The Conservative Party’s election platform claims that repealing a slew of climate policies and resource regulations will generate billions in revenue for the federal government.
This platform is “flipping the bird to climate change,” said Ryan Katz-Rosene, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Ottawa, in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer.
“It doesn’t talk about adaptation. It doesn’t talk about the impacts felt by Canadian communities. It doesn’t talk about wildfires. It doesn’t talk about water shortages. It doesn’t talk about insurance costs. It doesn’t talk about GHG (greenhouse gas) targets,” Katz-Rosene said.
The platform signals a new direction for the Conservative Party, away from technological and market-based policies to mitigate emissions that were included in the platforms of previous party leaders like Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole.
“In previous iterations, and there’s been some conservative commentators who have said, ‘Look, we are not going to get elected unless we have a serious take on climate mitigation.’ And I don’t know if that’s still the case,” Katz-Rosene said.
Instead, observers say Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is making good on what he has promised since he took the helm: he intends to kill all regulations and climate policies.
‘A really big number for government’
The costed platform estimates revenue that could be generated from deregulating natural resources and eliminating climate policy.
Conservative Party campaign spokesperson Sam Lilly did not respond to Canada’s National Observer’s request to review the analyses the party used to come up with their numbers. The potential costs of these policies have not been assessed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer; instead, the party said, two former senior government officials calculated “revenue projections tied to economic growth from eliminating” policies like the electric vehicle sales mandate, the oil and gas emissions cap and the clean fuel standard.
For example, the platform says scrapping the proposed oil and gas emissions cap would generate nearly $5 billion for the federal government from now until 2029. Dropping the federal EV sales mandate would generate more than $11 billion in revenue from now until 2029, the document concluded.
“That’s a really big number for a federal government revenue,” economist Andrew Leach told Canada’s National Observer, referencing the revenue projection from ending the EV sales mandate.
“I assume that that’s coinciding with the manufacturing investments, the consumer supports, et cetera.”
Some of the policies the Conservatives would scrap won’t be so easy to destroy, particularly the industrial carbon price, said Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at University of Victoria who analyzes climate policy, in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer.
“Many businesses have adjusted their investments in order to plan for the pricing signal,” she said. Because the cost increases over time, many businesses have already started to invest in low-carbon technology, including carbon capture sequestration utilisation and storage; the Canadian Climate Institute found $57 billion in investment is already locked in due to industrial carbon pricing, Rhodes noted. She also thinks reversing the federal zero-emissions vehicles sales mandate would be difficult given that EV sales are up and backtracking would put Canada at a disadvantage compared to China or Europe.
Policies and regulations on the chopping block
Poilievre has been clear about his intent to scrap countless climate policies and regulations on the energy sector, so the platform didn’t contain any surprises in terms of attacks on climate policy, according to Leach, Katz-Rosene and Rhodes.
Here are some of the policies and regulations he pledges to eliminate.
- Impact Assessment Act
- Clean Electricity Regulations
- ZEV sales mandate
- Industrial and consumer carbon price
- Clean Fuel Regulations
- Oil and gas emissions cap
- Canada Greener Homes Loans
- Low Carbon Economy Fund
- Oil Tanker Moratorium Act
- Single-use plastic ban
“There’s some contradictory statements in their platform,” Katz-Rosene said.
“There’s a lot of rhetoric in that platform about getting rid of regulations and fast-tracking approvals … that is about creating a better investment climate, but that assumes that you have large capital-rich private firms that are ready to jump in, and that’s not necessarily the case.”
They are critiquing Liberal spending but also assuming that private investment is going to pick up the slack when it comes to megaprojects, he said.
“When it comes to building pipelines, when it comes to building LNG facilities, when it comes to doubling Newfoundland oil and gas, or exporting oil through the Arctic ports — all of that is basically just rhetoric at this point, because it’s hard to imagine any of that coming to fruition without significant federal expenditures to support that.”
Another big question Poilievre’s platform raises is what his government would do if Indigenous nations or provinces oppose a project, Leach mused. At the French leaders’ debate on April 16, Poilievre did not directly answer whether he would impose a pipeline on Indigenous nations who don’t want it. He said others would support it and his government would side with the majority.
Rare Paris Agreement mention
Two of the four bullet points in the platform section titled “Protect the Environment and Lower Emissions” referenced emissions specifically.
One of those said a Conservative government could use Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to “dramatically reduce global emissions and fight climate change” by exporting Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG) and technologies to help lower global emissions.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the federal government were in discussions to try and do just that back in 2023, Canada’s National Observer reported.
The idea is to change the international framework for counting greenhouse gas emissions so that Canada can get credit for India reducing emissions by burning Canadian LNG instead of coal, for example.
Katz-Rosene called this notion “nonsense,” because it would require countries that switch from coal to Canadian LNG to agree to let Canada take credit for the emission reductions, which means they would not be able to count the GHG reductions for themselves.
“It’s hard to imagine how that would ever be the case,” Katz-Rosene said.
Leach agrees.
“This idea has been around since 1997 and “it’s always just been a way to say, ‘Well, this fossil fuel production is actually good for the environment,’” Leach said.
Similarly, a growing body of evidence throws cold water on the notion LNG is even a lower-emission fuel than coal to begin with. Recently, a study from Cornell University, published last October, found GHG emissions from American LNG are 33 per cent higher than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account.
The Conservative platform said it would reform investment tax credits — the Liberals’ 2023 federal budget included more than $80 billion in tax credits to support the low-carbon economy — but does not say what changes it would make.
The platform also pledges to repeal the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act to allow for building new LNG terminals to export energy overseas.
Stand.earth and Leach both point out that law does absolutely nothing to restrict LNG shipment in northern BC — it only applies to crude and persistent oil — and Leach said Poilievre has been consistently misrepresenting what the law actually does.
“You have LNG [export terminals] being built in regions covered by that tanker ban,” Leach said, pointing to LNG Canada and Cedar LNG.
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
