In the election campaign, the Liberals made some bold climate-change promises, including capping greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the oil and gas sector, forcing the industry to make big reductions in its methane emissions, and ensuring the country’s electricity sector becomes carbon-neutral by 2035. 

The specific planks – along with many other commitments – are meant to put meat on the bones of the Liberal government’s commitment to the UN in July that Canada will reduce its GHG emissions by 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, on the road to net-zero carbon by 2050.

Trudeau fell short in his bid for a majority government as many critics questioned the need for the summer election call during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Liberals can count on support from the New Democrats, Green Party and Bloc Québécois for ambitious climate action at home and on the world stage. 

For many voters, the election was less about climate change and more about a rising cost of living and affordable housing. To maintain support for costly climate policies, the Liberals will have to ensure that Canadians don’t feel overwhelmed by the wrenching transition ambitious climate action will entail.

Still, Canada – led by a reinstated Prime Minister Trudeau – has a key role to play in getting the world on a better track. 

As Canadians were casting their ballots Monday, UN Secretary General António Guterres and British Prime Minister Boris Johnston kicked off “climate week” in New York by hosting a closed-door session of world leaders to address shortfalls in GHG targets and climate finance.

A UN analysis of countries’ emission-reduction pledges – known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs – concluded that the world remains far off track to meet the Paris Agreement goal of holding the global increase in average temperature to 1.5°C, or even 2°C. 

After reviewing all the updated NDCs submitted this year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the new targets would still leave the world on pace for a 2.7°C increase in average global temperature by 2100 – and that assumes the leading countries actually meet their commitments.

To maintain support for costly climate policies, the Liberals will have to ensure that Canadians don’t feel overwhelmed by the wrenching transition it will entail.

Gathered in New York for the opening of the General Assembly, Guterres and Johnson made it clear that all nations have to step up their ambition and action. The re-elected Liberal government can provide international leadership, but only if Canada is meeting its own obligations. 

To date, the federal and provincial climate policies have failed to stop the inexorable rise in GHG emissions, which are believed to have fallen in 2020 as a result of the pandemic only to rebound this year as the economy recovered. In 2015 – the year in which the Liberals were elected – Canada had emissions of 723 megatonnes; that climbed to 730 in 2019. In a report this month, Climate Action Tracker said Canada’s policies are “highly insufficient” to meet its commitments. 

Clearly, it takes time to develop policy, enact it and then see its impacts. The stubbornly high emission levels, however, illustrate the enormous challenge in achieving a transition that requires major changes to the country’s energy production and consumption.

With the election win, the Trudeau government can be expected to move quickly to legislate the planned increase in the carbon price from $50 per tonne next year to $170 in 2030, through yearly increments of $15. That higher levy will drive up the cost of gasoline, heating fuels and electricity fired by fossil fuel for Canadian consumers and businesses.

The Liberals have said they will continue to provide rebates to families to compensate them for the higher carbon price – an average family of four in Ontario will collect roughly $2,018 annually from the rebate by 2030. However, small businesses and the not-for-profit sector will see their costs rise significantly.

The minority Liberal government will also have to enact measures to reverse the dramatic increase in emissions seen from the oil and gas industry over the past 15 years. In its platform, the Liberal Party said emissions from the sector must not rise above current levels and promised to set targets for GHG reductions in the industry for 2025 and 2030 consistent with a path to net-zero by 2050.

That won’t be easy. Any policies aimed at achieving the pledge will almost certainly provoke a backlash from oil- and gas-producing provinces unless accompanied by massive aid for both the companies and their workforces (including retraining and financing the adoption of new technology). Industry critics, on the other hand, will loudly oppose any further subsidies for oil and gas producers, even if they help reduce emissions from production.

The Liberal pledge to make the electricity system emissions-free by 2035 will conflict with plans in some provinces to use natural gas as a replacement for coal or to back up intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind.

As a wealthy country with one of the world’s highest rates of GHGs per person, Canada has a special responsibility to address climate change, even though it accounts for only 1.6% of global emissions. Failure to meet the Liberals’ lofty promises would once again undermine Canada’s reputation, which has suffered from broken commitments in the past and the rapid expansion of the oil sands, known throughout the world as one of the most carbon-intensive sources of oil.

In a report this month, Climate Action Tracker said Canada’s policies are “highly insufficient” to meet its commitments.

In the past six years of Liberal government, Canada has staked out a leadership position on climate change internationally. Ottawa joined with the U.K. in establishing the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which encouraged countries around the world to phase out reliance on coal-fired power.

In a pre-recorded message to the UN meeting in New York, Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country would no longer finance the construction of coal-based power plants abroad, which represents a major victory in the powering-past-coal effort. However, Beijing remains committed to coal-fired electricity at home. 

In July, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and his German counterpart were chosen to co-lead a process aimed at securing greater commitment from developed countries to deliver on their commitment of US$100 billion in climate financing for developing countries. 

Canada has pledged $5.3 billion (Canadian) toward that global commitment. The Biden administration announced it would seek approval from Congress to double its climate financing to US$11.4 billion annually.

