[R-G] Canada's Election and the Climate Crisis: Five Parties, No Solutions

[Anthony Fenton]

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 138 ... September 22, 2008
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Canada's Election and the Climate Crisis:
Five Parties, No Solutions

Ian Angus

For the environment, there's good news and bad news in Canada's  
current federal election campaign. Good news: for the first time ever,  
climate change is a central issue in the political debates. Bad news:  
despite much sound and fury, none of the major political parties is  
proposing effective measures for dealing with the climate change  
crisis. The differences between them amount to "Don't do anything"  
versus "Don't do much."

When Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party took office in January  
2006, they promptly cancelled existing environmental programs and  
planned to ignore the environment from then on. Only a massive public  
opinion shift led them to awkwardly don green garb in 2007 and  
announce a new "Turning the Corner Plan" on greenhouse gases.

There wasn't much to the plan -- a detailed review by the respected  
Tyndall Institute concluded that greenhouse gas emissions over the  
coming decade would be the same, and might be lower, if the  
Conservative plan didn't exist at all. The Tories' close alliance with  
the Bush administration and its drive to block any international  
agreement on emissions targets shows just how misleading their green  
rhetoric was.

Now, with a recession looming, the Conservatives are fighting this  
election as the "party of free enterprise, free markets and free  
trade" -- which means returning to their previous anti-environmental  
positions. Harper demagogically promises to defend economic growth,  
while charging that the Liberals "jeopardize our economic growth with  
new taxes and threaten to impose new trade barriers in their Green  
Shift Plan."

Harper signalled his new direction most clearly by promising a 50%  
reduction in federal taxes on diesel and aviation fuel. That's a $600  
million fossil fuel subsidy to industries that generate 10% of  
Canada's greenhouse gases. If the Conservatives are re-elected, no one  
should be surprised if they use "economic growth" to justify  
backtracking even on the feeble environmental measures they introduced  
in the past 18 months.

The opposition
Polls show that the environment and climate change still rank very  
high as voter concerns, so the Tory policy shift offers an opportunity  
for the opposition parties to mobilize that concern in support of a  
strong pro-environment program. Unfortunately, none of them proposes  
effective measures for dealing with the crisis. The "solutions" they  
offer amount to little more than crossing their fingers and hoping  
that the problem will go away.

All four mainstream opposition parties -- Liberals, New Democrats,  
Bloc Québécois and Greens -- have embraced the currently trendy  
economic theory that the way to fight global warming is to "put a  
price on carbon." Corporations and consumers emit greenhouse gases,  
the theory says, because doing so doesn't cost them anything. If  
government imposes a cost, companies and individuals will seek  
alternatives -- they will try to reduce or eliminate their emissions  
in order to reduce their costs.

The Liberal Party is the prime defender of this approach. The  
cornerstone of its election program is the "Green Shift Plan," which  
they say will "shift Canada's tax system away from income and towards  
pollution." They promise to phase in a $40 per tonne tax on greenhouse  
gas emissions over four years, and to reduce corporate and personal  
income taxes by an equivalent amount. As a result, businesses will be  
"encouraged to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into  
the atmosphere," while consumers will be motivated to insulate their  
homes and find other ways to make less use of fossil fuels.

The Liberals say they will begin the tax shift immediately. They also  
promise an emissions trading scheme for corporations, including caps  
on emissions -- but say it "will take several years to build."

The New Democratic Party argues, correctly, that the main effect of  
the Liberal tax plan will be higher prices for working people.  
Instead, the NDP wants to launch a cap-and-trade program quickly. They  
have provided few details about their program, but they have made  
positive statements about the Western Climate Initiative, under which  
several provinces and U.S. states propose to regulate emissions while  
allowing corporations to continue polluting by purchasing emissions  
credits from the government, other corporations or Third World  
countries.

The NDP website says its plan is "in line with" a similar scheme  
implemented in Europe. It is silent on the fact that the European  
system has produced windfall profits for energy companies while having  
no effect at all on emissions.

The Green Party and Bloc Québécois propose variants on the two main  
themes. The Greens want a cap-and-trade program for large  
corporations, combined with a shift from income taxes to carbon taxes  
for consumers. The Bloc favours cap-and-trade, organized on a province- 
by-province basis.

Complete bullet:
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