This story was originally published in 2019. Go here for our explainer on what the 2021 election results mean for environment and climate policy.

Well, well, well, the dust has settled (kind of) and Canada has a Liberal minority government.

Wait, what exactly is a minority government?

Here’s how it works: there are 338 seats in Canada’s House of Commons. To govern unilaterally, a party needs to win 170 seats. That’s what we Canucks call a majority government.

If no party wins more than 170 seats, you have what we call a minority government. That means the party that forms government will need the support of other parties to pass any legislation. It also means they can face a non-confidence vote at any moment, so they better keep themselves in the good graces of some allies.

Who those allies will be is the big, unanswered question at this hour.

What we know is this: the Liberals need 13 extra seats to stay in power. As of Tuesday morning, the Conservatives won 121 seats, the NDP won 24 seats, the Bloc Quebecois won 32 seats and the Greens won three seats.

The Liberals could work with either the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois (or some combination thereof) and remain in power.

Both the NDP and the Bloc have strong environmental platforms — arguably stronger than the Liberals — so if anything the Liberals can be expected to take a stronger stance on environmental issues.

There’s much we don’t know, but here are a few things we can reasonably expect to happen on the environment file.

1) The carbon tax will stay in place

An escalating price on carbon has been the cornerstone of the Liberals climate plan and they’ll have plenty of support to keep the carbon tax in place. The NDP also promised a carbon tax, but vowed to take it a step further by removing exemptions for heavy polluters.

Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois proposed that Ottawa impose a carbon tax in provinces where greenhouse gas emissions per capita are higher than average and that the proceeds be paid to provinces where emissions are lower, creating a form of green equalization. Trudeau will almost certainly be concerned about Albertan alienation, so he’ll avoid getting involved in that plan.

2) About those fossil fuel subsidies …

Back in 2015, the Liberals promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over the “medium term,” but Environmental Defence estimates the federal and provincial governments are still handing out $3.3 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry. A September 2018 report found that although there has been some progress on fossil fuel subsidy reform in Canada in recent years, there is still a significant amount of work to be done for Canada to meet a G7 country promise to end all “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by 2025.

The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois campaigned on a promise to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies — a policy that enjoys tremendous public support. With the parties needing to work together, we should expect this phase out to happen sooner rather than later.

3) The Trans Mountain pipeline debate is unlikely to be re-opened in Parliament, unless …

While many of the opposition parties might want to re-open this debate, it’s hard to see an opening for them to do so given the pipeline is already approved. Even if the NDP, Greens and Bloc Quebecois wanted to force a confidence vote on it, the Conservatives would side with the Liberals on this one.

However, the Liberals still need to find $10 to $15 billion to build the pipeline.

“The public financing of the project does seem to present a bit of a pickle,” said Kai Nagata of Dogwood, a B.C. democracy group. “It doesn’t seem likely the NDP/Bloc/Greens could vote for a budget with pipeline construction funds, but the Conservative party probably couldn’t stomach voting for everything else.”

Nagata added: “Even the Conservatives should be philosophically uncomfortable with borrowing money, in a deficit, to spend on corporate welfare.”

4) Buh-buy single-use plastics

The Liberals promised to start phasing out single-use plastics starting around 2021. The NDP, meanwhile, wants to intensify that approach by straight-up banning single-use plastics by 2022. Any which way, single-use plastics such as bags and straws are likely going the way of the dodo.

5) Full steam ahead on conservation

The Trudeau government has made significant progress toward meeting its Aichi Biodiversity targets: it pledged to protect at least 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.

The Liberals have also committed to conserving 25 per cent of Canada’s land, freshwater and ocean by 2025 and to working toward conserving 30 per cent by 2030. They also plan to advocate for countries around the world to set a 30 per cent conservation goal.

Additionally, the Liberals have identified the opportunity to reduce emissions by 30 megatonnes by 2030 using natural climate solutions that support efforts to better manage, conserve and restore forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, wetlands and coastal areas — as well ad by planting two billion trees.

The NDP and Greens have also committed to the goal of conserving 30 per cent of land, freshwater and oceans by 2030.

So, watch for more Indigenous protected areas, national parks and marine protected areas.