Countries’ representatives are now preparing to gather in Glasgow in early November for the 2021 Conference of the Parties. COP26 president Alok Sharma – who also serves as the U.K.’s Minister of State at the Cabinet Office – says it’s critical that we achieve significant progress on climate financing to help developing countries prepare for the inevitable impacts of climate change and reduce emissions in order to limit the damage. Tellingly, these countries won’t be adequately represented at COP26 because of vaccine inequity.

In 2015, a newly elected Trudeau arrived at the Paris climate summit with a promise that Canada was “back” and ready to forge an ambitious role in battling climate change after 10 years of resistance from former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. 

Since then, the Liberal government has made considerable progress, including being re-elected on its platform that proposed a large increase in the carbon prices. 

Now it must work with other parties – including the Conservatives where possible – to ensure the path to a net-zero carbon economy is secured domestically and work with global leaders to meet the goal of the Paris Agreement. The growing urgency of the climate crisis makes clear the inadequacy of half measures.

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Although Canada’s elected officials say they’re embracing that urgency, the policies adopted by various levels of government to date haven’t supported the fundamental and rapid transition needed to decarbonize our energy system.

A recent study by my research team at the University of Victoria found that policy documents of successive provincial and federal governments all say they aspire to a low-carbon energy transition. However, many policies intended to drive the low-carbon transition are actually just reinforcing fossil fuels by supporting the wrong kinds of innovations. Our research led us to the conclusion that Canada is locking itself into continued reliance on fossil fuels through policies that encourage incrementalism, rather than the transformative change we need. 

The scorecard tool we developed uses a scale of -2 to +2 to evaluate an innovation’s potential to decarbonize, democratize and decentralize energy systems. Policy-makers and investors can use these scorecards to inform their decisions about which innovations to support and which to discourage. Negative scores mean that the innovation is reinforcing the energy system’s path dependency on fossil fuels. A score of zero means that the innovation is reinforcing the status quo, and a score of +1 means that the innovation is providing incremental shifts toward reducing fossil fuel use, giving consumers more control, for example, by putting solar panels on rooftops. Innovations that receive a score of +1, however, are not transformative enough to address the climate emergency in the short timeframe that we need to. A score of +2 means that the innovation has the potential to disrupt the energy system by replacing fossil fuels, give communities more collective control over energy decisions, and decentralize energy grids.

Our study reached out to hundreds of policy-makers, energy and environment experts and advocates in Ontario to help us identify low-carbon innovations available to energy users. We identified more than 130 innovations offered over the last 20 years, including cooperatively owned solar panels, micro-grids, energy planning in Indigenous communities, electric vehicles, all the way down to replacing natural gas appliances and supplying new housing with natural gas. 

We also identified the policies and stakeholders that support them. We found that innovations with a high potential to decarbonize, such as electric vehicles and zero-carbon buildings, had less uptake. In contrast, the most popular economic policies support innovations that reinforce the fossil fuel regime, such as high-efficiency natural gas furnaces. For instance, Ontario cancelled both its feed-in-tariff program for renewable energy development and its cap and trade program and instead is choosing to expand the natural gas system to serve additional homes. 

We found that having the support of a wide range of stakeholders, such as policy-makers, advocates and industry, facilitates the diffusion of more innovations that disrupt the fossil fuel system. The more public discourse there is to support innovations with greater disruptive potential, the higher the possibility that policies and the instruments that support them will be developed. And if we give communities and municipalities more control over their energy systems, they are better able to deploy renewable energy and other decarbonizing innovations. 

In other words, the best low-carbon innovations decarbonize, democratize and decentralize.

We developed a scorecard tool to evaluate an innovation’s potential to decarbonize. Policy-makers and investors can use these scorecards to inform decisions around which innovations to support and which to discourage.

Canada’s state of carbon lock-in is making it hard to transition. Our policies, infrastructures, technologies and behaviours all reinforce continued fossil fuel use and inhibit the uptake of decarbonizing technologies. Many of the low-cost and commercially viable low-carbon innovations required to meet crucial greenhouse-gas-reduction targets already exist yet are being implemented much too slowly. Only four of these – solar PV, energy efficient lighting, data centres and networks, and electric vehicles – are penetrating markets sufficiently, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

A low-carbon energy transition means switching things such as heating and transportation to run on electricity rather than fossil fuels, combined with rapid and massive deployment of low-carbon sources of renewable energy. It also requires energy users – households, businesses and even public institutions – to participate in energy systems in many new ways, such as putting solar panels on their roofs or driving electric vehicles. Collectively, by adopting innovations that decarbonize, democratize and decentralize at a large market share, energy users can disrupt the energy system to propel us toward a net-zero world. 

As a Liberal minority government is sworn in in the coming weeks, it will quickly need to ramp up its greenhouse-gas-cutting policies, with the UN’s landmark climate change summit in Glasgow, COP26, rapidly approaching. Canada needs its policy-makers to respond to the climate crisis by focusing their efforts on the wide range of innovations we can harness to decarbonize our economy. But they must also take care that policies don’t work against the goal of a fossil-free transition for Canada.

