The Global Climate Strikes of September 20 and 27, 2019 were a set of large global protests sparked by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In Canada, the climate strikes on the September 27 drew 600,000k+ and occurred against the backdrop of an approaching federal election. This post will analyze the impact of the September Climate strikes on the salience of climate change during the 2019 federal election, as characterized by Canadian media. Data used in this analysis was gathered from Dow Jones database, Factiva.

Theory

John Kingdon’s multiple streams framework posits that a ‘policy window’ emerges when the independent streams of problems, politics and policies converge. Windows can be opened by developments in the problems or politics streams. In Kingdon’s conception, a ‘problem’ comes to be defined as such through a focusing event, or as a result of strong responses though ‘formal’ feedback mechanisms (e.g. negative opinion poll) or ‘informal’ feedback mechanisms (e.g. a mass protest). For a policy window to open, however, the problems stream must ‘couple’ with changes in the politics stream, which increases the likelihood that a given issue will take root on a governmental agenda.

Measuring the Impact of Climate Strikes in Canada

The climate strikes of September 27 were a powerful ‘focusing event’ and feedback mechanism to communicate public dissatisfaction with climate action in Canada. In the context of an impending election, the scale of the Canadian climate strikes was also social proof of the salience of climate as a voting issue. Analysis of Canadian news media is one tool to examine the prevalence of climate in coverage of the federal election, and a possible “proxy measure for an issue’s agenda status among policymakers” (Beilmann, Susanne). The climate Strikes, along with several other events, helped drive the issue of climate into closer conversation with the federal election.

Analyzing the relationship between mentions of climate change in federal election coverage is one broad tool to gage the extent to which climate change has become a more significant, or less significant voting issue for Canadians over time. Data from Canadian newspapers over a five-year period illustrate how climate gained traction in coverage of the 2015 Canadian elections compared to those of 2019.

(Source: Factiva, Region= Canada)

Fig. 1 Mentions of ‘Climate Change’ AND ‘election’ in Canadian news outlets over the past five years. Factiva settings were restricted to ‘Canada’, and timeframe was set to ‘past five years’. All news mentions of ‘election’ were first compiled, then data on articles mentioning ‘election’ AND “climate change” were compiled and calculated as a percentage of total articles overall mentioning “election”.

The term ‘climate’ is mentioned markedly more often in the 2019 elections when compared to the last Canadian federal election year.  In 2015, the term ‘climate change’ was mentioned in 6.7% of news articles containing the term ‘election’, while in 2019, 14.4% of articles which mentioned ‘election’ also mentioned ‘climate change’. Using media attention as a proxy measure for issue salience, the data suggest that climate is a more significant voting issue in 2019 than in any historic Canadian election.

While a five-year analysis illustrates the broad changes in climate coverage in election years, this multi-year scale makes it impossible to identify the impact of discrete ‘framing’ events on the coverage of climate in the federal election. Reselecting a narrower study period on Factiva (August 28 – October 11, 2019) enables a more detailed analysis of their interactions.

(Source: Factiva. Region: Canada)

Fig. 2. Number of articles which mention ‘student strike’ (specifically ‘climate strike’ or ‘student strike’), “’climate change’ AND ‘elections’” from August 28-October 12, 2019. Setting a narrower date range on Factiva enables closer study of how media mentions of ‘elections’ and ‘climate change’ fluctuated near the Climate Strikes or near planned campaign events, such as televised debates.

The first wave of articles mentioning ‘elections’ and ‘climate change’ occurred near September 11, when the Canadian federal election was called. Coverage of the announcement may have surveyed party platforms and speculated about key voting issues, such as climate change. Another wave of interest occurred directly before and after the climate strikes on September 27. The data suggests two things: First, the climate strikes elevated the topicality of climate in elections coverage, independent of reporting on the school strikes (See fig. 2.- The rise in mentions of ‘election and climate change’ rises independent of mentions of ‘elections’ and ‘climate strike’ OR ‘student strike’).

Media focus on climate as an election issue did not evaporate after the climate strikes. Momentum continued. The next rise in mentions on October 3 coincides with the date of GreenPac’s ‘100 Debates on the Environment’ – a coordinated effort to raise the profile of environmental issues by staging a collection of 100 ‘non-partisan all-candidate debates on the environment’ nationwide. Although the mentions climate strikes and student strikes dropped off, the 100 Debates generated similar levels of media attention to climate and the election as the Climate Strikes.

Media attention to climate continued through to the English and French language Leaders Debates of October 7 and 9. Both events allocated time for debate on ‘environmental’ issues, and climate featured prominently in this sections and others. Climate was an arena which candidates used to distinguish themselves from other parties through critique of the effectiveness of opposing climate plans, and by ‘selling’ the benefits of their plans for climate action. Next-day coverage reflected the centrality of climate in the debates and contributed to the two surges of climate mentions in elections reporting.

