With US tariffs hitting Canada amid an affordability crisis, climate change has declined among Canadian voters’ top-of-mind concerns. Yet the parties are offering very different climate and energy commitments in the federal election. In other words, this election is about climate change, whether voters are aware or not. 

We compared the parties’ positions on climate change, focusing on the three parties most likely to either form a government (Liberals or Conservatives) or sign a confidence agreement with a minority government (NDP). As professors, we would not give any of the parties an A grade on climate action. However, we anticipate that emissions would continue to decline under a Liberal government, but not under a Conservative one.

Starting with the big picture: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has dodged questions about the party’s commitment to Canada’s existing Paris Agreement targets. Liberal Leader Mark Carney — a former UN special envoy on climate finance — has not questioned Canada’s 2030 or 2035 targets. The NDP has called for tightening the 2035 emissions reduction target by five percent.

Economy-wide carbon pricing has been the centrepiece of the federal climate plan to date. The consumer carbon tax was repealed on April 1, and none of the parties is proposing to bring it back.

The industrial carbon pricing system remains in place, however. Industrial polluters pay a carbon tax if they emit above sector-specific performance benchmarks. The Canadian Climate Institute reports that industrial carbon pricing is the single most impactful federal climate policy, with the potential to account for up to half of Canada’s emissions reductions this decade, and (thanks to those performance benchmarks) at minimal cost to consumers or risk of companies moving abroad. 

The Conservative Party has committed to eliminating the federal industrial carbon pricing........

© National Observer