Christina Hoicka is an associate professor in geography and civil engineering at the University of Victoria.

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The environment is often a forgotten issue once politicians are on the campaign trail. But this time, propelled by the catastrophic wildfires in British Columbia this summer and the dire conclusions in the recently released sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change sits at or near the top of the list of issues most important to voters. Yet Justin Trudeau’s early election call may have set the stage for a major setback on climate action.

The election call was met with immediate questions about its rationale, given a minority but relatively stable and productive Parliament, the crisis in Afghanistan and a mounting fourth wave of COVID-19.

Polls are suggesting that after a weak start, Trudeau’s Liberals are only just catching up to Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives.

This is likely due to O’Toole’s largely successful repositioning of his party towards the political centre, including a belated recognition of the reality of climate change and the need for some form of carbon pricing.

But it’s important to look beyond the rebranding and consider what a Conservative win might mean for Canada’s approach to climate change.

Climate action in motion

Progressive voters have been left confused and more than a little annoyed by Trudeau’s election call. The Liberal minority government that resulted from the October 2019 election was dependent on the support of Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and, to a lesser extent, Yves-Francois Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois to survive. The result had been considerable action on climate change and a host of other issues.

The Liberal government, bolstered by a series of court decisions culminating in a March 2021 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that upheld the validity of its backstop carbon pricing system, had implemented the federal system, as promised, in those provinces without adequate carbon pricing systems of their own.

The federal backstop charge on heating and transportation fuels now applies in Ontario, Manitoba, Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nunavut. An output-based pricing system for industrial emitters is in place in Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Yukon, Nunavut and partially in Saskatchewan.

Although the carbon pricing system goes far further than any previous federal government has gone to implement substantive climate policies, it’s not without significant weaknesses.

The burden of the pricing system falls overwhelmingly on individual consumers and households rather than industry. In addition to that unfairness, the effective cost to industrial facilities is far too low to significantly affect their behaviour. What’s more, the standard applied by the federal government to provinces seeking exemptions on the basis of their own systems has been profoundly inconsistent.

Liberal climate commitments

At the same time, the Liberals had committed to moving the carbon price to $170 a tonne by 2030 and revising what’s known as the Nationally Determined Contribution to reduce emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The Liberals originally committed to a 30 per cent reduction by 2030 and increased it to a 45 per cent reduction. It also adopted a broader net zero emission target for 2050.

A national phaseout of coal-fired electricity has been accelerated and new programs for funding public transit, electric vehicles and energy-efficient renovations for buildings are under way or proposed.

In a reversal from the government’s previous contradictory position of both pursuing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the expansion of fossil fuel exports, Trudeau has reaffirmed the commitment implied in the Liberals’ December 2020 climate policy paper to capping and reducing emissions from the fossil fuel sector.

Beyond the environment, the government has also adopted legislation recognizing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and has been moving forward with a national child-care plan.

Low voter turnout?

The risks in this context are enormous. The unpopular and unwelcome election call, in combination with the continuing threat of COVID-19, is a potential recipe for low voter turnout. Under Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, there’s the potential for irregular electoral outcomes.

The core Conservative voter is generally loyal and reliable, giving O’Toole a significant advantage in such a scenario.

Other factors may also favour the Conservatives, including the Bloc Québécois’s potential for growth in Québec. Although the federal Greens have diminished as a factor outside of a few specific ridings, the risks of vote-splitting between the Liberals and NDP exist.

The situation could lead to a Conservative victory and even a majority.

O’Toole has, so far, done a skillful job moving his party from the right to the moderate centre, but major questions still have to be asked what sort of government he would actually lead. Although acknowledging the reality of climate change, his party’s climate policies, particularly on carbon pricing, remain weak shadows of what’s being proposed by the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens.

Conservatives more popular in the West

The Conservatives may see some gains in Ontario and Québec, but they’re still fundamentally grounded in Alberta and Saskatchewan where many voters are hostile to climate action and dependent on resource development industries.

A Conservative cabinet would likely include more than a few holdovers from the Stephen Harper era, which was defined by the abandonment of Canada’s international climate change commitments, particularly the Kyoto Protocol.

A new Conservative federal government would likely draw heavily on Jason Kenney’s government in Alberta, and Doug Ford’s in Ontario, for political staff and advisers.

Both governments have been unwilling to act on climate change and have been criticized for their poor management of the COVID-19 pandemic. They remain overwhelmingly pro-industry, carbon-intense and development-friendly.

This all makes for some very difficult choices for voters concerned about climate change. Many would prefer a Liberal minority government dependent on the NDP, Bloc Québécois and/or Greens for support.

Such outcomes are, however, notoriously difficult to engineer from the perspective of individual voters.

O’Toole’s recent stumble on gun control may significantly weaken his party’s appeal to moderate voters, particularly in Québec and in urban areas.