Overall, climate as a topic featured more than twice as often in coverage of the 2019 federal election than in the election coverage of 2015. The climate strikes of September 27 and the planned events which followed (100 Debates, Climate Strikes) were related to significant spikes in media interest in climate and the elections. The recurrence and fairly consistent distribution of these spikes suggests that interest in climate as an election issue has kept momentum in the media since the climate strikes. A recent Angus Reid poll also suggests that climate is a top issue for voters. The extent to which climate will be one of, if not the defining issue in the upcoming federal election will be the subject of post-election analysis.

Limitations

Analysis of Canadian media content helps to illustrate the relationships between events such as the Global Climate Strikes, 100 Debates on the Environment, and televised debates. However, this measure has several limitations:

• Uncertain Relationship: Graphing media mentions of “climate strike” and “election” (fig. 1 and Fig. 2) presumes that articles mentioning ‘climate change’ and ‘election’ are discussing climate change in relation to an election. It is possible that some journalists may be discussing these issues separately in the same article.
• International Election Coverage: Factiva cannot exclude coverage of foreign elections which also mention ‘climate change’. It is possible that coverage of international elections distorts data in all figures. Setting the parameters to ‘Canada’ limits this data to Canadian news sources which increases the likelihood that Canadian elections were the elections in conversation.
• French Language Exclusion: Search terms were limited to English language news sources. As French media was excluded, data will only reflect the relationship between ‘election’ and ‘climate’ in Anglophone Canada. It is possible that Quebecois news sources would have altered the relationship between the terms: ‘election’, ‘climate’, and ‘climate strike OR student strike’.

I gave a presentation today at UBC on a panel with colleagues. Some folks there expressed interest in seeing the slides, so I’m posting them here. The link to the pdf is posted below. I’ll try to keep it updated if there are any significant changes in the parties’ stances.

The pdf doesn’t have the notes where there are many references. Andrew Leach has some platform evaluations. EnviroEconomic and Clean Prosperity compared the Liberal and Conservative plans, as did Mark Jaccard.

September 28 update: Yesterday Trudeau announced a tree planting program that they say will achieve 30 MT reductions by 2030. If implemented, and that estimate checks out. Their progress towards the 2030 target would increase from 65% to 81%.

October 15 update:
Simon Donner, “No party’s climate plan will avoid dangerous global warming,” Policy Options, October 1, 2019.

Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Leach, How The Four Federal Parties’ Climate Plans Stack Up, Chatelaine, Oct 4, 2019

Hoberg Platform Comparison v. 2

Faculty at universities and colleges across Canada have been working to support the Global Climate Strike events that in Canada will be focused around Friday, September 27.

Some faculty have pledged to donate their pay for the day to groups working to address the climate emergency. You can take the pledge here. I’ve been asked what groups I recommend. Here’s a list of groups that I would suggest.

For those outside of Canadian university faculty that would like to support the global climate strike by donating their day’s pay, please join us! This list is has two global groups and a number of Canadian-focused groups. Folks in other jurisdictions might want to pick other groups.

350.org, leading global group “working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.”

Climate Action Network, network of over 100 organizations bringing “labour, development, faith-based, and Indigenous groups together with the key national, provincial, and territorial environmental organizations working on climate change.”

Climate Strike Canada, “the overarching network of students, young people, activists, and allies, which connects all of the climate action surrounding the Canadian school strike movement.”

Our Time, “a national campaign led by young people and millennials who are championing a vision for a Green New Deal for Canada — an ambitious plan to tackle climate change and inequality together.”

For Our Kids, “a network of concerned Canadian parents and grandparents taking action on climate” (half of their donations go to Climate Strike Canada).

International Rescue Committee, a refugee aid group that “helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.”

September 26, 2018, the NEB released its draft list of issues and factors for consideration in its reconsideration of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The reconsideration commits the same indefensible error of not including climate impacts associated with the project in the proposed factors to consider in the analysis. Below is the text of my submitted comment to the NEB about this concern.

October 03, 2018

Ms. Sheri Young
Secretary of the Board
National Energy Board
Suite 210, 517 Tenth Avenue SW
Calgary, AB T2R 0A8

Dear Ms. Young,

I am writing to provide comments on the draft List of Issues and the draft Amended Factors and Scope of the Factors for the Environmental Assessment under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 (CEAA 2012) for the NEB reconsideration of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. The proposal would clearly rectify the primary flaw in the original NEB review identified by the Federal Court of Appeal by incorporating project-related marine shipping in the definition of the designated project.

