Mulcair Bites Back

I haven't always agreed with failed NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, but he's on the money in his op-ed in the latest Maclean's, "How Canada became an environmental outlier."

Liberals and the left freely denounced Stephen Harper for turning Canada into a climate pariah. At UN climate summits Canada was regularly mocked for our shoddy policies on greenhouse gases.  Then we elected another eco-champion, the son of the great Pierre Trudeau.

There was a lot of hope during the negotiation of the Paris Accord just after the 2015 election. I was in the conference room in Paris when Justin Trudeau, representing a new generation of world leaders, threw out his arms wide and proclaimed, “Canada is back!” What he forgot to mention was that Canada was back with Stephen Harper’s plan, Stephen Harper’s timelines and Stephen Harper’s targets—the same targets that Trudeau had derided as being woefully inadequate during the his election campaign.

Canada was once again playing to type. Canadians who cared about the environment and climate change could feel better about themselves. Even if the results still weren’t there (we haven’t met even Stephen Harper’s targets since signing the Paris Accord), at least they were no longer embarrassed. We had a new leader who could emote on the subject, even if Canada still didn’t walk that talk.

In short order our hopes were dashed. Justin was merely the last in a line of Liberal leaders that went all the way back to Chretien.

Jean Chretien will always get credit for signing the Kyoto Protocol even though Canada went on to have one of the worst records in the world for GHG increases. Stephen Harper famously called the Kyoto Protocol a “socialist scheme designed to suck money from rich countries”. Chretien and Harper had results that were similar, but one approach was welcoming to environmentalists and the other, to the oil patch.

Both sides were talking to their base: the Conservatives in mocking Kyoto, the Liberals in signing it. But with both Liberal and Conservative governments, Canada has consistently failed to meet its international obligations on climate change. As highly-respected former sustainable development commissioner Julie Gelfand pointed out in her final report, Canadian governments had shown a disturbing failure to meet our climate obligations for decades.

As Chretien’s former chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg later admitted, Canada didn’t have any plan to meet the Kyoto targets and it was mostly about “galvanizing public opinion”, in other words, it was largely an exercise in political communication.

Just when the Liberal government desperately needed a smoke screen, along comes a pandemic.

Perhaps not surprising then that the only thing Trudeau did on the environment during the COVID-19 pandemic was weaken environmental rules to help the fossil fuel industry, just as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers had requested. The stakes are high and it really is a question of which generation will lead us out of the current health and economic crisis.

Trudeau and Peter MacKay, his likely Conservative opponent in the next federal election, represent the same generation—one that has failed on the environment. Anyone hoping that we could see a change should meditate on MacKay’s reflection on Canada’s role in combating climate change: “We can throw all our car keys in Halifax harbour, turn down the heat, turn off the lights, walk around naked in the dark eating organic beets and it won’t make a difference.”

None of this will make any difference with the Liberal party faithful. They will continue to gush and swoon over their oh-so decent leader, ignoring how he has betrayed Canada, especially future generations of Canadians, even if he does seem more like Chretien's kid than Pierre's.