But Canadians are still faced with an unwanted election, that has placed climate progress at unnecessary risk.

Mark Winfield is a professor of environmental studies at York University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Each would maintain an increasing carbon price for large greenhouse gas emitters, including fossil-fuelled power plants. They all want more electricity production from our abundant renewable energy resources, and more sharing of it between regions. And they’ve all proposed initiatives that would drive electrification in sectors currently powered mainly by other energy sources, including passenger vehicle transportation and industrial hydrogen production.  

This high-level consensus represents important progress. But whatever government takes office after the election will need to move quickly to implement and expand upon these commitments if Canada is to successfully meet its emission reduction targets.  

Renewables at the core of our ambitions

Renewable electricity must be at the core of these efforts. In Canada today, we have the tremendous advantage of an electricity supply that is already almost 70% from renewable energy resources. And there is vast undeveloped potential within our flowing inland and marine waters, blowing wind, and shining sun. It’s an enviable starting point.

Moving to fully decarbonize electricity production is critical and within reach in Canada, and we need to do so well before 2050. We then need to expand our use of this invaluable resource, because electricity meets only about one-fifth of Canada’s total final energy needs today.

Renewable electricity will be instrumental in displacing more of the polluting fuels that currently meet the other four-fifths of our final energy. This means we need to dramatically and rapidly ramp up generating capacity. Numerous studies have shown that by 2050 we will need to produce two to three times as much clean power as we do currently.

There are countless potential renewable electricity generation, storage and transmission projects in Canada. A number are already in development and ready to proceed rapidly.  

They include wave and tidal energy on our coasts, hydropower refurbishment and development, new wind and solar generation across the country, and more transmission lines and energy storage to knit it all together. The development, construction and operation of such projects will require significant investment and a very large skilled workforce and will provide significant opportunities for Indigenous communities across the country. Successfully moving to the scale required from a climate change perspective, however, requires swift action. 

A critically important leadership opportunity

Leadership, it is sometimes suggested, involves finding a parade and getting in front of it. The renewable electricity parade is already marching forward, with a great many Canadians cheering it on. Getting in front of it and sustaining its momentum will be a critically important job for whatever government is sworn in later this year. 

That leadership needs to entail maintaining Canada’s long-standing commitments to phase out coal-fired electricity and to work toward a 90%-non-emitting electricity grid by 2030, with full elimination of electricity-related greenhouse gas emissions well before 2050.  

It also must involve encouraging rapid investments in new renewable electricity generation, storage and transmission to both enhance Canada’s future economic competitiveness and meet climate policy objectives. The Canadian Institute for Climate Choices has identified such investments as “safe bets” that will be required on any pathway to significant emission reductions. 

Our post-election leaders must give investors increased certainty by providing a transparent schedule for increased carbon pricing at an accelerating pace that prices-in the impact of emitting generation and solidifies the business case for non-emitting alternatives. They will also need to work with the  provinces and territories to design and implement comprehensive plans to electrify key energy uses and streamline regulatory review and approvals processes for renewable energy projects while maintaining environmental protections. 

In the remaining days of this short campaign, we can indeed take satisfaction from the emerging consensus around Canada’s clean-energy future. But we should also be asking all leaders and candidates pointed questions about their readiness to turn vision into action, and about their keenness to get in front of this ready-made parade. 

Anne-Raphaëlle Audouin, Robert Hornung and Elisa Obermann are the leaders of the Canadian Council on Renewable Electricity (CanCORE), a collaborative initiative of Canada’s national trade associations for the water, wind, solar and marine energy sectors. These sectors produce 68% of Canada’s total annual electricity.

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As the country’s need for power grows through the decarbonization of transportation, industry and space heating, the Liberal Party climate plan is proposing a clean energy standard to help Canada achieve a 100% net-zero-electricity system by 2035. 

The proposal echoes a report released August 19 by the David Suzuki Foundation and a group of environmental NGOs that also calls for a clean electricity standard, capping power-sector emissions, and tighter carbon-pricing regulations. The report, written by Simon Fraser University climate economist Mark Jaccard and data analyst Brad Griffin, asserts that these policies would effectively decarbonize Canada’s electricity system by 2035.

“Fuel switching from dirty fossil fuels to clean electricity is an essential part of any serious pathway to transition to a net-zero energy system by 2050,” writes Tom Green, climate policy advisor to the Suzuki Foundation, in a foreword to the report. The pathway to a net-zero grid is even more important as Canada switches from fossil fuels to electric vehicles, space heating and industrial processes.

While the NDP and Greens also call for a net-zero grid by 2030 (five years earlier than the Liberals), only the Liberals have promised to institute a clean electricity standard, which is the specific mechanism under federal law that would permit Ottawa to use regulation and carbon pricing to achieve its target. And while the Conservatives promise to upgrade the grid, their platform doesn’t include a net-zero electricity system target.

