North Shore candidates see climate change as key election issue

After sweltering through a summer that included forest fires, along with an unprecedented “heat dome,” climate change has emerged as a key issue for voters in British Columbia.

All four main parties have climate change platforms. They also have pointed criticisms of their opponents’ approaches and can point to duelling scientific reports and endorsements.

Green Party

The Green Party proposes to tackle climate change through a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 – the largest reduction being proposed by the political parties.

That target is important, says Mike Simpson, Green candidate for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, because “we’re tying our target to the science of what would be required to be able to get to [a global temperature increase no more than] 1.5 [degrees Celsius].”

Carbon emissions then need to go down – not just stop going up, says Simpson. To do that, the Green Party would increase the carbon tax to $265 per tonne by 2030.

Greens would immediately halt construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, says Simpson, including LNG facilities and the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Simpson says it makes no sense to invest in fossil fuel projects if Canada is to meet its climate targets. That money should be put into clean energy sources like wind and solar instead, he said.

Simpson adds his party has promised to ban natural gas fracking, pointing to that as a key difference with the NDP.

The party would ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2030.

The Green Party would strike a climate emergency cabinet to work on solutions to climate change. “But the one thing we cannot argue about is the science, because you just can’t fight with physics,” he says.

NDP

In the same riding, another climate activist, filmmaker Avi Lewis, is running for the NDP on a platform of fighting climate change.

The NDP is promising to reduce carbon emissions by 50 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 – more than what the Liberals and Conservatives are promising.

Reductions will be met through eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, continuing with existing carbon and ramping up government regulation through five-year targets, including rolling back “loopholes” for industry, according to the NDP platform.

Carbon pricing and incentives alone aren’t enough to slash carbon emissions fast enough, says Lewis.

“For 30 years, we've had these optional incentives, trying to affect people's behaviour with tax credits and other weak market mechanisms. When you take a carbon budgeting and regulation approach, you're making it the law, it's not optional. And that's what creates culture change.”

Lewis criticized the Liberal government for subsidizing the oil and gas sector, saying the NDP would stop those subsidies.

The party would phase out the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The NDP is opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline but has stopped short of officially saying it would cancel the pipeline. Local candidates, however, are “campaigning fiercely to cancel the project,” says Lewis.

Liberals

The Liberals are defending their record on climate change action and promising to go further.

The party says it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 40 per cent by 2030 - an accelerated timeline from the 30 per cent promised at the Paris climate summit in 2015.

To do that, the Liberals plan to raise the price on carbon to $170 a tonne by 2030 and achieve “net zero” increase in emissions by 2050.

Jonathan Wilkinson, the Liberal environment minister who is running for re-election in North Vancouver, calls the Liberal platform “the most detailed climate plan that exists anywhere in the world.”

The Liberal plan also includes a 75 per cent reduction in methane emissions that are “26 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas,” says Wilkinson.

Wilkinson disagreed with critics who say his party has done little on climate change. “We took office from a [Conservative] government that did almost nothing on climate change. And we put into place a whole range of measures to start to change the trajectory,” he says. “The projections for Canada when we took over this government was that we would be 12 to 15 per cent above 2005 [emission] levels in 2030. Right now, we are one per cent below. And we are projecting to go down every year.”

The Liberals are proposing five-year binding targets on emissions from the oil and gas sector.

The party also says it will phase out the public financing for fossil fuels and eliminate subsidies to the industry by 2023. 

Wilkinson says some money the NDP counts as a subsidy to industry includes money to clean up oil well sites and funding for clean technology to help reduce emissions.

Wilkinson also disagreed that the building of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will mean more Alberta oil sands production. A pipeline is safer than shipping oil by rail, he said, and allows Canadian producers to sell to more markets.

“We've made a commitment to cap emissions from the oil sands, that tells you something about the ability of oil and gas production to increase significantly. It just won't happen,” he said.

The Liberals plan to make 50 per cent of all vehicle sales electric by 2030 and phase out sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

Conservatives

The Conservative platform on climate change is notable for being the first time the party has significantly addressed the issue in a federal election.

Conservatives promise to meet the original Paris climate goal of reducing carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 – less than the government is currently committed to.

John Weston, Conservative candidate in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, and former MP for the riding, defended that approach against the Liberal promises.

“What’s better – to buy into unachievable targets with a leader who's missed his targets year after year, or get behind an achievable innovative plan to reduce emissions by 30 per cent by 2030?” he says.

The Conservative party says it will work with industry to reduce emissions but will tie its industrial carbon pricing to carbon pricing in other countries. Conservatives will also set up a system of personal carbon savings accounts for households.

“It puts the responsibility for bringing down our greenhouse gas emissions in the hands of individuals who will be able to monitor their own progress,” says Weston.

Conservatives support the Trans Mountain pipeline and also have proposed resuscitating the cancelled Northern Gateway pipeline in B.C.

“We acknowledge that getting our energy to tidewater into markets is important,” says Weston. He adds if Canada doesn’t step into the market “then bad actors like the Saudis, and Russia, that have much lower regard for environmental standards, are stepping into that place.”

Conservatives plan to make 30 per cent of new vehicle sales EVs by 2030.

The Conservative platform also stresses new technologies that suck carbon out of the atmosphere, proposing tax breaks to encourage Canadian companies to develop that technology.

–  with files from Stefan Labbé