens would also abandon Trans Mountain, along with all other pipeline expansion, ban oil imports and support the existing tanker ban on the north coast of B.C.

The Greens oppose nuclear energy, saying it’s too costly and too risky. They plan to develop a national electricity grid plan, and transition the current electrical grid to a more efficient system. The party wants wind to make up 20 per cent of national electricity production by 2025 — a fourfold increase — as well as ramping up geothermal and solar to each bring 25 new gigawatts of electricity online. The ban on oil imports the party has suggested would switch Canada’s oil supply to one entirely dependent on Alberta, which is in line with what the Conservatives have promised for 2030.

Its boldest claim is that through retrofits and efficiency improvements, “Canada could easily reduce energy demand by 50 per cent.” 

The Greens see demand for oil and gas declining, and its policies would accelerate that decline. To soften the blow to workers in the oil and gas industry, the Greens would bring in a retraining program to teach them how to work in renewables — for example, drilling wells for geothermal.

The Liberal Party, as mentioned, hasn’t released their platform. We’ll have to wait and see what they propose to do about energy next, but so far it’s been a mix of buying a pipeline, powering a natural gas production and transportation boom with “clean” energy, and not developing an energy strategy. 

In 2017 the government introduced legislation to ban oil tankers off the north coast of B.C.

In January Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced federal support for Canada’s first geothermal electrical plant, in Saskatchewan.

The Conservatives propose, well, the opposite of whatever Trudeau has proposed. They would undo the tanker ban and repeal the Liberals’ Bill C-69. That controversial bill brought in new requirements for environmental assessments of major projects but is highly unpopular with certain industries, which have lobbied extensively to get rid of it.

Also on the topic of regulatory burden, the Conservatives would provide “certainty on approval timelines and schedules,” and “end foreign-funded interference in regulatory hearings.” It’s unclear if that would include silencing oil and gas companies that are foreign-owned.

Expect more opposition when the Liberal platform is out.

Mount Edziza Provincial Park, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Land, water, wildlife and ocean conservation

The balance of protecting wildlife and its habitat from human incursion while also allowing for economic activity is a delicate one. More often than not, the needle has gone toward development in Canada, to the detriment of species at risk like Southern Resident Killer Whales, most caribou herds, as well as plant species like the whitebark pine.

The Trudeau government has made significant progress toward meeting its so-called Aichi Biodiversity targets: it pledged to protect 17 per cent of terrestrial area and inland waters, and 10 per cent of its oceans, by 2020. A flurry of big new protected areas has moved that along. But meanwhile it has continued to advance some projects, like the Trans Mountain pipeline and a new road to the Arctic coast, that would interfere with sensitive habitat.

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The Conservatives included in their plan “a comprehensive update of Canada’s strategy to protect our fisheries, forests, agricultural lands, [and] tourist areas.” That would include a focus on invasive species, which can threaten native ecosystems, and controlling pests “that

pose a substantial threat to forest and aquatic health,” as well as conducting a $15 million inventory of wetlands.

As during the Harper years, the language in the Conservative plan favours species and habitats of economic importance over a more holistic approach. It promises to review how land is set aside for protection, and whether communities have enough input.

The Conservatives continue to support the Aichi targets (that calls, among other things, for 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas to be conserved by 2020), which were first agreed to by the Harper government. They also supported the passage of a Liberal fisheries bill that restored habitat protections gutted by the Harper government, with minor revisions. 

The centrepiece of the NDP conservation plan is to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in law through what they’re calling the Environmental Bill of Rights. It will guarantee the right to clean land, air and water, and bring in a national freshwater strategy.

They are also upping the ante on land protection: whereas the Aichi targets only extend up to 2020, the NDP wants to accelerate the protection of land and protect 30 per cent of land, freshwater and oceans by 2030. That’s nearly double the land and freshwater, and triple the amount of ocean protection that the current targets call for.

The NDP promises to use “all the tools available” under the Species At Risk Act, though not to make any changes to it. They say they will work with provinces and territories to “protect waterways under international agreements,” presumably referring to rivers like the trans-border Elk River, contaminated on the Canadian side by selenium from coal mining.

Part of the Greens’ conservation plan focuses on restoring ecosystems that have been damaged already — they would conduct an inventory of contaminated water bodies and groundwater, and work on figuring out how to clean them up, while empowering their own departments and agencies to restore aquatic ecosystems. 