Under Jaccard and Griffin’s proposal, a clean electricity standard would be established to regulate CO2 emissions specifically from power plants across Canada. In addition, the plan includes an increase in the carbon price imposed on electricity system releases, combined with tighter regulation to ensure that 100% of the carbon price set by the federal government is charged to electricity producers. The authors propose that the current scheduled carbon price of $170 per tonne of CO2 in 2030 should rise to at least $300 per tonne by 2050.

In Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the 2030 standard would mean that all fossil-fuel-powered electricity plants would require carbon capture in order to comply with the standard. The provinces would be given until 2035 to drop to zero grams CO2 per kilowatt hour, matching the 2030 standard for low-carbon provinces (Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island). 

Alberta and Saskatchewan targeted 

Canada has a relatively clean electricity system, with about 80% of the country’s power generated from low- or zero-emission sources. So the biggest impacts of the proposal will be felt in the higher-carbon provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Alberta has a plan to switch from coal-based electric power to natural gas generation by 2023. But Saskatchewan is still working on its plan. Under the Jaccard-Griffin proposal, these provinces would need to install carbon capture on their gas-fired plants by 2030 and carbon-negative technology (biomass with carbon capture, for instance) by 2035. Saskatchewan has been operating carbon capture and storage technology at its Boundary Dam power station since 2014, but large-scale rollout at power plants has not yet been achieved in Canada. 

With its heavy reliance on nuclear and hydro generation, Ontario’s electricity supply is already low carbon. Natural gas now accounts for about 7% of the province’s grid, but the clean electricity standard could pose a big challenge for the province as it ramps up natural-gas-generated power to replace electricity from its aging Pickering station, scheduled to go out of service in 2025. Pickering currently supplies about 14% of Ontario’s power. 

Ontario doesn’t have large geological basins for underground CO2 storage, as Alberta and Saskatchewan do, so the report says Ontario will have to build up its solar and wind generation significantly or find a solution to capture CO2 from its gas plants. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance has kicked off a campaign to encourage the Ontario government to phase out gas-fired generation by purchasing power from Quebec or installing new solar or wind power.

As the report points out, the federal government has Supreme Court–sanctioned authority to impose carbon regulations, such as a clean electricity standard, and carbon pricing on the provinces.

The federal government can also mandate a national approach to CO2 reduction regardless of fuel source, encouraging higher-carbon provinces to work with their lower-carbon neighbours. The Atlantic provinces would be encouraged to buy power from hydro-heavy Newfoundland, for example, while Ontario would be encouraged to buy power from Quebec, Saskatchewan from Manitoba, and Alberta from British Columbia.

The Canadian Electricity Association, the umbrella organization for Canada’s power sector, did not respond to a request for comment on the Jaccard-Griffin report or the Liberal net-zero grid proposal.

Liberal-NDP battle over climate policy

The proposed clean electricity standard is part of a Liberal-NDP battle over climate policy in the current election campaign, prompted in part by an assessment by Jaccard of the parties’ climate platforms. Jaccard has rated the overall Liberal climate plan as 8/10, which is not surprising given that his own recommendations for carbon pricing and the more recent clean electricity standard are in the plan. At the same time, he ranked the NDP’s climate platform at 2/10, saying it was hobbled by unrealistic burdens on industry to pay for decarbonization.

Ironically, the NDP plan calls for the kind of strong regulation and stringent carbon pricing throughout the economy that Jaccard specifically recommends for the electricity system in his net-zero electricity report.

Just how much more clean power will Canada need? 

The proposal has also kicked off a debate about exactly how much additional electricity Canada will need in coming decades.

In his 2015 report, Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in Canada, energy and climate analyst Chris Bataille estimated that to achieve Canada’s climate net-zero target by 2050 the country will need to double its electricity use by that year.

Jaccard and Griffin agree with this estimate, saying that Canada will need more than 1,200 terawatt hours of electricity per year in 2050, up from about 640 terawatt hours currently.

But energy and climate consultant Ralph Torrie (also director of research at Corporate Knights) disputes this analysis.

He says large-scale programs to make the economy more energy efficient could substantially reduce electricity demand. A major program to install heat pumps and replace inefficient electric heating in homes and businesses could save 50 terawatt hours of consumption on its own, according to a recent report from Torrie and colleague Brendan Haley. 

Put in context, 50 terawatt hours would require generation from 7,500 large wind turbines. Applied to electric vehicle charging, 50 terawatt hours could power 10 million electric vehicles.

While Torrie doesn’t dispute the need to bring the power system to net-zero, he also doesn’t believe the “arm-waving argument that the demand for electricity is necessarily going to double because of the electrification associated with decarbonization.” 

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. 

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The upcoming decade is crucial for avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis. This federal election is a critical opportunity to demand that our political leaders listen and act at the scale and speed we know is necessary to address the climate emergency. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores, yet again, the urgency to act. 

Despite their reputation for being less likely to vote, young people are not apathetic – millennials are the country’s largest voting bloc. They represent more than 40% of voters in this election – and they have a lot riding on the election outcomes. 

