Tom Harris Apr 08, 2022 5 Comments @ Toronto Sun
You would think that by now the brain trust behind the major Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leadership candidates would have learned that if you betray your base on climate change, you won’t survive long as party leader.
Former CPC leader Andrew Scheer learned this lesson the hard way. After voting against ratification of the Paris Agreement as an ordinary MP in 2016, conservatives were justified to expect that, as leader, he would continue this approach. Yet, mere weeks after being elected CPC leader in 2017, Scheer voted in favour of a Liberal motion to reaffirm the government’s commitment to the Paris Agreement.
Indeed, he made it compulsory for all CPC MPs to vote this way despite a 2017 Angus Reid poll that revealed that 68% of conservative voters wanted the economy to take precedence over the environment. While several CPC MPs stayed away from the House rather than vote, only Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke MP Cheryl Gallant voted against the motion. Even Carleton, Ontario MP Pierre Poilievre voted to support it. Several factors played a role in Scheer’s demise, but his flip-flop on Paris was certainly one of them.
Erin O’Toole lost his CPC leadership, in part, because he broke his promise on climate change, signing the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s “No Carbon Tax Pledge” when running for party leadership and then making up his own version of the tax after winning.
Now, Poilievre, if elected leader, plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through “technology, instead of taxes,” precisely what Scheer promoted. Following Scheer’s opening speech in support of Poilievre’s candidacy at the latter’s “Axe the Carbon Tax” rally in Ottawa on March 31, Poilievre boosted “carbon” capture and storage that does nothing to reduce climate change but leads to huge increases in power costs.
He also promoted providing natural gas to the world so that coal-fired power plants could be shut down, a serious mistake in a world that needs the reliability provided by power stations that store their fuel on-site. Poilievre then promoted electric vehicles (EVs), apparently unaware of the serious problems with EVs, especially in cold weather.
Jean Charest says that, if he wins, he will push for a “price on carbon.” When the Harper government withdrew Canada from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011, then Quebec premier Charest vowed that his province would comply with Kyoto all on its own. As federal Environment Minister under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Charest headed the Canadian delegation at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that got Canada into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the first place. It is the UNFCCC that underlies today’s carbon tax and other climate policies that plague us today.
CPC leadership candidate Patrick Brown, former Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Ontario leader, told delegates at the March 2016 PC annual meeting, “Climate change is a fact. It is a threat. It is man-made. We have to do something about it. And that something includes putting a price on carbon.”
Yet, when asked later that year in a Stittsville, Ontario townhall meeting of grassroots conservatives about whether he thought humanity was causing a climate crisis, he tried to avoid answering the question, finally admitting he didn’t know and did not think there was a consensus among scientists about the causes of climate change. Yet the very next day on CTV News he said the exact opposite. If Brown does win and holds the party-wide consultations he has promised on the issue, he will certainly get an earful if he continues such flip-flops.
Haldimand—Norfolk MP Leslyn Lewis, also running for the leadership, started her 2019 PhD thesis, “The existential debate over climate change seems to be settled,” and then proceeded to strongly boost the climate scare. When asked about her climate policy on April 4 at a public forum in Moose Jaw, Lewis confused pollution with carbon dioxide, taking a similar tack to Poilievre in supporting technical solutions to the supposed problem. Canadians for Affordable Energy concluded in 2020: “Lewis’ … generous support for the ‘oil is dead’ crowd should give affordable energy advocates – and rank and file Conservatives – serious pause about her candidacy.”
The other major candidates, aside from one, all say the same — we must reduce GHG emissions to save the climate. The one exception so far is Ontario independent MPP Roman Baber who, because he said so little on the topic, has a wide-open runway to generate broad grassroots support if he simply tells the truth about climate change.
There is no climate emergency. The roughly $110 billion that Environment and Climate Change Minister Stephen Gilbeault told CTV News on April 3 has been spent since 2015 on the “transition” to new energy is an unforgivable waste of taxpayer’s money.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based not-for-profit International Climate Science Coalition – Canada.
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