6) Expect more electric vehicles

The Liberals have set a target of 30 per cent of all light-duty vehicles on the road being electric by 2030. The Bloc Quebecois also support measures to require manufacturers to sell more electric vehicles. And the NDP support maintaining the $5,000 federal incentive for electric vehicle purchases while eliminating federal sales tax on them. One way or another, electric vehicle incentives are here to stay.

7) A lot of Albertans are going to be outraged

With Conservatives winning a higher percentage of the popular vote than the Liberals nationwide, and winning every seat in Alberta and Saskatchewan except for one, Westerners are rightly going to be upset about ending up with so little say in Ottawa. How that will manifest is yet to be seen, but I’d wager a bet it ain’t gonna be pretty.

8) Will electoral reform have its moment in the sun?

The NDP and Greens have long supported a move to proportional representation — an electoral system that would ensure the allocation of seats is more in line with the popular vote than our current first-past-the-post system. With the Conservatives being the latest losers under the first-past-the-post system, one has to wonder if there might be a cross-party push for a referendum on modernizing our electoral system.

Much more will become clear over the coming weeks and months, but for now what we know is that the Liberals will have to work with some combination of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois — and that means that if anything, they’ll have a stronger mandate to take bold action on the climate crisis.

Updated Oct. 22, 2019, at 10 a.m. to include updated seat counts.

Updated Oct. 22, 2019, at 2:45 p.m. to add further comment regarding the Trans Mountain pipeline and to provide further detail about conservation promises. 

Updated Oct. 24, 2019, at 11:40 a.m. to correct an error regarding the source of fossil fuel subsidies. The $3.3 billion a year in subsidies are from both the federal and provincial governments, not just the federal government.

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Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's decision this week to approve a major expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline has negative implications that go well beyond the borders of the Great White North.

Canada is currently the largest supplier of oil to the United States. We export more oil to the US than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico combined. We are a secure, stable and reliable trading partner with the US for a product that can make or break their economy.

Right now, Canada has almost zero ability to transport its oil to anywhere other than the United States. There is no big spigot off of our east, west or north coasts that allows for overseas export to other markets, particularly in Asia. 

Approving the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion changes all of that, and for the first time Canada might be capable of shipping significant amounts of oil to markets other than the United States (assuming the project is actually completed — a big question mark given ongoing First Nations' legal challenges and resistance from British Columbians).

This fact has got to have the attention of the US government. Their stable, reliable and secure oil supply is now, for the first time in history, under threat of going to other markets.

What is President-elect Donald Trump Thinking About This?

I would bet this announcement is on President-elect Trump's radar. Trump has promised to renegotiate or even terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Trump has also promised to restart the process of building the Keystone XL pipeline that would significantly expand transport capacity for tar sands oil from Canada to the United States and foreign export markets via the Gulf of Mexico. 

While there is no doubt a benefit to Canada diversifying the customer base for its oil products, it may come at the expense of ticking off our biggest customer to the south. In the complicated world of geopolitics and oil, who knows where this could lead.

Trudeau Just Knocked Over the First Domino 

Here is a graph showing the largest proposed oil and gas projects in the world, along with the carbon emissions they will put into our atmosphere:

According to a report earlier this year by Oil Change International, if these projects are built, we are toast. Burnt toast that is.

It is crucial to the earth's climate that the projects represented in this graph are never built. Canada is in that top five as you can see, and you can also see that some not-too-cooperative countries are also in the top five, including Russia and Iran. 

What kind of message does Trudeau's approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project send to these other countries like Russia, Iran and Qatar?

I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that if there was any inkling of hesitation amongst these other countries to not proceed with building their own new pipelines, that has all been thrown out the window with Trudeau's decision. 

In fact, it is most likely that many of the countries in this graph will speed up their timelines, so as to maintain a competitive edge in the oil market over us Canadians. 

Oceans Have No Borders

The Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion will increase oil tanker traffic from around 60 tankers per year to more than 400. So instead of a massive oil tanker coming through Vancouver's waterfront and the Burrard Inlet on average every couple of weeks, we will now see on average one a day.

Experts have always said that when it comes to oil tankers, spills are not a question of if, but when. We have been relatively lucky so far that the only major spill from the existing Trans Mountain pipeline happened on land. And no matter how prepared we could be for a spill in our Inner Harbor here in Vancouver (which history has shown not to be the case), the problem is likely not containable within our own borders.