The youth of today know that they will face the burden of tomorrow, and they are seeking to meaningfully participate in decision-making processes that will affect our future. The choices made by policy-makers, governments and leaders today will shape our societies for years to come. It’s vital that young people are given the opportunity and power to co-create the solutions for the future. 

This is the impetus behind the Davos Lab, an initiative of the Global Shapers Community that mobilized more than two million people in 180 nations to develop a youth-driven recovery plan to address the world’s socio-economic and environmental crises. A group of 14,000 young people around the world compiled the ideas behind the plan, released in August. They mobilized interested stakeholders to outline a vision of collective action that will help policy-makers integrate the voices of the next generation into recovery efforts. Such dialogues, led by young people, were also held across Canada, focusing on various topics, including conscious consumerism and accelerating a net-zero transition. 

One of the main issues of concern for youth in Canada and around the globe is the need for a green recovery and meaningful jobs. Job insecurity is on the rise, and young people are unclear about career prospects in this time of uncertainty. The RBC Future Launch study of more than 1,800 Canadians aged 14 to 29, released in March, found that in every province, youth are significantly less confident when it comes to their job prospects and how prepared they are for the future of work. Gen-Z women make up 2.5% of the Canadian labour force but account for 17% of the total decline in employment during the pandemic.

Young people risk being left behind as they are struggling with the youth unemployment crisis. That’s why we’re now calling on all federal political parties to commit to substantial investments in youth-led climate solutions, and skills development. This can also include the creation of a youth climate corps that provides good-paying green public jobs and puts Canadian youth to work. Young people can work toward restoring ecosystems, building community resilience, protecting biodiversity and contributing to care work. Ensuring equitable access to these opportunities will be critical to elevating youth voices in addressing climate change. 

In their 2021 election platform, the Liberals have broadly pledged to invest $8 billion to “accelerate green jobs,” in addition to investments in “youth employment and skills srategy.” The NDP promises to establish a civilian climate corps of young people to create jobs supporting conservation and “build an equitable clean-energy economy.” 

The Green Party platform also references the “creation of a youth climate corps” as part of its green jobs training program, while the Conservative platform does not include a direct mention of green jobs. (Shake Up the Establishment, a youth-led non-profit organization, provides a detailed summary of each party’s climate and environmental promises.) 

We need all federal political parties to embrace a comprehensive strategy that creates pathways for good green jobs for young people, especially those from equity-seeking groups. We also call on all parties to commit to shaping policy in collaboration with youth and invest in youth-led climate solutions, as well as holding companies accountable for environmental harms that jeopardize our future.

The actions being taken to date are not enough: Canada’s climate record is the worst among the G7, as emissions have continued to increase. A society-wide mobilization to address the climate crisis requires transforming our economy – it means reducing emissions rapidly, scaling regenerative business models that do not rely on the exploitation of people and the planet, mobilizing capital toward equitable climate solutions, and ending fossil fuel subsidies. As noted in Canada’s first state of the youth report, released in August 2021, “the climate crisis can only be solved with an overhaul of the system, not individual actions.”

If we are to avoid these pitfalls, we must ensure that we lay a foundation that addresses the systemic issues in our society by investing in young people, as they are the best placed to lead the transition to a more sustainable world. We are quickly becoming the last generation with the ability to slow down the rate of climate change. If today’s politicians want our vote, they must commit to saving our future. 

Puninda Thind is a sustainability professional, climate justice organizer and a Global Shaper passionate about building resilient, sustainable and just communities. Laura Corrales is an ESG consultant, social intrapreneur, Global Shaper and Action Canada Fellow passionate about youth leadership and  systemic change. Robyn Seetal is a CPA, CA, sustainability consultant, and impact investor passionate about adopting  eco-centric leadership as a tool for systemic change. Anoosha Lalani is a CPA and passionate environmentalist interested in the financial impact of ESG issues. 

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The Liberals’ 2021 campaign pledges would undoubtedly provoke renewed battles with conservative-led provinces, and potentially more court challenges from them. The climate plan that Trudeau laid out on August 29 would reach deep into provincial jurisdiction over the electricity system and natural resources in order to impose regulations aimed at moving Canada to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The headline promise was a get-tough approach to the oil and gas industry, which accounted for 26% of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019. And to be clear, it is not just the carbon-intensive oil sands that are targeted, but conventional and offshore oil as well as natural gas production and processing.

The more ambitious strategy would face a backlash in provinces like New Brunswick Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta where governments have resisted federal climate policies and unsuccessfully challenged carbon pricing in the courts. 

Since 2015, the Liberals have attempted a balancing act with the oil and gas sector, which had contributed mightily to the country’s economic growth over the previous 15 years and is heavily concentrated in western provinces, where distrust of the central government and especially the Liberal Party is endemic. 

Today’s Liberal campaign talk promises a more muscular approach to the industry. It’s vague about how a future government would actually implement the platform. But it is anchored in the overarching pledge to reduce GHGs by up to 45% by 2030 and put the country on track to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

That’s in line with the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C. 