The Greens would also increase funding to Parks Canada and accelerate the creation of new marine protected areas and parks, with a $500 million “completion budget” intended to have the entire parks system in place by 2030. They would also end trophy hunting across Canada, while supporting other types of hunting such as Indigenous subsistence hunting and hunts of other non-threatened species.

Selection of Species at Risk would no longer be subject to cabinet but rather by the recommendation of scientists, increase funding for endangered species, and increase penalties for killing them.

Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Extras

Each party has taken up their own causes that are related to the environment but that don’t have direct bearing on any one of the topics above. We’ve reported on some of these big issues, from environmental law to corporate accountability to ocean plastics, but expect to hear more of these sexy, sexy issues arise throughout the election.

Among the Liberal Party’s side-projects has been plastics: a plan to start banning single-use plastics starting around 2021, committing $100 million to reducing plastic waste in developing countries, and banning microbeads in cosmetics and other products. 

The NDP wants to intensify the Liberals’ approach to plastics, by banning single-use plastics by 2022. They also want to provide training and re-training for people affected by climate action and encourage “local food hubs” while reducing food waste and protecting pollinator health.

The Conservatives, sticking to their push for private solutions to environmental issues, want to issue a “green patent credit” for eco-friendly technologies. They would modernize air quality regulations. They would also re-establish a policy advisory panel made up of hunters, fishers and conservation groups.

The Greens have a plan to bring in a youth-driven “Community and Environment Service Corps,” which would create 160,000 minimum wage jobs for young people to work in climate mitigation, environmental rehabilitation, and other similar projects across the country. They would also develop laws to will allow non-Canadians to sue Canadian corporations over violations of “basic human, environmental, or labour rights in their own countries.” 

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So there you have it. The environment is a major part of this year’s election, and the parties are all going to be jockeying for your vote on this issue. Whether it’s the Conservatives’ industry-led approach, the Liberals’ record of restoring protections and establishing new protected areas, the New Democrats’ promises to take the Liberal plan ever further, or the Greens’ promises to make drastic changes, one of these strategies will have to win out. 

Watch for splashy new environmental announcements as the election goes on — and watch this space for analysis.

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.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government issued 14 permits for work on the $9 billion Site C dam during the writ period of the last election — a move that was offside according to people familiar with the project and the workings of the federal government.

“By convention, only routine matters are dealt with after the writ is dropped,” said Harry Swain, the chair of the Joint Review Panel that reviewed the Site C dam. “Permits and licences are only issued when a government considers the matter to be non-controversial and of no great public importance.”

Swain served for 22 years in the federal government, ending as deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs and later Industry. In an exclusive interview with DeSmog Canada last year, Swain said the B.C. government shouldn’t have moved ahead with construction on the dam until the demand case became clearer.

Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May noticed all of the Site C permits had been issued in late September, just weeks before October’s federal election.   “They saw that they were unlikely to form government again so they began making appointments and decisions during the election,” May told DeSmog Canada. “Usually during the writ period the government operates as a care-taker government, doing what’s absolutely necessary.”   Land clearing has begun on the dam, while opposition has continued to grow. First Nations are challenging the project in court over treaty issues and a protest camp was set up in the construction zone in December. (In Photos: The Destruction of the Peace River Valley for the Site C Dam)   “These permits are really quite distressing,” May said. “You get two departments issuing all these permits in a two-week period. It looks orchestrated by the former government.”

‘The Honour of the Crown is at Stake’

A broad coalition of organizations from across Canada has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt construction of the Site C dam by refusing to issue further federal permits needed for construction of the project, which will flood 23,000 hectares of land along 107-kilometres of the Peace River Valley.   An open letter from the coalition urges Trudeau to rescind all permits and to re-examine the previous government’s approval of the dam, which was given despite the review panel’s finding that it would infringe upon the treaty rights under Treaty 8.   “It’s bad enough to have disputed lands devastated by damage like this. But to have actual treaty rights and treaty-protected activities essentially removed … the honour of the Crown is at stake in something like this,” May said. “The Crown chose to ignore a finding in the review that these treaty rights were going to be irreparably harmed.”   May argued that, given its commitment to a new relationship with Canada’s First Nations, the federal government shouldn’t issue any further permits.   “They can’t undo permits that have already been issued or replace forests that have already been clear-cut, but any future permits need to have a very huge hold until treaty rights issues are resolved,” she said. 