According to media reports last year, the neighboring Washington State government is "worried about Canada's ability to respond to oil spills." And they should be considering that the US-Canada ocean border is only a few miles from where all these oil tankers would travel through. The US San Juan islands for instance is a major tourism destination and home to diverse marine life, and is in serious risk from any spill that happens just up the coast. 

Image credit: Wilderness Committee

First Nations communities on both sides of the border are tied together in the Salish Sea, which predates any borders. The Coast Salish nations, along with many other First Nations' communities, are strongly opposed to this pipeline and so we will see mounting opposition and court proceedings, with implications that will likely reach across the Canada-US border. 

Our friends in the US take on a lot of risk from a potential oil spill, but see none of the economic benefits of Canada's expanded oil export capabilities.

All risk and no reward is likely something that is not sitting too well with Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, who is a very vocal supporter of action on climate change.

What About the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement, negotiated late last year by 195 countries, commits the vast majority of world leaders to dealing with the issue of climate change by committing to significantly reducing their country's greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.

At the time, newly-elected Prime Minister Trudeau and his Environment Minister Catherine McKenna were a breath of fresh air at the Pairs climate talks.  As much as we are a small country (by population), Canada is a significant player at these climate negotiations because per-capita we are historically a large emitter of greenhouse gas pollution. We also hold massive amounts of greenhouse gas reserves in our oil sands and other fossil fuel deposits. So to see Trudeau and McKenna step up at the Paris climate talks was a big deal. 

The Paris Agreement is both a functional document and a symbolic one, and in many ways its symbolism is the more powerful of the two.

The Paris Agreement sent a resounding message to the world that business-as-usual is no longer acceptable. It made clear to the global business community that the days of paying lip service to concerns about climate change is no longer acceptable, and markets have reacted. 

Speaking of lip service, did you hear about Prime Minister Trudeau approving a new expansion in oil sands pipelines that will lock in massive new amounts of carbon being pumped into our atmosphere? 

Somehow Trudeau and his government think they can reconcile a commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change with the construction of a new pipeline that will greatly increase emissions of the very thing the agreement is trying to reduce.

On paper Trudeau might be able to make that case, but he is missing the real point of the Paris Agreement and that is the signal it sends out to the world. 

With Trudeau approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, he and his government have just thrown a big bucket of sloppy crude onto that clear and resounding signal the Paris Agreement sent out to the world. 

Between domestic unrest and the international ramifications, this pipeline decision will likely come to define much of Trudeau's time in government, which quite honestly I think is something this Prime Minister really didn't think through that well.

Image courtesy of Abdallahh on Flickr under creative commons.

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Canadians could be forgiven for being a bit confused about how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing on climate change these days.

Last week he approved one of the largest sources of carbon pollution in the country — the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal in B.C.

The week before that his government announced it would stick with Harper-era emissions targets.

Now Trudeau has announced the creation of a pan-Canadian carbon-pricing framework, which means our country will have a carbon tax nation-wide for the first time ever.

So are we hurtling toward overshooting our climate targets or are we finally getting on track?

Let’s look first at the carbon price announcement.

The carbon price will begin at $10 in 2018 and will scale up $10 per year until 2022.

The announcement “sends a clear signal that we’re all in this together and that we need a federal approach to regulate carbon pollution,” said Amin Asadollahi, lead for climate change mitigation at the International Institute of Sustainable Development.

The timing seems right as well, with a new Nanos poll showing 77 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support Canada pursuing a national plan to meet international climate commitments. Additionally, 62 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support a national carbon price.

Under the new framework, provinces will have the autonomy to choose a carbon pricing mechanism that works for them, whether carbon tax or cap and trade, and all revenues generated in province will stay in province.

Having a pan-Canadian framework for pricing carbon creates incentive for businesses, Assadollahi said, and “harmonizes the approach rather than having patchwork policies across the country.”

However, critics have already come out against the price as too weak to be useful.

“I was very disappointed we were starting with $10 per tonne,” said Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Green Party, “which is so low under British Columbia’s carbon tax of $30 per tonne. It was an obvious political calculation.”

And bringing the provinces together may be harder than Trudeau bargained for.