However, the draft commits another serious, and easily rectifiable, error by excluding the consideration of the environmental and socio-economic implications of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project. This deficiency was acknowledged by the current federal government as a significant shortcoming that it addressed in part by repeatedly committing to consider at least upstream emissions in environmental assessments. If the current government already has an established process to do so for this reconsideration of TMX outside the NEB process, then this is a less serious defect (although still an unnecessarily fragmented way to conduct a review of a project). But I have not seen a statement committing the government to do this.

Best practice in environmental assessment considers all significant environmental impacts of the project being assessed. Given the severity of the global climate challenge, and Canada’s commitment to the international community to play its part in reducing global emissions, it is imperative that this be included in NEB’s reconsideration. I would note that the US, in its reviews of major pipeline projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, assesses both upstream and downstream greenhouse gas implications. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s assessment of upstream greenhouse gas emissions found the following: “Considering only the capacity added by the Project, emissions could range from 13 to 15 Mt of CO2 eq per year.” Those magnitudes clearly classify GHGs as an environmental impact of significant concern deserving consideration. That ECCC assessment is now two and one-half years old, and market conditions affecting the modelled impact might have changed significantly.

Sincerely

George Hoberg
Professor

March 10, 2018 protest in Burnaby, BC

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and British Columbia Premier John Horgan prepare for the emergency pipeline summit, the dominant discourse in mainstream and social media has been about Alberta’s economic needs and whether or not the BC government is overstepping its constitutional jurisdiction with its proposed diluted bitumen regulation. Those two issues are unquestionably critical, but there are two larger issues looming at the summit: Alberta’s climate challenge and indigenous reconciliation. No one at the summit will be representing these latter two issues but they are undeniably elephants in the room.

Alberta’s Climate Challenge

One of the more remarkable things about the Trans Mountain conversation has been Trudeau and Notley’s claim that the pipeline project is a climate solution. It is true that in the short term, politically, getting Alberta’s participation in the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change was not possible without Trudeau committing to push forward a new pipeline. But the longer-term problem is that it’s hard to square the oil sands expansion planned by Alberta and enabled by the Trans Mountain project with Canada’s UN commitment to the international community to reduce emission by 30% (below 2005 levels) by 2030.

The current policies that make up the Pan-Canadian Framework are not sufficient for Canada to meet its 2030 goals. It’s hard to see how Canada can meet that target without reductions from Alberta, whose much-celebrated Climate Leadership Plan does not reduce emissions through 2030 (report, p. 10). Even more important when discussing long-lived investments like pipelines, for Canada to be a responsible global citizen in contributing the long-term climate goals, post-2030 reductions in emissions will have to be much steeper.

The challenge all along is that the Alberta oil sands fueled model of economic development is simply not sustainable as we shift to a low-carbon, clean energy future. Sooner or later the Governments of Alberta and Canada need to reckon with this reality. Trudeau’s Pan-Canadian Framework, by buying Alberta’s participation with an emissions-expanding pipeline, simply postpones the necessary task of dealing with this reality.

By approving the pipeline, Trudeau chose to imposes the costs and risks on British Columbia, for which there will be an electoral backlash form the west coast. But if Trudeau is serious about climate leadership, or even simply compliance with Canada’s 2030 targets, he’ll need to reckon with the Alberta problem. There’s really no other alternative than beginning the transition away from the oil sands as the core driver of the province’s economy. That will be costly — socially, economic and politically.

Notley certainly doesn’t want to deal with this issue. Trudeau doesn’t either. Horgan has undermined his ability to represent the climate case when he changed the province’s policy framework in an effort to attract a major LNG project, and by advocating increased domestic refining as an alternative to a pipeline to export raw bitumen. Nonetheless, Canada and Alberta’s climate challenge loom large over the emergency meeting.

The Indigenous Reconciliation Challenge

The other elephant in the room is Canada’s challenge in reconciling settler governments with its indigenous peoples. One of the cornerstones of Trudeau’s election campaign has been building a government to government relationship with aboriginal people. Yet while three settler government leaders sit down to discuss the fate of a project of great to concern to many of Canada’s First Nations, no First Nations leadership will be present at the summit. The Governments of Alberta and Canada are rushing to help Kinder Morgan ramp up summer construction even before courts have ruled on multiple lawsuits against the project by First Nations.

All three settler governments attending the summit have committed to fully implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Yet there is a still a huge gulf in understanding of what role First Nations should play in project decision-making. Existing Canadian law, and the expectations of all three settler governments, is that Crown governments have an obligation to consult with and accommodate First Nations, but the consent of First Nations is not required for projects to go forward. In contrast, First Nations believe that UNDRIP’s provision of “free, prior, and informed consent” from indigenous groups means what it says: First Nations consent is required for a project to go forward in their traditional territories.