“The review panel’s report clearly stated that not only was there massive environmental damage that could not be mitigated but that the erosion of treaty rights could not be mitigated. That’s an astonishing conclusion. Especially since the panel also found that the public interest case was pretty muddy.”

BC Hydro in Court for Injunction Against Protest Camp Monday

BC Hydro is scheduled to go to court on Monday to seek an injunction to have the protest camp removed. Documents filed in that case focus on financial issues, with BC Hydro arguing a delay in construction will cost it money, while expert witnesses for the protesters argue that a one-year delay will actually save taxpayers $267 million because power demand forecasts have fallen.   BC Hydro has always argued the financial argument for the project is strong because of growing power demand, but economists and the crown corporation’s former CEO Marc Eliesen have challenged that and called for a third-party assessment.

Site C Dam Slated For Audit

Meantime, B.C.’s Auditor-General stated this week that the Site C dam has been identified as a project needing an audit, but no timeline has been set for that work.   “As a British Columbia ratepayer it’s very clear that Site C is likely to put British Columbia into a negative economic situation, at least at the beginning of its lifespan without any benefit to British Columbians,” May said. “It’s for the LNG industry.”   Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, added his voice to the call for a delay in Site C construction in the legislature on Thursday, citing significant risk to taxpayers and the provincial economy.   “Site C should have been subject to the B.C. Utilities Commission, but the government felt it would slow down their political agenda too much,” he said. “It is risky and foolish. British Columbians are going to be paying for this project for decades.”   Weaver argued that in the absence of a vastly expanded LNG industry, the power from the Site C dam won’t be needed — an argument DeSmog Canada has explored in depth.

Wind Energy Association Driven Out of Province

Weaver also warned on Thursday that proceeding with Site C is actively driving clean energy investment out of the province.   Two weeks ago the Canadian Wind Energy Association announced it was closing up shop in B.C. because of a lack of opportunity to develop new wind projects in the province. Instead, the association will focus on Alberta and Saskatchewan.

“We obviously have limited resources, and we’re going to focus our efforts on those markets which provide the greatest opportunities in the short term to see more wind energy deployed in the country,” CanWEA president Robert Hornung told Business in Vancouver.

Hornung added: “While B.C. has tremendous untapped potential for wind energy … it’s also true that, at this time, there’s no vision of short-term opportunities emerging in B.C.”

Industrial demand for power in B.C. is falling due to the closure of mines and pulp and paper mills, both big electricity consumers. And with the Site C dam on the books, BC Hydro doesn’t anticipate any calls for power until 2030 — which means the prospects of new wind power projects have effectively been killed.

"Rather than let the market take the risk for energy infrastructure projects, this government is using billions of taxpayer dollars to get Site C ‘past the point of no return,’ ” Weaver said.

George Heyman, the NDP critic for the green economy, told the Georgia Straight this week that the government is failing to support renewable energy.

"That's a problem for development of jobs and industry in every corner of B.C.," Heyman said. 

"And it's a problem for British Columbians who think we should be taking advantage of dropping tech prices and advancing technology in both wind and solar and other forms of energy production — instead of throwing all of our eggs into the basket of one big dam in Northeast B.C. with a price tag that's likely to go up steeply in the coming years."

You can click here to read more about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and climate change.

Image: Construction on the Site C Dam by Garth Lenz.

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.

Mel Arnold, a federal Conservative candidate from the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding in B.C., told the CBC he remains “unconvinced” by climate science and that the role of human activity in the rise of global temperatures remains undetermined.

In an interview with the CBC’s Daybreak South radio show this week, Arnold told host Chris Walker he believes only 1.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are human-caused.

Arnold also said cycles in climate could be responsible for recent changes in temperature.

"I don't know that it has been determined for sure that human activity is the main cause. It is part of the process," he told Walker. “But how much of it is actually naturally occurring, that's I think where the debate is."

"As you know, this area was once buried in kilometres of thick ice during the ice ages. And we have approximately 30-year cycles on weather conditions here. Those types of things are still in play."

Cindy Derkaz, federal Liberal candidate from the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding, said Arnold was simply toeing the Conservative Party line.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Derkaz said. “I feel that he is following a party line and bound to do that and I’ve noticed that there’s been no rebuttal of [Arnold’s statements] from the party.”

