Unexciting federal budget a flimsy smokescreen for climate capitulation

CHELSEA, QUE.—According to the not-so-subtle Liberal communications plan, the few progressive and chewy morsels in last week’s federal budget should overshadow Justin Trudeau’s most brazen betrayal since 2015—far graver than his reversal on proportional representation and other, less consequential, broken promises. That betrayal also happened last week, just a day before what turned out to be a low-key budget: Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s decision to permit a new oil development—the Bay du Nord deep-sea project, located in the North Atlantic, some 500 kilometres north east of St. John’s, N.L. That permission was granted in the direct wake of another dire climate change report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a warning from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to all governments that investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is “moral and economic madness.” It’s the sort of thing Guilbeault, once a prominent Quebec environmentalist, used to say—in fact, when it first appeared he called the IPCC report “sobering." Among other things, the Bay du Nord decision represents the complete and total capture of another high-minded environment minister by a powerful industry and its political protectors. Every dedicated federal environment minister—from Charles Caccia, David Anderson and Jim Prentice, through to Stéphane Dion and Catherine McKenna—has been eventually undercut by the prime minister of the day, irrespective of party affiliation. This, along with an unbroken national record of failing to meet international emissions reduction goals, suggests a systemic problem that transcends partisanship. No national political leader has found the conviction and courage to stand up to the fossil fuel sector, and its fierce political enablers in Alberta, and force it to accept responsibility for the destruction of our planet. Or, at least, for its share. The Trudeau government is only the latest manifestation of this trend. While emissions continue to rise, and oil enjoys a hopefully brief revival, the climate consequences—from flooding in British Columbia and elsewhere, to devastating wild-fires, to heat waves at the poles—become more dire, more intimate, and harder to ignore. So the Trudeau government can’t ignore them. Instead, it promises to address rising emissions—including the 26 per cent that come from Alberta’s oil sands—but always sometime down the road, 2030, say, or 2035, but definitely 2050. The government’s latest Emissions Reduction Plan, for instance, also released before the budget, calls for a 45 per cent reduction in oilsands emissions from 2005 by 2030. That goal sounds steep—Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley calls it “fantasy”—but Guilbeault points to “plans to develop guidance” to require new oil and gas projects to have “best-in-class” emissions control leading to the “cleanest oil and gas” on offer. But, not before extensive consultation with the industry, provinces, indigenous leaders—and, wait, haven’t we heard this before? Anyone remember Stephen Harper’s “sector by sector” consultations with large emitters in 2008? Suffice it to say, they ended inconclusively and emissions are higher than ever. And why is a government so far off its Paris Accord commitments even contemplating new fossil fuel projects? For the jobs, supposedly, but those jobs are less plentiful than they once were, and, given the finite future of oil, less permanent. And that supposes that Bay du Nord, a joint enterprise of Norway’s Equinor and Husky Energy, scheduled to start production in 2028, goes ahead at all. For his part, Guilbeault was left to stutter through the latest Liberal talking points on Bay du Nord, the blandishments seemingly sticking in his throat: some of the lowest-emissions oil produced anywhere; not likely to cause adverse environment effects; the world will be using fossil fuels for some time; more oil isn’t the problem, more emissions are; the project must meet 137 conditions, etc. And whales and marine life will not be affected, the oil company claims—not that anyone in government appears concerned. Little of this stands up to scientific scrutiny: the oil from Bay du Nord is only fractionally less carbon intensive than the oilsands product, say experts, and the minister’s sunny forecast fails to account for emissions created when the estimated 1 billion barrels of new oil from Bay du Nord are burned. Also: see above. Why is government approving new projects—even encouraging the production of 300,000 new barrels per day, supposedly to replace Russian oil in Europe—and watching wordlessly as emissions spike again and Alberta records a record high in output over the winter? Perhaps because renewed oil profits are also bolstering federal revenues. There is one irrefutable equation: the more oil produced and burned, the more emissions. To obscure that undeniable fact, the federal budget is offering a refundable tax credit (formerly known as a subsidy) to oil and gas companies to develop carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects. These are intended to redirect emissions from heavy emitters, like oil mines and industry, into exhausted mines or concrete storage tanks. So you can burn oil AND reduce emissions! The CCS tax credit will cost $2.6-billion, the largest of a scattering of new and continued environmental spending in the budget. Credits will range from 60 to 37 per cent of costs, depending on the project, and continue at $1.5-billion annually until 2030. Whether that is enough to induce oil companies to invest $1-billion in a single CCS facility remains to be seen. It should, however, keep Alberta Premier Jason Kenney quiet for a while—if not happy. After all, Trudeau has taken another page from the Harper playbook, the “silver bullet” theory—a technological miracle cure that will keep oil and gas flowing forever. So far, CCS has proven expensive, and of limited use in actually containing emissions, except in smaller venues, such as cement plants. It has been derided by climate scientists and other environmentalists as an ineffective and expensive prop for an industry that should be shrinking, not continuing indefinitely. The technology has also consumed billions in government subsidies around the world and has yet to be seriously adopted by industry. And why, at a time when oil companies are making record profits, can they not pay for this vaunted technology themselves? In rebuttal to any of these questions, the Liberals will point to other shiny objects: another $1.7-billion in electric vehicle rebates, with new rebates for heavy-duty electric trucks and vans; recent investments in EV and battery plants; an ongoing retrofit program for home-owners—on top of previous investments in public transit. All good, if limited, measures, given that road transportation represents some 20 per cent of emissions. But there is no sign of rebates for second-hand EVs, already available in Quebec and once promised by Trudeau. Overall, it is hard not to see the welcome, though small, investments in marine parks, old growth forests, plastics containment, and the like, as cover for the government’s failure to contain emissions from oil and gas extraction. The sector accounts for six per cent of national GDP and remains a key pillar of Alberta’s booming economy. But as long as it is coddled, and even encouraged, the transition to cleaner energy—and the significant economic promise of green energy—is stifled. One of Canada’s largest oil companies, Suncor, for instance, recently announced it is abandoning investments in wind and solar, in favour of hydrogen and CCS. The Bay du Nord decision, like Trudeau’s decision to buy the TMX pipeline, will have profound and lasting echoes. It has deeply disappointed environmentalists who pinned their hopes on Guilbeault. It makes a farce of anything Trudeau says about climate in future. It recalls his remarks at a Texas oil conference in 2015: “No country would find 173 million barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there.” And it leaves a large constituency of voters with nowhere to turn. Not the NDP, who have never shown much environmental zeal under Jagmeet Singh. Certainly not the Conservatives. The Greens, unfortunately, are an ideological and organizational mess. And Elizabeth May is only one person. It will probably be a climate-conscious world, and the global market, that determine the fate of Canada’s fossil fuel sector—while our governments are busy establishing revised timelines. There will be a lot more climate grief before then. Susan Riley is a veteran political columnist who writes regularly for The Hill Times. The Hill Times