With the election only two weeks away, the Liberals are trailing slightly in the polls and need to generate some momentum if they are going to return to power, even with a minority government. The climate crisis remains one wedge issue on which they hope to blunt the Conservatives. 

The Conservative Party, led by Erin O’Toole, says it would roll back Canada’s GHG target to the 30% reduction originally pledged under the Paris Agreement, despite a requirement in the treaty deal for countries to adopt more ambitious targets after their initial commitment. More importantly, the Conservative plan is not in sync with the goal of limiting the increase in average global temperatures to well below 2°C. Even at that level, people in Canada and around the world can expect costly and painful disruptions, with droughts, floods and rising sea levels, as witnessed last week by the flooding that inundated U.S. cities like New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

For its part, the NDP has set a GHG reduction target of 50% by 2030 and proposes an even more aggressive emissions reduction plan than the Liberals’, one that would also face challenges from provinces. 

Trudeau’s climate platform says GHGs from the oil and gas sector must stop growing this year, and have a clear path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. To meet that goal, the industry would face a series of five-year targets, though it’s not clear who would set them or whether they would have the force of regulations.

The Liberal government passed legislation this spring to enforce its net-zero goal and set up a “net-zero advisory committee” that will recommend how to get there, including how much each sector should be expected to contribute. That recommendation would form the basis of enforceable standards, one Liberal strategist said, speaking off the record.

Provincial pushback would be expected 

The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan have set no broad emissions targets – including for their energy industry – and have not endorsed the net-zero goal. Those governments unsuccessfully challenged the Liberals’ carbon pricing plan with the Supreme Court of Canada and would almost certainly balk at any federal regulations that forced industry to either curtail production or invest huge sums to cut emissions on existing facilities.

The Supreme Court ruling made it clear the federal government does not have carte blanche in setting climate change policy. University of Calgary law professor Martin Olszynski says Ottawa would be able to rely on criminal law of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) to regulate industrial emissions. However, the federal government could open itself to a provincial challenge if it allows too much regulatory flexibility in the rules, Olszynski says.

The party’s climate platform contains other notable pledges that would raise hackles in certain provincial governments.

It vows to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 75% from 2012 levels by 2030. That goal is a significant increase from the target of 40% by 2025 that was set by Trudeau and former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 and was largely supported by industry and provincial governments at the time.

The move would require a massive, industry-wide effort to improve detection and capture of methane, especially in the gas fields of northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, where the process of hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, results in large methane leaks.

Methane is a powerful GHG. It’s roughly 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide but also has a shorter-term impact in the atmosphere. In a dire assessment published on August 9, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world must dramatically reduce methane pollution to slow the rate of global warming in the short term. 

The three western provinces have their own regulations aimed at achieving the 40% reduction that Ottawa set in 2012, but environmental groups argue the provincial approaches are insufficient to meet that goal, let alone achieve a 75% cut by 2030.

Brawl brewing over electricity regulations

While the oil and gas industry is the usual battleground between Liberals and provinces on climate change, Trudeau’s most recent plan sets up a potential brawl over regulation in the electricity sector. 

The Liberal platform promises to enforce a “clean electricity standard” that would result in an emissions-free power grid by 2030. Ottawa has set pollution standards for power plants in the past, but it is the provinces that regulate the electricity system. Often, the provinces actually own the generation and transmission assets that comprise the grid.

An “emissions free” grid would not only require the complete phase-out of coal-fired power by 2030 (which Canada committed to doing in 2018), but either end use of natural gas in power plants or force utilities to adopt expensive technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is technically feasible but is not currently widely in use.

That would leave several provinces, including Ontario, that are looking to use gas to replace coal in a bind. They’re planning to use natural gas to provide an uninterrupted supply of power and to back up renewable electricity generation, which can be intermittent.

The federal government already sets emissions standards for new power plants that burn gas, but its pledge to force a zero-emissions standard would likely provoke a battle with several provinces. Quebec, too, would likely join a provincial revolt – more to defend its provincial jurisdiction in the electricity sector than to protect its natural gas assets.

The Liberal commitments for reducing GHGs in the oil and gas sector and on the grid are aggressive and controversial, but they illustrate the depth of effort that the country would require to meet the more ambitious targets that line up with global climate change goals.

Absent an about-face by provincial governments, a less pugnacious approach would avoid renewed tensions in the federation but leave Canada as a laggard in the effort to avert catastrophic global warming.

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In the first week, however, the spotlight shone on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the ongoing debate about whether the government should require certain employees to be vaccinated as another wave of COVID-19 infections swells. Canada’s role in safeguarding future life on this planet has yet to be broached in a serious way. That is likely to change.

This campaign is bookended by a summer in which the climate emergency became increasingly apparent and the UN climate summit this fall – to be hosted in November by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – in which nations will be expected to make more ambitious commitments to head off global environmental disaster.

Each of the political parties has made sweeping promises for climate change action, and voters need journalists to ask probing questions about their adequacy and credibility.