Derkaz said the science of climate change, including the role of human activity, is “unequivocal” and that constituents in her region are already feeling the effects of warmer global temperatures.

“We are experiencing some of the hottest years on record one after another. We are experiencing serious forest fire seasons, problems with our water supply drying up which leads to a diminished flow in rivers which negatively affects the return of fish.”

“These are all problems we are dealing with.”

NDP candidate Jacqui Gingras said Arnold is “actively denying climate change” and it is “outrageous and dangerous to hold the view” that humans are not contributing to increasing temperatures.

“We’ve been measuring climate change for 150 years and have been able to reconstruct climate going back 8,000 years,” Gingras said. “Thirteen of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.”

Gingras said that researchers from Climate Central calculate that the odds of climate change not being attributable to human activity is one in 27 million.

Gingras said Arnold is apparently willing to bet against those odds.

“To the south of us in Kelowna there were terrible fires this year that had enormous costs on people's lives,” she said. “Our local industry, the forestry industry, relies on those trees.”

“We’re on the brink of something traumatic, not only locally, but globally there’s a crisis building.”

Wildfires and trees were also present on the mind of federal Green Party candidate Chris George.

“These fires have been a big issue,” George said. “All of the surrounding forests are vulnerable to beetle kill because winters don’t get cold enough to kill the insects off which means that more dry standing forests and they are more vulnerable to wildfire.”

George added that before this season’s wildfires, heavy rainfall caused mudslides in the Shuswap region.

“We basically lost our tourism season. The mudslides wiped out roads, filed our lakes and streams with mud and shut down houseboat operators.”

George said the increased intensity and frequency of both drought and heavy rainfall are “easily linked to climate change.” Both tourism and agriculture, which the area depends upon, are being “disproportionally hit” by the effects of warmer temperatures, he said.

George added he’s surprised to hear any candidates would question the impacts of human activity on the climate. “I was a bit astonished that that’s still a position out there.”

According to Environment Canada, greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere as a result of transportation, oil and gas development, the production of electricity, energy use in buildings, industrial and trade activities, agriculture and the production of waste.  

Andrew Weaver, climate scientists and MLA for the B.C. Green Party said the comments are “outrageous” but he is “not surprised” to hear them coming from a representative of Conservative Party.

“This is common within the Harper Tories to find people whose views are based on… I don’t know where they get their views from, but they’re not scientific,” Weaver said.

He added the statements point to the larger problem of scientific literacy in political decision-making.

“If you make decisions as a matter of faith — ‘I believe this to be true’ — it’s the beginning of the downfall of society.”

Campaign manager Linda Hawkes said Arnold was unavailable for comment.

Image: Mel Arnold via Twitter

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The National Energy Board ruled in favour of Kinder Morgan Friday, allowing the company to keep its emergency response plans for the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline secret.

Kinder Morgan fought the province of British Columbia’s demands to disclose its emergency response plans for the $6.5 billion pipeline expansion that will triple the amount of oilsands crude moving from Alberta to the Burrard Inlet, arguing the information is too “sensitive.”

In a statement Kinder Morgan argued “it is not appropriate to file security sensitive information about facility operations and countermeasures.”

Eoin Madden with the Wilderness Committee, an intervenor in the Trans Mountain hearing process, said he wished this ruling came as more of a surprise.

“I’d love for it to be news, but basically for the last year or so we’ve watched more and more information be denied to us intervenors in the National Energy Board process.”

Madden said the entire project review process has been threatened by regulatory capture, a concern he said was confirmed at the highest level with the outspoken disavowal of the proceedings by former BC Hydro CEO Mark Eliesen.

Last fall Eliesen became a vocal critic of the Trans Mountain review, criticizing the National Energy Board’s activity as “fraudulent” and a “public deception.”

Madden said the NEB’s recent ruling falls into a trend of information being withheld from participants in the public hearings. “You’ve got to look at the trend. The trend started in 2012 where, through increased lobbying, the federal government changed the laws on how we engage in processes like this. They made it less democratic.”

“At this point you have to wonder whether the process should proceed at all,” he said, adding many participants lack a fundamental faith in the hearings.