The Elephants Aren’t Going Away

Each of Canada’s oil sands pipeline proposals has ran into the same process pathology: individual projects have been transformed into proxy battles over broader issues about Canadian climate policy and indigenous rights. The fact that both issues are being ignored in the emergency pipeline summit does not mean that they are any less important or that they are going to go away. Canada is long overdue for serious conversations about reconciling settler and aboriginal title and Alberta’s economic model with a low-carbon future. Let’s hope the gathering of political leadership at the pipeline summit advances those two conversations.

Clean Energy Canada corrects BC gov p. 12 graph

After repeated delays, Premier Christy Clark announced British Columbia’s new climate policy today. Friday August 19, at 1 PM. As the announcement has been dragged out, any expectations for meaningful progress were very low. But even by that low bar, this plan is disappointing. The province seems to have abandoned all pretense of being a climate leader.

Climate policy experts from around the world have examined BC carbon tax a model progressive carbon policy initiative. I doubt they will be anymore.

Effective climate policies have at least 2 core ingredients: legally-enforceable carbon pollution reduction targets, and a suite of policies that can be demonstrated to meet those pollution reduction targets. Today’s plan fails both of those tests.

Targets Abandoned

The province has, shamefully, failed to comply with its 2020 pollution reduction target. In fact, the 2020 target is completely ignored in today’s plan. But the province of BC is currently required by law to reduce its GHG emissions by 33% by 2020; it’s right there in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act (Section 2.1). While the government never commented on it, the government-appointed Climate Leadership Team acknowledged that the 2020 target couldn’t be met.

But the Climate Leadership Team proposed a sensible alternative: an ambitious 2030 target of 40% reduction below 2007 levels. But the government ignored that call. The only remaining target is for 2050, which is too far in the future to guide near term decisions. So we no longer have meaningful emission reduction targets.

Plainly Inadequate Policies

The policies proposed in the plan can’t credibly put us on a path to meet that 2050 target.

BC uses 2007 as its baseline year. In that year, emissions were 66.3 million tonnes. In 2012, it was able to achieve it 6% interim reduction target, but since then emissions have started to come back up and in 2014 (in the inventory figures just released) BC’s emissions were 62.7 million tonnes, 5.5% below the 2007 baseline.

The plan claims to reduce emissions by 25 million tonnes by 2050 below projected 2050 emissions (It doesn’t provide a 2050 business as usual projection but look like it’s 77 MT). So even if they achieve the projected reductions (see below), 2050 emissions are projected to be 52 million tonnes (this according to Clean Energy Canada – the province did not include the projection in its bizarre graph on p. 12). BC’s legislated emission target for 2050 is 13 MT tonnes – so there’s a 39 MT gap in the plan. In other words, the government’s plan, even if implemented, would not even get the province half way to where it needs to be.

Using forests for reductions

Even the limited policies offered by the plan are poorly supported and not credible in their current form. The plan claims to get half of the reductions by 2050 (12 MT) by “enhancing the carbon storage potential of BC’s forests.” There is no rationale provided in the document for that 12 MT figure, and there are no accompanying commitments to regulation or funding to achieve that level of reduction.

There are real and cost-effective ways to use forests to reduce the province’s greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge is the complexity of designing and measuring forest sector reductions. That complexity makes it harder to ensure that emission reductions are real and verifiable. If the province is intending to rely increasingly on forest emission reductions, it will need a much more vigilant regulatory program, and substantially more investment, than we’ve had in the past.

Forestry can play a role in emissions reductions but, if we want to make the sort of reductions required to meet that 2050 target, it can’t substitute for reducing emissions from fossil fuel use and industrial processes.

Maybe now’s the time for federal leadership

Canada has committed to reducing its emissions by 30% (from 2005 levels) by 2030. BC, once an ambitious climate leader, now proposes virtually no reductions by 2030 (if all their policies are implemented successfully emissions would be only 3% lower (not a typo)). Provincial initiatives are failing to put Canada on a path to meet our international commitments.

I’ve long been skeptical of the Canadian approach of letting provinces lead on climate policy. Today’s disappointing actions by the BC government strengthen the argument that it is time for the federal government to step in and show real leadership on climate policy.

Note: I’m part of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions Forest Carbon Mitigation Project, but the views expressed here are solely my own.

George Hoberg
July 21, 2016

Trudeau with the premiers at a November 2015 meeting

The premiers are meeting in Whitehorse this week, and climate and energy are on the agenda again. For long-frustrated Canadian climate hawks, it’s remarkably refreshing to have a federal government verbally committed to climate action, and a provincial government in Alberta finally taking action to cap the increase in oil sands emissions. But it is also important to keep in mind how far we from having a meaningful climate policy in Canada.