Journalist Markham Hislop recently commented that the Conservative Party of Canada’s climate change policies as outlined in their platform effectively “close the gap” with the Liberals’ stance on the issue while suggesting that the New Democrats offer a slightly more ambitious plan than the one put forward by the Trudeau government.

The result, he suggested, is less opportunity for wedge politics in which the Conservatives are painted as Neanderthals, as they were under Andrew Scheer during the 2019 campaign.

There is some truth to Hislop’s contention, especially when journalists are preoccupied with other priorities that create more clearly defined wedges. Still, there are yawning differences among the parties with regard to climate ambition. There continue to be deep cleavages in terms of how they would treat the oil and gas sector, which is responsible for 25% of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Liberals remain vulnerable 

In the past nine months, the Liberal government moved the yardsticks on climate ambition. They announced a tougher 2030 target and commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, passed legislation that provides some accountability on meeting GHG-reduction targets, and announced plans to raise the carbon price to $170 a tonne by 2030. They also announced more than $15 billion in spending to commercialize and adopt clean technologies that will help Canada meet its commitment and create jobs in the zero-carbon economy.

Still, the Liberals remain as vulnerable as they were in the 2019 election among voters who rank climate change high on their list of priorities and are unhappy with the Trudeau government’s ongoing support for the fossil fuel industry.

In addition to support for the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and export facilities for natural gas, the Liberal government provided some $1.9 billion in subsidies to the industry in 2020, the International Institute for Sustainable Development concluded in a report this year. Activists say that figure dramatically underestimates federal assistance by excluding things like pandemic-related wage subsidies and Bank of Canada bond purchases.

Conservative climate platform falls short 

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, is determined to give his party more credibility on climate change policy, but so far he has had mixed success.

His platform promises $15 billion in spending over several years to support the development and adoption of low-carbon technology. It includes a modest carbon price of $50 per tonne but would allow consumers to keep the proceeds of the levy to spend on a variety of energy-saving devices. The move may appeal to voters, but it would do little, if anything, to encourage less fuel consumption. The Liberal program provides cash payments to Canadians to ease the burden of the levy but is not tied to their actual spending.

When O’Toole released his climate plan last spring, analysts concluded it was a “serious” plan that could, if fully implemented, achieve GHG reductions that would put Canada within reach of our initial target of reducing emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. It’s a target that may have been reasonably laudable when it was initially set by former Conservative PM Stephen Harper in 2015.

However, that target is clearly insufficient to put the country on course for achieving net-zero status by 2050. The Liberals will no doubt remind climate-conscious voters that the Conservatives have not endorsed the net-zero target.

In April, the Liberal government increased its ambition to reduce emissions by between 40 and 45% by 2030 and hit that mid-century, net-zero goal. The New Democrats would set a target of 50% GHG reduction by 2030, while the Green Party of Canada says we need to go further and cut GHGs by 60% in the next decade.

O’Toole has the least ambitious targets, while at the same time, his party lacks credibility to implement the plan for a number of reasons.

Environmental economist Nic Rivers – who was quoted in the platform as lauding its seriousness – notes that many of the proposals are conditional on a number of factors, often requiring identical American action. While the platform has some serious policy proposals, it is easy to be skeptical about whether there will be seriousness in implementing them, Rivers says.

Conservatives remain deeply divided about the importance of GHG reductions. At a spring policy convention, the delegates voted down a resolution that would recognize the reality of climate change and the need for Canada to address it.

The party has oil in its DNA. Conservatives have worked hand-in-glove with the industry’s leaders in recent years to oppose Liberal climate and environmental policies, and their platform calls for continued expansion of oil and natural gas exports.

While Conservatives have endorsed technology to capture carbon emissions in industry, that approach faces serious limitations. Chief executives at Suncor Energy and Cenovus Energy say it would require $75 billion to decarbonize the oil sands, and they want the federal government to pay. It would take additional billions to capture carbon from conventional oil and natural gas production. None of this would address emissions that occur when the oil or natural gas is burned as fuel.

One telling item, as reported last week by The Narwhal’s Fatima Syed: the Conservative platform proposes to criminalize civil disobedience actions that would interfere with oil and gas projects. Conservatives – both federally and in Alberta – have waged war on environmental groups that oppose oil pipelines and liquid natural gas facilities as unsustainable fossil infrastructure. Former PM Stephen Harper and his cabinet minister Joe Oliver targeted environmental groups, including increased audits of their charitable status by Revenue Canada.

Still, the Conservatives are clearly hoping mainstream voters will see a “serious” enough plan to check the climate box as they consider their election options. Liberals, meanwhile, have upped their ambition considerably since 2019 and want to persuade Canadians that theirs is an urgent but pragmatic approach.

Avid climate voters, including young Canadians who rank it as a high priority, will have to decide whether Liberal actions are sufficient or opt for a more ambitious NDP environmental platform that would intrude heavily in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The Green Party has the most ambitious climate agenda and could attract ardent environmentally minded voters. However, internal battles derailed its campaign before the election even started.

In a tight contest, the parties’ ability to manage the climate agenda could be one key to electoral success.

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