“Breach of due process”

“I’m disappointed in the ruling,” Chris Tollefson, legal counsel with the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, said. “I think the tribunal made an error when it concluded it didn’t need the documents at this stage.”

Tollefson said the tribunal should have considered not whether it needed the information, but whether the information was necessary for the process and “necessary for procedural fairness to be ensured for the intervenors.”

Tollefson said intervenors needed to see Kinder Morgan’s emergency plan to prepare questions for the second and final round of 'information requests' or questioning.

“Without those documents in my view they’ve been denied the ability to make their case and that amounts to a breach of due process.” He added that there was a marked drop in participation during the final round of questioning.

“Certainly you hear – loudly – frustration being voiced by lawyers, by clients who are involved in this process,” he said.

Tollefson said his clients, BC Nature and Nature Canada, are committed to carrying through with the NEB process “despite the failings we see,” but adds a separate province-led environmental review could address some of the growing concerns with the adequacy of the current review.

“The notion of having a parallel provincial process at this point makes a lot of sense. There are many issues and questions that are not being dealt with in this process that British Columbians want and need to be addressed.”

Intervenors involved in the process have found themselves without the necessary information needed to present their case, they’ve been denied the opportunity to question officials outside a written ‘information request’ process, and are prevented from discussing issues – like climate change – that the NEB finds outside the scope of the hearings.

“I think British Columbians also want to cross-examine company officials and experts to get answers to these questions and that could happen through a parallel provincial process,” Tollefson said.

“That doesn’t mean this federal process will come to an end. It will carry on. But together hopefully the two processes will provide us with a basis for making a wise decision about the future of this project.”

Made-in-B.C. environmental review the answer?

Other on-lookers, however, are less convinced the process should continue.

Spencer Chandra Herbert, NDP MLA and environment critic, said the NEB ruling strongly supports the argument for a separate province-led environmental review.

“I think the NEB’s ruling that Kinder Morgan doesn’t have to provide their full emergency management plan, the plan to deal with oil spills and fires and the like, is wrong. It’s outrageous.”

Chandra said the NEB review process has “been so drastically altered by the Harper Government” that it has become “a fraud and a sham.”

“What it means for B.C. – the province that moved the motion to ask for this information – is that this process is a sham and B.C. should get out of it. B.C. should withdraw.”

Chandra argued a review process tailored to B.C.’s specific concerns is the only thing that makes sense in light of the project and failed federal review.

“We should have a made-in-B.C. process where we can demand the answers that we want whether they are about oil spills or climate change. It’s our coast.”

“What other recourse do we have? I’m not willing to roll over and trust Kinder Morgan as B.C. seems willing to do,” he said.

In November the Green Party of B.C. launched a petition to call for a “made-in-B.C. review” of the pipeline project.

“The B.C. Government has the option to pull out of the existing process and launch its own separate environmental assessment by giving the National Energy Board 30 days notice,” the petition page states.

Around the launch of the petition Green Party MLA and climate scientist Andrew Weaver said, “enough is enough.”

“For months now we’ve seen mounting evidence that the National Energy Board hearings on the Trans Mountain pipeline are seriously flawed.”

“Our provincial government must reclaim British Columbia’s right to have our own, made-in-B.C., hearing process,” he added. “It’s time for the government to step up and protect our interests for it’s clear that the National Energy Board is not doing so.”

Last week Weaver submitted nearly 100 additional questions to Kinder Morgan in the second and final round of the NEB hearings.

“I continue to engage in the this process because I believe it’s important to give a voice to my constituents and to British Columbians who worry that their concerns are being ignored,” he said in a statement.

Around 400 intervenors submitted 10,000 questions to Kinder Morgan and 2000 of the company’s answers were challenged as inadequate. The NEB provided support for those challenges less than 5 per cent of the time.

According to Metro News, the B.C. Ministry of Environment submitted requests for additional information to “seek more information about the Emergency Management Plan.”

Christy Clark has outlined seven conditions for the pipeline to go forward, one of which is a comprehensive spill plan.

Image Credit: Chamber of Shipping

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The rough track at the foot of West Farnham Glacier, carved by a Glacier Resorts bulldozer in 2008, comes to an abrupt end as the already rough terrain becomes impassable.

Huge boulders block the path, where there is an early-fall dusting of snow and, ahead, the cliffs are festooned with precariously hanging icicles.