Already Premier Rachel Notley has announced Alberta will only support the plan in exchange for pipeline access to tidewater. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who has been a vocal opponent of carbon pricing for years, used the announcement to reiterate his position, saying the announcement wasn’t worth the carbon emissions it took to fly environment ministers to Ottawa.

May told DeSmog Canada the “recalcitrance of the provinces is very disconcerting.”

May said the environment ministers of Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, who were visiting a meeting of the ministers this morning, made a statement by walking out in response to Trudeau’s carbon price announcement.

“Ministers of provinces storming out of meetings is just childish,” May said, especially given the flexibility of the carbon price plan to suit individual provinces and territories.

Canada’s New Carbon Price: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly #carbontax #cdnpoli #climate https://t.co/g9nBo5m8d2

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 4, 2016

Matt Horne, senior policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, said the Prime Minister made a smart political move in considering differences among provinces in the plan.

“The feds were wise not to be too prescriptive here,” Horne told DeSmog Canada.

“The decision they made on the flexibility of the mechanism and revenue generated is interesting,” Horne said. “You have got to achieve this level of ambition but how you do it and how you use the revenue is up to you.”

“That gives maximum space to someone like Brad Wall to make this work in Saskatchewan.”

Province by province regulations will be necessary to meaningfully reduce emissions where they start.

A recent report by Mark Jaccard, climate policy analyst and professor at Simon Fraser University, found a carbon tax of $200 per tonne would be necessary to catalyze significant climate action and a transition to renewable energy systems.

Jaccard said an overreliance on carbon pricing can mask a suite of alternative options like sector-by-sector performance standards, renewable portfolio standards, mandatory market shares and zero-emission vehicles.

“Ninety per cent of the reductions in the last eight or nine years…in California are occurring because of the flexible regs, not because of that very low floor price in their cap-and-trade,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada in a recent interview.

Whether or not this federal government will be a strong actor on climate change remains to be determined.

For Kai Nagata, communications director at the Dogwood Institute, Trudeau’s carbon price announcement should be viewed within the context of last week’s approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal.

“If you set a weak carbon pricing target, that means to hit your pollution reductions targets you have to reduce actual carbon infrastructure. Are we doing that? Not at all, in fact, quite the opposite.”

“This is the dilemma,” Nagata said, “no one believes carbon pricing alone, through whatever form, is going to reduce pollution enough to get at base pollution levels.”

“The only thing that would really take a bite out of Canada’s carbon pie is to stop adding fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Nagata added if Trudeau fails to put pressure on the energy sector to reduce emissions, that pressure will be placed on other less-polluting sectors and individual citizens.

“It’s fundamentally unfair and it will have the effect, if they continue to approve extraction and production, of subsidizing the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the ordinary citizen.”

Alex Doukas, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, also pointed to the issue of subsidies.

“Setting a strong national carbon price is potentially a very important step forward for Canadian climate action,” Doukas said. “But there’s a multi-billion-dollar elephant in the room: Canada still gives $3.3 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies each year.”

Doukas said the Trudeau government needs to complement its carbon price with an “ambitious timeline for phasing out all of its fossil fuel subsidies.”

“Otherwise, the Trudeau government’s incentives to polluters risks cancelling out the newly announced carbon price.”

So while some Canadians are celebrating the announcement of a national carbon tax as a victory, it will remain pyrrhic until Trudeau implements the types of regulation that will actually bring significant emissions reductions and starts to make the tough calls on building new fossil fuel infrastructure. Until then, we’re going to hold the applause.

Update: October 4, 2016. The provincial environment ministers walked out of a meeting of ministers in Montreal, not out of the House of Commons as was previously stated. Kai Nagata’s title has been updated from energy and democracy director to communications director. 

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On Sunday, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced that the federal government will stick with the previous government’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The news, delivered via an interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon, attracted a significant amount of criticism.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May described it as “nothing short of a disaster for the climate” and Press Progress suggested the news undermined election commitments and later statements by the Liberals.

Fair enough: McKenna had previously called the targets the “floor,” noting that “certainly we want to try to do better.” And in election materials, the Liberals stated: “We will work together to establish national emissions-reduction targets.”

Not exactly a broken promise, but some had hoped for more.

But here’s the thing: yes, the Liberals could have set a more ambitious target. And yes, to help keep global temperatures below two degrees of warming, they will need to in the future.

But what matters is not setting a target — it’s meeting a target.