A meaningful climate plan needs to have, at minimum, two core ingredients. First, a jurisdiction needs a measurable, enforceable climate target in terms of a level of reductions in greenhouses gases over a specified time period. Second, there must be real, enforceable policies in place that can reasonably be expected to achieve that climate target. Canada is doing reasonably well on the first ingredient, but is a long way from having the second in place.

Canada does have a real climate target. The Harper government committed, in the run up to the Paris Accord last December, to reducing emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, and the Trudeau government seems intent to stay with this target for the time being. According to Simon Donner, this target might be consistent with Canada’s fair share of international reductions to meet a 2°C, although nowhere near sufficient to meet Paris’ bolder 1.5°C target (that would require more than a 90% reduction). Our 30% by 2030 target would be a much stronger target if it was embodied in domestic law, but at least it provides a measurable objective to guide policy.

Canada is not currently on a path to meet this target. The latest inventory report from Environment Canada shows just how far off we are.

A more optimistic scenario comes from the work of Dave Sawyer and Chris Bataille, who modelled the expected impact of current policies and also recently introduced policies like the Alberta climate plan and Ontario’s cap and trade plan. Even if those policies and plans are faithfully implemented, Canada only gets one half of the way there to its 30% by 2030 target (110 million tonnes short of its 2030 goal of 524 million tonnes, from a 2005 base of 749 million tonnes).

Current and recently announced policies only get us half way to target

Where will Canada get the remaining 110 million tonnes of required reductions? There are many potentially effective options – pricing through a carbon tax or cap and trade, regulations, or some combination. Over the past week we have heard fresh commitments from the Trudeau government to introduce a nationwide carbon price even if some provinces are opposed. But there’s no signal, publicly at least, what the level of the price floor will be. Nor is there any indication of how the national price would be coordinated with existing provincial climate policies. The highest carbon tax in Canada is currently BC’s $30 a tonne (a level, we’ve known for some time, that won’t enable BC to meet its own provincial climate target). Alberta will be moving part of its economy to $30 per tonne in 2018, but the Quebec (and soon Ontario price) is only around $16 per tonne. Pledging to establish a carbon price is virtually meaningless unless you specify the price and design, and demonstrate how it will achieve Canada’s target.

Canada clearly needs new, bold policies to close the gap and meet its 2030 target. Until now we’ve relied almost exclusively on uncoordinated provincial initiatives: a carbon tax in BC, a ban on coal in Ontario, cap and trade in Quebec, and mixture of pricing and regulatory instruments in Alberta. One important consequence of that is that we have yet to have any kind of national discussion about appropriate burden sharing among the provinces. At present there are widely varying costs of carbon across the provinces. Alberta’s bold new plan, as significant a step as it is, doesn’t actually reduce Alberta’s emissions (p. 26). If Canada is to reduce its emission by 30% by 2030, what should each province’s share of that national reduction be? It seems hard to imagine a political agreement where other provinces reduce their emissions by even more than 30% to allow Alberta to continue its current level of emissions.

I hope the premiers can make some major strides towards addressing these issues this week. But that seems unlikely. It’s long past time for the Government of Canada to do what federal governments should do: show real leadership on vitally important national policies. Canada doesn’t just need carbon pricing – we need carbon pricing and climate policies that are actually strong enough to meet our commitments to the international community and future generations. We have a long way to go.

Rachel Notley’s Government of Alberta made history today by transforming her province from a renegade to a leader on climate policy. The province announced today that it will introduce a $30 per tonne economy wide carbon pricing (starting at $20 per tonne in 2017 and increasing to $30 in 2018). It will also cap carbon emissions from oil sands facilities at 100 million tonnes, compared to about 70 million today. That is designed to allow for growth from the facilities currently under construction. The province will also phase out coal use for electricity by 2030, and require 30% of its electricity to be generated by renewables by 2030.

These changes are monumental. While the details of the carbon price will need to be analyzed, its $30 level matches BC’s current carbon price, the highest in Canada. The cap and trade regime being operated by Quebec and California currently has a price of about $16 per tonne (although that price is likely to increase somewhat by 2018).

The overall emissions cap is also important, signalling a limit on the growth the oil sands impact on our climate. It does not cap oil sands production, but increased production beyond the level of those facilities under construction will only be able to occur if innovation drives down carbon intensity of oil sands significantly.

These changes fundamentally alter the politics of Canada. It will make it much easier for Canada to become a constructive player in global climate policy. The meeting tomorrow between Trudeau and the premiers can be much more productive with this bold move by Alberta in advance. If other provinces want to claim the mantle of climate leadership, they are going to have to step up their game, creating the potential for a “race to the top” in Canadian environmental policy. It will contribute, as Notley stated, to “a significant de-escalation worldwide of Alberta’s oil sands.”