“We call it the road to nowhere,” said professional mountain climbing guide Arnor Larson, who, since 1970, has taken visitors into the remote Farnham area of the Purcell Range — 60 kilometres from Invermere along a lumpy, slippery one-track road.

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Stretching above the track is the money card — blindingly bright snow, broken by icy blue patches, where the prospect of all-season glacier skiing has fuelled a 24-year debate.

Glacier Resorts Ltd. plans to build a billion-dollar ski resort, with hotels, lodges, condominiums and shops, in the adjacent Jumbo Valley. Lifts and gondolas would take visitors from the village to ski on Farnham, Jumbo and Commander Glaciers.

But the most pressing question is how long the glaciers will be around.

While the Jumbo Glacier Resort Master Plan predicts the glaciers will survive or even grow as climate change will mean additional snow at high altitudes, climate scientists say glaciers in the Purcell Mountains will have disappeared by the turn of the century.

Larson, who has had a front-row seat to the glacier melt for more than four decades, points to scraped rocks below the glacier toe, showing how Farnham has receded in the time he has been guiding. Then he glances up at the summer snow and points to semi-concealed crevasses.

Professional mountain climbing guide Arnor Larson. Photo: Pat Morrow.

“I wouldn’t be too keen as a guide to take anyone there in the summer for skiing,” he said.

Larson, who has collected old photos of the glaciers, compares a 1913 photo of Commander Glacier to a 2008 photo, showing massive ice reduction. Over recent years, the process has sped up and Commander has shrunk considerably further since 2008, he said.

Commander Glacier in 1913.

Commander Glacier in 2008.

The melting is further accelerated by machines cutting ice roads on the glaciers or “mining” snow from the upper part of the glacier to build ski runs, he said.

Large machinery on Farnham Glacier. Photo: Arnor Larson.

Tommaso Oberti, vice-president of Pheidias Project Management Corp., the company spearheading the resort design, said the Master Plan is based on information from Michael Maxwell, a geophysicist with global consulting firm Golder Associates.

Maxwell, an honorary research associate at the University of British Columbia, said he worked on monitoring the Purcell glaciers in the mid-1990s, but has not done any research in the area since then.

“I guarantee that things have changed since then, but I can’t say how they have changed,” said Maxwell, who is continuing to do some glaciology work in other areas.

The Jumbo Master Plan fact sheet on climate, water and glaciers argues global warming is actually a compelling reason to build the resort because many low-elevation ski resorts in B.C. will not be able to operate if the worst climate predictions come true.

“Even with extreme glacier retraction and a dramatic increase in global temperatures, JGR will be one of the very few locations in North America where skiing will be possible in winter because of its high elevation. In fact, the moraines that are left behind by retreating glaciers result in some of the most skiable terrain possible, when covered with snow in winter,” Oberti wrote in an e-mail.

The glaciers range from a height of 3,400 metres at the top of Jumbo to a low of 2,450 metres at the bottom of Farnham.

That means the high glaciers could actually grow, rather than recede, says the Master Plan.

However, Brian Menounos, professor of earth sciences and Canada Research Chair in glacier change at the University of Northern B.C., said glaciers in the Columbia Basin are unlikely to survive past 2100.

Brian Menounos. Photo: Univeristy of Northern B.C.

It is likely that precipitation will increase from 10 to 15 per cent because of climate change, Menounos said.

“But that doesn’t compensate for the amount of warming that is likely to occur. The modelling that I have seen says most of the ice in the Columbia Basin will not be there by 2100.”

Glaciers in western Canada started retreating in the 1920s, probably because of natural warming, but most scientists agree that, since 1980, they are strongly retreating because of human-caused climate change, Menounos said.

Large glaciers take a long time to respond, so even if everyone immediately stopped using fossil fuels, the glaciers will continue to melt “because of what we have done to them,” he said.

Some icefields in the North Coast Mountains will survive past the turn of the century, although they will be reduced by half, Menounos said.

“But in the southern interior ranges it’s not a good news story.”

Climate scientist Andrew Weaver is Green Party MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and a lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific assessments, including the report that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Weaver scoffs at claims that the Purcell glaciers will survive or grow and described long-term plans for year-round glacier skiing as a “bit of a pipedream.”

A group that knows the glacier well is the Canadian Olympic Development Association (CODA), now known as Winsport, which spent six years training at Farnham, eventually pulling out in 2009.