The two previous federal governments were nowhere near to meeting the targets they set, so Canada is working to catch up right now.

While setting a new, more ambitious target might have drawn positive headlines, it may well have set the country up for repeated failures.

Ultimately, policy experts are more concerned with the details that will be contained in the government’s upcoming climate plan.

“At the end of the day, as much as the goals and targets matter, what matters most is reducing emissions,” says Amin Asadollahi, the lead for climate change mitigation for North America at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“Measures matter more. Setting up a target and missing it misses the point.”

Clare Demerse, federal policy advisor for Clean Energy Canada, agrees.

“We have, in this country, a long history of having targets and a very short history of having actual plans to meet them. We have been in a situation where Canada has really established a credibility problem in terms of hitting targets. We need to fix that.”

Paris Agreement Requires Canada To Review Targets Every Five Years

The important and now reaffirmed climate target is a reduction of emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030; a recent paper from the Climate Action Network indicated that current measures will result in a 91 megatonne overshoot, so a lot is still going to have to change.

There’s also a goal in place to cut emissions in 2020 by 17 per cent, largely considered impossible given a decade of inaction by the federal Conservatives. And then there are the most distant goals of a 65 per cent reduction by 2050 and a G7 goal of full decarbonization by 2100.

The Paris Agreement, which hasn’t yet been ratified by Canada, will require each country to review targets every five years starting in 2018 and justify plans to the international community.

“Every five years, we’ll come back to the table and the international community will test this resolve as to whether it has the political will to put the world on a trajectory to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Asadollahi says.

And political will — inextricably linked to public acceptability — is what this is really about. Can the Liberals put in place a plan to meet the target and get re-elected?

Why @JustinTrudeau’s Commitment to Harper’s Old Emissions Target Might Not Be Such Bad News After All https://t.co/SBtzmCn2W0 #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 21, 2016

2030 Target Tough, But Achievable

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, says that meeting the 2030 target will be challenging but achievable, especially given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity and available political capital.

Plenty of options are on the table. A predictable price on carbon via a tax or cap-and-trade framework is considered the most important. McKenna has indicated the federal government will set a national price if provinces don’t take measures themselves, despite resistance from Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

A new report, Is Win Win Possible? Can Canada Meet Its Paris Commitment … And get Re-Elected?, published on Tuesday by renowned climate policy analyst Mark Jaccard recommends a combination of a $40/tonne of carbon dioxide tax by 2030, accompanied by an array of flexible and industry-specific regulations.

Other measures could include an accelerated phase-out of coal, better building codes, fuel efficiency standards, energy efficiency measures, incentivizing a faster deployment of renewables and smart grids, support for electric vehicles and charging stations and better public transit.

Demerse notes that governments and industry often overestimate how difficult environment policy is going to be to implement.

“Once you get started and it becomes a conversation where you take the lobbyists out and unleash the engineers, you see all kinds of innovation,” she says. “That’s certainly been the story with clean energy, where we’ve seen the cost of clean energy fall very significantly.”

Let's Not Forget About Decarbonization

Stewart warns that such measures could be effective enough to meet 2030 targets, but would be undermined if the Liberals approve new pipelines and massively expanded oilsands production, which would lock in new greenhouse gas emissions for decades.*

As a result, he says it’s important to start working now towards decarbonization — meaning no further growth of the oilsands, as also recommended by Jaccard — which in itself would allow for the meeting of 2030 targets given oil and gas now contributes the most emissions of any sector in the country.

Stewart says that such decisions will require some “tough political fights” but that the federal government has all the tools it needs to make the big changes required.

“If you’re not forcing anyone to change their behaviour, you’re not actually changing any outcomes,” he says. “Thirty per cent by 2030 isn’t good enough. We have to go farther. And the Paris Agreement builds in a way to ratchet up that level of ambition.”

The next United Nations climate conference will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from November 7 to 18. Given the successes at the last iteration in Paris, it’s likely that it will be a quieter affair. But Canada will need to have the ball rolling on a serious climate plan by that point, especially given its ambitions to land a UN Security Council seat.

“We haven’t seen the work they’ve been putting together,” Demerse says. “We know it’s going to be very political and not simple. We’re still in a wait and see mode. This is a process that can deliver but we don’t yet know what’s going to come out at the end of this.”