These changes are testimony to two fundamental political changes. The first is a concerted resistance movement to new oil sands transportation infrastructure in both Canada and the United States.  While there are many sources of this resistance, to many anti-pipeline activists, resistance has always been first and foremost about forcing climate policy change. Notley referred to this indirectly when she described Obama’s denial of the Keystone XL pipeline application as a “kick in the teeth”. The second dramatic political shift is Notley herself, beaming from the podium. Her May 2015 election brought decades of Conservative rule to an end, allowing this tectonic shift, a reminder that elections matter more than anything else.

There’s a lot more work to be done. Remember that we need to completely decarbonize the energy system by mid-century. But today is a day for celebration. Alberta has bent its carbon emissions curve, and provided a lever to Canada to show real climate leadership.

Here’s the Panel’s Climate Leadership report.

Pipeline and climate issues took central stage in last night’s leader’s debate hosted by Maclean’s. There are five main takeaways from the debate. You can watch the debate here, and read transcripts from it here at Maclean’s. All the quotes below are taken from the Maclean’s transcription.

1. Energy and environmental issues have become central to Canadian electoral politics.

The most remarkable thing about last night’s debate is the simple fact that the party leaders spent about one-fourth of their debate on energy and climate issues, a striking change from the 2011 federal election debates where energy and environment was largely ignored. The profile of these issues is a clear indication of the remarkable success of First Nations and the environmental movement in forcing these issues onto the political agenda.

2. Opposition leaders teamed up to blame stalled infrastructure on Harper’s poor environmental policies.

Most of the focus of this debate segment was on attacks on Harper’s environmental record by the other three party leaders, although there were noteworthy exchanges and differences among the opposition party leaders as well. Mulcair and Trudeau made almost identical argument that Harper’s poor environmental record had undermined social license for new energy projects and, as a result, hurt the economy.

Trudeau began the assault:

“[N]ot only has he not helped our environment, but he’s actually slowed our economy. He cannot get our exports to market because there is no public trust anymore. People don’t trust this government to actually look out for our long-term interest. We – he hasn’t convinced communities of the rightness of his – his pipelines, of the proposals he supports. He hasn’t been working with First Nations on the kinds of partnerships that are needed if we’re going to continue to develop our natural resources. Canada will always have an element of natural resources in our economy, but the job of the Prime Minister is to get those resources to market. And in the 21st century that means being smart and responsible about the environment. Mr. Harper’s inability to understand that is exactly why he’s so struggled to actually get our economy growing in a right way anymore.”

Mulcair taunted Harper about his record of getting pipeline projects approved:

“Mr. Harper thought that by gutting our environmental laws, somehow he could get our energy resources to market better. How’s that working out, Mr. Harper? None of those projects has gotten off the drawing board, and it’s not hard to understand why. Canadians across the country want a clear, thorough, credible environmental assessment process. Canada can be a leader around the world. We can play a positive role. But with Mr. Harper, we’ve got the worst of all worlds. Dirtier air and water, we’ve got more carbon pollution, and we’re a laggard on the world stage.”

Trudeau piled on:

“The reason environmental groups in Canada and across the United States are so concerned about Canadian oil is because Mr. Harper has turned the oil sands into the scapegoat around the world for climate change. He is – has put a big target on our oil sands, which are going to be an important part of our economy for a number of years to come, although we do have to get beyond them. And his lack of leadership on the environment is hurting Canadian jobs and Canadian relations with other countries.”

Of course that’s not quite right. It’s the environmental movement that has succeeded in framing the oil sands expansion as a major climate risk. Harper has contributed to the stigmatization of the sector by failing to take any meaningful climate action on Canada’s oil sector.

3. Opposition leaders differ on bitumen exports and pipelines

While the opposition leaders were singing the same song about the link between Harper’s environmental policy retrenchment and the failure of his oil sands export strategy, there were important differences in their positions on the merits of exporting raw bitumen. Trudeau supports Keystone XL, but Mulcair and May both oppose it. Mulcair stressed this difference with the Liberal leader: “Mr. Harper and Mr. Trudeau both agree with Keystone XL, which represents the export of 40,000 jobs. I want to create those 40,000 jobs here in Canada.”

Mulcair and Trudeau had an embarrassing exchange accusing each other supporting Energy East in English and opposing it in French. You could almost hear Harper laughing. May emphasized her opposition to Energy East, stating it “is still about export.”