“It was amazing conditions for summer training and we believe it played a key role in as many as three medals won at the Vancouver Olympics,” said Dale Oviatt, Winsport communications spokesman.

“Essentially we pulled out because of finances as it was an expensive operation to run.”

But while ski conditions on the glaciers may be good for now, the Jumbo Glacier Resort project, which will take 20 years to build, flies in the face of scientific understanding of climatic trends, Weaver said.

“It is expected that by 2100 Jumbo Glacier will be largely non-existent. In fact, just looking at the period between 1985 and 2005, the entire southeastern B.C. glacial region lost, on average, roughly 15 per cent of its mass,” he said.

Weaver cannot understand why the provincial government is supporting the private-sector proposal by funding the Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality, which has no residents, and he questions whether the project is attracting investors.

“A prudent investor would ask ‘how long is this glacier going to be around?’ and would ask the scientific community,” he said.

Main Image: Commander Glacier by Pat Morrow.

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.

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.

The Harper government followed the advice of industry associations when making controversial changes to the Fisheries Act in the 2012 omnibus budget bills, documents relased through access to information legislation reveal.

Gloria Galloway writes for the Globe and Mail that in 2010, "the High Park Group consulting firm was commissioned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to gather industry and business observations about the habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act."

The released documents show that phrasing regarding changes to fisheries protections "suggest that wording was offered by industry associations," according to Galloway.

Negative feedback from the 23 organizations consulted, including the Canadian Electricity Association (CEA), the Canadian Hydropower Association (CHA) and the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce (SKCC), correlates with changes made to legislation protecting fish and their habitats.

For example, the consultant's report said that "CEA/CHA and SKCC call for modification of the act's definition of 'fishery' to clarify that it refers to 'commercial, recreational, subsistence or aboriginal use of fish as a resource."

One of the biggest changes made in Bill C-38 was, as Galloway points out, the removal of "broad protections that covered all fish habitats," narrowing the focus of the law to protect only fish "that are part of a commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisheries, or to fish that support such a fishery."

Incidentally, the High Park Group reportedly noted that there was a "lack of cogent and substantive documentation of industry positions on the issue" of concerns about the pre-2012 Fisheries Act, as well as a lack of evidence to back up claims including "that it was too unpredictable, that it caused considerable barriers to infrastructure investment, and that it increased regulatory costs and timelines."

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans didn't neglect to also consult with environmental groups about the Fisheries Act, having done so between 2006 and 2009. It appears feedback from environmental groups did not figure as heavily in the changes ultimately made.

In fact, another report released by the department under access to information said that environmental groups called the Fisheries Act "one of the strongest laws in Canada that can be used to protect our environment" and called for it to be strengthened and enforced.

Andrew Gage of West Coast Environmental Law, one of the environmental groups consulted by the DFO, said the Harper Conservatives are "a government listening only to industry concerns."

The DFO reportedly said in an e-mail that they're "still focusing on preserving fish habitat," but using a "common-sense approach that focuses on managing threats to Canada's recreational, commercial and aboriginal fisheries and the fish and fish habitat on which they depend."

Critics of the changes to the Fisheries Act include Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who said the DFO created "a new definition for what a fishery is and completely [ignored] the comments from a wide consultation from people on the ground who are actually protecting the fishery."

This isn't the first time that the Harper government has proven its commitment to putting 'natural resources development' and industry interests ahead of environmental protection.

Other documents released through access to information requests have already revealed that the federal government solicited industry support for environmental reforms written into the Omnibus Budget Bill C-38. Additonal documents show the government made pipeline development a top priority for that bill, at the fossil fuel industry's request, and further colluded with the oil and gas industry when tweaking the bill's environmental legislation and industrial project review process.

Image Credit: Geoffrey Kehrig / Flickr

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.

Pitting the economy against the environment has always seemed to me to be a false dichotomy.

For example, here in British Columbia, we have an economy that relies both on the province's natural resources and its natural beauty, and to not care for the environment from which we draw those resources, seems a short term fools game. 

Though right now in B.C., a person is either for the economy or for the environment, and neither the two shall meet. Again, it is a fools game. And the game is playing out most ridiculously when it comes to the debate over the development of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline that would run from Alberta to an offshore shipping facility in the small northern town of Kitimat, BC. 