*Update Notice: Sept. 22, 2016, 10 a.m.: This article previously incorrectly stated that the Liberals could approve new pipelines and meet the 2030 targets.

Photo: Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and her chief of staff Marlo Raynolds, via the Pembina Institute.

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Some of the largest, most profitable companies in Canada are collectively receiving an estimated $3.3 billion in subsidies every year from Canadian taxpayers, according to a new analysis.

The report, released today by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian-based think tank, outlines how billions in federal and provincial tax breaks and corporate incentives benefit companies in the oil and gas sector like Imperial Oil, whose earnings in 2015 were CDN$1.1 billion.

The new analysis comes as Trudeau is in China for the G20 Summit. In 2009 G20 leaders committed to a complete phase out of all fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term and Justin Trudeau, while on the campaign trail, made an election promise to fulfill that commitment.

“Fossil fuel subsidies work against Canada’s commendable progress in putting a price on carbon — they give money and tax breaks to the sources of carbon pollution that we’re trying to scale back,” Amin Asadollahi, North American Lead on Climate Change Mitigation at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Canada

Between 2013 and 2015 the federal government handed out an average of CAD $1 billion every year through the Canadian Development Expense program. During that same period an average of CAD $148 million was provided to oil and gas companies through the Canadian Exploration Expense program.

B.C. and Alberta also provide the lion’s share of oil and gas subsidies through royalty reductions and drilling credits.

Oil and gas subsidies across Canada. Image: IISD

Some of the largest oil and gas subsidies in Canada. Image: IISD

Fossil Fuel Subsidies Better Spent Elsewhere

The new analysis details how those taxpayer funds could be better spent in Canada.

For instance, the institute calculates that $3.3 billion could pay for the education of 260,000 students, or job training for 330,000 Canadians, each year. Or each Canadian could just pay $94 less per year in taxes.

Image: IISD

Despite the global downturn in oil prices, some of the largest oil and gas companies in Canada have turned an impressive profit. In 2014 oilsands giant Suncor Energy posted a record profit, with operating earnings of CDN$1.37 billion.

Last year Suncor Energy and Imperial Oil ranked 11th and 12th respectively for most profitable companies in Canada.

Canadian Taxpayers Fork Out $3.3 Billion Every Year to Super Profitable Oil Companies https://t.co/yO6ILluS8S #cdnpoli #oilandgas

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 1, 2016

Subsidies for Fossil Fuels Undermine Carbon Tax

While oil and gas companies are getting windfall tax breaks, the Canadian government is proposing to put a tax on the greenhouse gas emissions that result from the production of oil and gas.

As IISD analyst Amin Asadollahi describes it, “[i]magine the Canadian government taxed cigarettes with one hand, while handing out tax breaks to tobacco companies with the other.”

Fossil fuel subsidies also undercut tax breaks and financial incentives for renewable energies like wind, solar and geothermal.

In a 2015 report the International Institute for Sustainable Development along with Oil Change International found global subsidies for the fossil fuel industry are four times greater than subsidies for clean energy alternatives.

Clean energy analysts say the overwhelming emphasis on support for fossil fuel development has prevented the renewable energy industry from reaching its full potential. The renewable energy industry, despite the lack of help, is still booming and outpacing even the most optimistic predictions for its growth.

In its election platform the Liberal party promised to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies in order to support the growth of alternatives.

“The saving will be redirected to investments in new and clean technologies,” the party platform says.

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With only a couple of weeks left in the Canadian federal election, voters are starting to ask fundamental questions about where the major parties stand on important issues like climate change. Canadians already rank climate and environment as a top issue both during and between election cycles. 

But with both the federal election on the horizon and international climate talks scheduled in Paris for late November, Canadians have a real opportunity for their votes to translate into substantial climate action on the global stage. 

Pressure is mounting for Canada to play a leadership role at these negotiations, with major trading partners like China and the United States already jointly announcing their emission reduction goals and commitments in advance of the talks.  

And Canadians are showing a desire for strong climate leadership. Even provinces like Alberta are defying stereotypes by showing a broad public desire for climate action. A recent poll by EKOS found that 53 per cent of Albertans support stronger climate policies and about the same support an economy-wide carbon tax to help solve the problem. 