May sought to drive a wedge between the NDP and environmentalists in BC by demanding to know whether Mulcair opposed the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Mulcair re-articulated his nuanced position that he would wait until the regulatory review was complete. But of course he did not do that with Northern Gateway, which he opposed long before the environmental assessment was completed. That exchange led to flashbacks of the 2013 BC election, where NDP leader Adrian Dix (remember him?) began the campaign with the same position, and disastrously changed it mid-campaign. Mulcair’s probably too smart to make the same mistake.

4. Opposition leaders need to bone up on their understanding of GHG trends

Harper has little credibility on the environmental file, and opposition leaders mocked him for it. When Harper described his climate record, May chimed in “That’s not true!” And a bit later Trudeau blurted out “Nobody believe you!” The problem is that what Harper was saying at that point was correct: “Mr. Trudeau, let’s be clear on what the record actually is. Not only do we take both the economy and the environment seriously; we are the first government in history to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while also growing our economy.” Nic Rivers, economist at the University of Ottawa, provided the numbers, direct from Environment Canada.

It is true, as May later emphasized, that the main reason for the decline was the great recession and the policy actions taken by provinces, especially Ontario. It is also true that there has been a steady rise since the 2009 nadir, and that the Harper government’s own projections show them continuing to increase substantially as the oil sands sector expands. But it is also unquestionably true that emissions for the latest year we have data (2013) are lower than when Harper took office, despite economic growth over that period.

There’s plenty of dishonesty in Harper’s statements on energy and environment to criticize. In the debate, he said more than once that Mulcair is opposed to LNG in BC, when that is not his position. His continued castigation of his opponents for pushing a carbon tax (discussed below) is another obvious example. But the opposition leaders should sharpen their understanding of and arguments about carbon emission trends.

5. Harper continued his silly demagoguery against the carbon tax, and no one responded

Since he feasted on Stephan Dion in the 2008 election, Harper has gleefully bludgeoned opponents for supporting a carbon tax. In last night’s debate, he persisted:

“The way you don’t deal with this problem is start imposing carbon taxes that will inevitably – they raise money for the government. They don’t reduce emissions. They hit consumers, and they hit consumers hard…Paul, I’ll say what I’ve said to people across the country: a carbon tax is not about reducing emissions. It’s a front. It is about getting revenue for governments that cannot control.”

There are several problems with this statement. First, while May’s fee and dividend is a carbon tax, the two main opposition parties aren’t supporting a carbon tax. Mulcair advocates cap and trade. Trudeau would let the provinces choose their instrument. More importantly, the argument that they don’t reduce emissions and are only a front for padding government finances is just not supported by the record. BC’s carbon tax has been held up as an international model of a revenue-neutral (meaning it does not raise government revenues) carbon tax that has reduced emissions while the economy grew substantially. It is true that you could use carbon pricing to increase government revenues, and there are pros and cons of doing so. But Harper’s argument that it’s a front for padding government treasuries is sheer demagoguery.

What surprised me is that not one of the three opposition leaders chose to defend carbon pricing. I’m not sure whether this is because they see defending carbon pricing as a no-win strategy against Harper, or they just chose to focus their arguments elsewhere. Whatever the reason, we ended up with a debate heavy on pipelines and remarkably unilluminating on climate policy. A basic word search shows climate issues were out-mentioned by pipelines 43-28.

We’re still waiting for that long overdue national conversation about climate policy.

Nonetheless, congratulations to Paul Wells and Maclean’s for fostering a vigorous debate on these important issues.

Last week, the prestigious Ecofiscal Commission released a report on climate policy that strongly advocated “The Way Forward” (its title) was through carbon pricing by the provinces. It is certainly no surprise that a group of economists would advocate carbon pricing. But it is quite striking that a group of economists would be so enthusiastic about provincial instead of federal leadership. Typically, economists advocate the most economically efficient solution, and a balkanized subnational process would seem inconsistent with that. Their endorsement of the provincial approach has been widely applauded in the media.

I have the utmost respect for both the member of the Ecofiscal Commission and the process they are using. However, before the idea of provincial leadership gains even more credibility (did we really just have a provincial “Climate Summit”), I did want to go on record that, in the opinion of this political scientist, it is a ridiculous idea. Only in Canada, and in particular in Harper’s Canada, could the outlandish notion that it is not the federal government’s place, indeed duty, to lead in developing a national climate policy gain such currency.

When George Grant published his famous essay in 1965, he was lamenting what he saw as Canada’s capitulation to American hegemony. In contemporary climate policy in Canada, we’re not capitulating to the US (which is racing ahead of us on climate). We’re capitulating to a self-imposed ideology of provincial paramountcy that blinds us the obvious merits of federal leadership.