In the provincial election that is underway, there are two parties (B.C. Liberals and B.C. Conservatives) that are being framed as "pro-business" for their support of the pipeline, while the two parties questioning the construction of the gateway pipeline (Green Party and the N.D.P.) are framed as "anti-business."

In the game of politics, it is always easier to convince the electorate that issues are in stark contrast, as it makes for great talking points for the candidates. However, when you look at the facts (which tend to be overlooked in political debate) and consider how the economy and the environment rely on one another, I would suggest that supporting the construction of the Enbridge Gateway pipeline is in fact "anti-business" for British Columbia. 

So here's the facts as best I can find them:

What BC Gets with the New Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline

According to Enbridge, the construction phase of the pipeline will create about 3,000 short term construction jobs and long term about 560 jobs – these predicted numbers of course need to be taken with a grain of salt given the source, but for arguments sake let's say they turn out to be accurate. The tax revenues to B.C. would be about $1.3 billion over 30 years (roughly $40 million a year). As far as new cash into the economy from spending on capital equipment and goods and services, Enbridge estimates about $830 million in one-time spending. 

While these numbers are impressive, especially for the Northern region of the province, BC also gets something else with the Gateway pipeline in the form of huge economic risk.

With the Gateway pipeline, BC can expect to see 225 oil supertankers on our coastal waters each year, handling an estimated 500,000 barrels of oil a day. While oil tankers are safer than they once were, with that much oil and that many tankers on our unpredictable and often remote coast, it is not a matter of whether we will see a major oil spill, but a matter of when. All the technology in the world cannot save for human error and this has been shown time and time again on the coasts of almost every major oil exporter from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia. Oil spills are also permanent, and no end of clean up can get all the oil. 

This is not even mentioning the inevitable inland spills that occur from oil pipeline bursts, with Enbridge being one of the more notorious companies on this front responsible for a massive rupture in Michigan into the Kalamazoo river in 2010, among others.

So What is At Risk to B.C.'s Economy?

Sport Fishing Industry

According to a report by the BC government done a few years ago on the economic profile of saltwater angling in BC, the province sees $550 million in angler expenditures, $120 million in wages and benefits paid and 3,590 full time jobs per year. Home to the King Salmon, much of the sport fishing tourism and angling jobs are very near the coastal waters of Kitimat, where the Enbridge pipeline would end and oil tankers would fill up on crude. And anyone who has been up that way knows that there is just as much amazing fishing for these massive fish inland on the the Skeena River, which just so happens to flow out to the ocean up the coast only a relatively short distance from Kitimat and near the northern oil tanker shipping route.

B.C.'s Seafood Industry

In 2011, according to a report by the BC government, more than 100 species of fish, shellfish and marine plants were harvested with, "… an estimated wholesale value of $1.4 billion." Now don't get me started on fish farms (if you want to know where I stand just watch this), but I am assuming fish farmers can't be too happy with the prospect of 225 oil tankers and millions of gallons of oil being pumped off the west coast. According to the BC Seafood Alliance, the seafood industry provides 11,000 full time jobs on our coast.

Whale Watching and Eco-Tourism

Globally, the whale watching industry topped $2 billion in 2009, and at that time was projected to add $400 million and 5,700 jobs to the global economy. You don't need stats to know that whale watching is big in BC, and whales and oil don't get along to well in the same water. Eco-tourism as a whole is a massive and growing industry. According to BC's Wilderness Tourism Association, "the wilderness tourism sector also represents 26,000 direct full-time jobs and some 40,000 jobs in total," and contributes about $1.5 billion annually to B.C.'s economy. To be fair, not all eco-tourism in B.C. is on the coast, but a heck a lot of it is and I am sure kayakers will not appreciate the wake of a oil super-tanker.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. The jobs and revenue our coastal waters already provide are vast and growing, and (for the most part) are sustainable. And these figures are based on real life – they are proven jobs and money our province gets right now, which makes them much more valuable than the theoretical estimates by an energy company that is trying very hard to display its project in the best light possible. 

So considering all of this, and the economic risks our province will face with a pipeline burst or an ocean oil spill that history has proven to be inevitable, who in this B.C. election is "anti-business"? Those against the Northern Gateway pipeline or those in favour? 

Image Credit: Enbridge Tanker Safety Video, screen shot.

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