Environmental group Environmental Defence recently issued a new report that outlines where each of the major parties stand on climate. Here DeSmog Canada breaks those climate positions down with further analysis of each party's election platform: 

Liberal Party of Canada and Justin Trudeau on Climate Change

When it comes to actual carbon emission reduction targets the Liberal Party has been rather vague so far in this election, making a promise that they will "provide national leadership and join with the provinces and territories to take action on climate change, put a price on carbon, and reduce carbon pollution."

In their election platform, Trudeau and the Liberals have committed to a $2 billion Low Carbon Economy Trust that will fund projects that help reduce carbon emissions.

On the international policy side, the Liberals say they will attend the Paris climate summit and within 90 days "establish a pan-Canadian framework for combating climate change."

The Liberals also state in their election platform that they support the G20 commitment to phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels in the medium-term and that they will work with the U.S. and Mexico to develop a long-term North American clean energy and environmental agreement. 

The NDP and Thomas Mulcair on Climate Change

The NDP has committed to a nation-wide cap-and-trade system that includes a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major sources like the Alberta oilsands. According to the Environmental Defence report, the NDP's plan puts Canada on track to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 34 per cent by 2025, with a baseline measure of 1990. By 2050, the NDP plan on climate change would see Canada's emissions drop by 80 per cent. These targets and commitments would be legislated making them much more difficult to reverse by future governments. 

The NDP also commits to establishing "Green Bonds" which would allow Canadians to "invest up to $4.5 billion over four years in 'clean energy, climate resilient infrastructure, commercial and industrial energy retrofits, and other sustainable development projects.'"

A further $1.5 billion would be spent over the next four years in "green programs" like retrofitting homes to be more energy efficient and local clean energy projects for northern and remote communities. 

The Conservative Party and Stephen Harper on Climate Change

As the incumbent party, it is fair to judge the Conservative party's performance on their record to date, even more so than their election promises. While Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have been mildly better on climate change in the last couple years (by, for example, agreeing with other G7 nations to phase out fossil fuels by 2100), the bar has been set rather low. This isn't helped by the fact that members of the Conservative party still consider climate change a theory consisting of "alarmist claims."

Under the Harper government, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada have ever so slightly dropped, but as the CBC points out in a recent analysis of claims on climate change made by Stephen Harper, those slight reductions had nothing to do with policy actions by the Conservatives and were instead a result of the major economic recession in 2008 and 2009. 

As for Harper's commitment in this federal election on climate change, his party highlights the commitment they put forward for the Paris negotiations that would see Canada reduce its emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 measured on a baseline of 2005. However, the Conservatives have made this commitment on a sector-by-sector basis and one of the sectors left out of this commitment is the Alberta oilsands, the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. 

Emissions from the oilsands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions have increased 79 per cent since 2005. They currently account for nine per cent of Canada’s total emissions and that portion is expected to jump to 14 per cent by 2020.

In a recent analysis the Conservative Party's commitment was found to be the weakest of all the G7 countries. 

The Conservatives have announced some funding for green projects, like a Public Transit Fund, but say funding for that program would not start until 2017. 

The Green Party and Elizabeth May on Climate Change

Not surprisingly, the Green Party offers a very ambitious set of commitments on climate change, proposing emission reductions that are more than double those of Conservative Party of Canada. The Green Party plan would see Canada's greenhouse gas emissions reduced by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025 and by 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. 

The Green Party also commits to a "fee-and-dividend" system, which is similar to a cap-and-trade system and would set an initial price on carbon of $50 per tonne across all sectors, including the Alberta oilsands. 

As for investing in green programs, Elizabeth May and the Greens would commit $500 million a year to a "Green Climate Fund" that would assist developing nations in addressing climate change, an additional $180 million a year in clean energy research and development and $1 billion a year for a "Green Technology Commercialization Grants."

The Green Party would also reintroduce tax credits for homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient, create a national plan for public transportation and provide tax incentives for renewable energy storage faculties and for the manufacturing and purchase of electric and plug-in hybrid cars. 

If climate change is an important issue to you, there is one big thing you can do — bigger, I would argue than changing your lightbulbs or buying a hybrid car. The single biggest thing you can do to help fight climate change in Canada is to vote for the party you think is going to make the biggest difference.

Check out each party's platform for more details. While you're at it make sure you're registered to vote and don't forget to put October 19th in your calendar!

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.