The Ecofiscal approach contrasts with the recommendation of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues, a group of over 60 Canadian academics that released its report, Acting on Climate, last month. (I helped draft the section on climate policy instruments.) That report strongly endorsed national carbon pricing either through a national carbon tax or a national cap and trade system. The report states:

From a cost-effectiveness standpoint, a national GHG reduction plan has advantages. There would be concerns about fairness and competitiveness if emitters in one province paid a significantly different carbon price than emitters elsewhere in Canada. A cap and trade system would realize economic benefits from being applied to a larger and more diverse area.

The Ecofiscal Commission report, however, was supported by much more extensive analysis, including elaborate modelling with a computable general equilibrium model that compared different scenarios. They compare the cost-effectiveness of provincial-led regulatory approaches, provincial-led carbon pricing approaches, and then linked (national) carbon pricing approaches. The most compelling conclusion of their report is that the modelling shows you get 89% of the gains from shifting from a regulatory approach to a more flexible carbon pricing approach at the provincial level. A national approach would be more cost-effective (getting you the final 11%), but the Commission uses the results to downplay the relative important of federal leadership and play up the huge gains available from provincial carbon pricing.

A more careful look at their results suggests that conclusion, in my view, is not justified, for three reasons.

The analysis overstates the cost-effectiveness advantage of a provincial approach: The figure below shows the relative benefits of three features: flexibility, revenue recycling, and linkage. The biggest gains in efficiency, 2/3^rd nationwide, are from moving from a regulatory approach to a more flexible carbon pricing approach. An additional 24% comes from what they call revenue recycling, and the final 11% from linkage in a nationally-coordinated approach

The analysis is notable in how large the efficiency gain are by moving away from regulation, especially given the federal government’s continued reliance on that instrument. But I don’t think it is right for the Commission to attribute the gains from revenue recycling to a provincial-led approach. The Commission is certainly correct to note that the revenues collected from carbon pricing raise significant political questions about what to do with the revenues, a particularly sensitive topic in post-1980 Canada. Much of the tension can be addressed by returning any carbon pricing revenues to the province of origin. That can be done with a federal approach as easily as it can with a provincial approach. That’s what the Sustainable Canada Dialogues’ Acting on Climate report recommends (pp. 29-30). What the Ecofiscal Commission’s analysis models is not revenue recycling per se, but the economic impact of the income tax reductions made possible by a tax shift from income to carbon (as BC does with its revenue-neutral carbon tax). There’s no guarantee that provinces will use the revenues that way (Ontario is saying it won’t), and even if they did that’s not an impact reasonably attributed to a provincial-led approach.

There is indeed a substantial efficiency gain from moving to carbon pricing at the provincial level, but the degree of efficiency gains from a provincial vs. national approach are overstated.

The analysis relies on the dubious assumption that provinces will voluntarily meet their targets: The Ecofiscal Commission report builds its analysis on scenarios assuming provinces meet their existing targets. Doing this avoids two challenging features of a national approach: having a national discussion about sharing the burden for reductions, and mechanisms for compliance if provinces fail to meet their targets. First, you can also avoid a conflict over dividing up responsibility for a national target  if you have a nationwide carbon tax or cap and trade program because, as the Sustainable Canada Dialogues report describes, “provincial emission levels would be responses to market signals, not established in advance” (p. 29).

Second, if there’s no strong federal leadership role, there’s no mechanism to force compliance with targets.  Canada’s most stubborn climate challenge remains the reluctance of the country’s largest and fastest growing emitting province, Alberta, to enact sufficient climate policies to contribute to the national effort. (The Ecofiscal Commission notes that Alberta’s current approach “had no significant impact on annual GHG emissions or even emissions intensity” (p. 22).) BC and Saskatchewan will also face big challenges meeting their targets. We could surrender to a “naming and shaming” approach of voluntary provincial commitments, like the UNFCC is doing with international climate diplomacy. But that’s supposed to be the difference between nation-states and the international community. In nations, we have laws that we enact through the political process and that we agree to enforce.

Provincial leadership would produce large inequalities in burden-sharing: What the Ecofiscal report doesn’t say is how the carbon price varies across the country when provinces pick their own approach to meet their own target without federal coordination. Due to highly variable costs of control and stringency of targets across the provinces, their recommended approach would likely lead to widely different carbon prices across the country. This would create serious problems for competitiveness and fairness.

A national approach would be more cost-effective, coherent, enforceable, and equitable. If one or more provinces so strongly resisted adopting the national approach, it could work to exempt a province so long as mechanisms were put in place to ensure that the province contributed its fair share to the national reductions.

I completely get what the Ecofiscal Commission is trying to do, and applaud their sensitivity to political feasibility. We need to get going on climate policy, and in Harper’s Canada, provincial leadership offers the hope of quick progress. But don’t let the report raise doubts about the strong merits of federal leadership and a Canada-wide climate policy. It’s more efficient. It’s fairer. And it’s what nations do.