Canada’s major climate failure

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/12/2023 (659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WHEN it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, let’s face it, Canada is failing.

Independent organizations, such as the Globe Carbon Project or Climate Change Performance Index, continue to confirm Canada as the worst performer of the G7. We are near the bottom of the pack internationally. We are routinely beat out by our U.S. neighbours, including even Donald Trump back in 2017, hardly something to brag about.

The ability to meet ambitious targets by 2030 is now in grave doubt, confirmed by Canada’s independent environmental commissioner. Despite overly confident statements, we all now need to consciously accept that Canada will fail. Results are not yet official for 2022, but all indications are that Canada’s emission increased again, for the second year in a row since COVID.

How could this possibly happen given that emissions reduction is a marquee policy of the federal Liberals? A combination of: (1) policies driven by photo-ops, not performance; (2) over-focus on grand visions, lacking attention to critical details; (3) selective reliance on “models” rather than actual data; and (4) inability to acknowledge failures.

The tree-planting debacle is a recent addition, but the most prominent failure remains the carbon tax. The evidence is in front of us all. Many commentators express conceptual support for the carbon tax, but in order to be more than just virtue signalling, there must be significant tangible reductions. Everyone should look back to an important 2018 Environment Canada report entitled, “Estimated Results of the Federal Carbon Pollution Pricing System,” available online. We were told then that the carbon tax would be decisive, reducing emissions 80 to 90 million tonnes by 2022 alone. Yet, it has not happened.

The prime minister’s latest folly, selectively exempting fuel oil from the carbon tax, opened a floodgate for criticism from all sides. Minister Gudie Hutchings openly admitted the political motivations, yet the Liberals’ official justification actually explains why their carbon tax does not work. With no affordable options, the cost of the carbon tax becomes just a hindrance to consumers being able to move to lower emissions alternatives. Consumers generally remain and are well observed to be unresponsive to carbon taxes, “inelastic” in economic terms.

Much more can be said regarding the lack of effectiveness, but the lack of fairness is equally problematic. Statements that eight of 10 households somehow get net benefits from rebates are utter fabrication, and mathematically impossible. Such statements appear based on selective interpretation of a computer model, whereas actual results confirm households on average here pay more.

Canadians continue to struggle with the crises of affordability and food insecurity. It turns out, though, that these woes are linked to and made worse by carbon taxes, best exemplified by the situation facing food banks.

Food banks are the last line of defence against hunger but receive little in the way of federal assistance. Yet food banks must pay carbon taxes. Unlike commercial businesses, however, they cannot merely pass costs along to clients.

Food banks have been long performing an important and valuable environmental service. They glean significant amounts of food that otherwise would just go to waste. As such, they directly reduce organic matter going to landfills, material that is readily converted by naturally occurring processes into methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Indeed, methane is increasingly recognized as problematic, including at the recent COP meeting.

A preliminary value of the benefit provided by just one major food bank comes to about $200,000 annually, based on only $50 per tonne of GHG. For this important service, food banks get absolutely nothing, but still must pay carbon taxes. If that seems backwards and unfair, it is.

I was privileged to be part of a group that, in part, looked into this, as reported in the article, “How gleaning food addresses greenhouse gas emissions and food insecurity” in the publication Policy Options, readily accessible online. Paying food banks for their good environmental work is a no-brainer that could make the current government look like heroes. But, beyond cockamamie actions on fuel oil, absolutely nothing so far has happened on this.

It is true no opposition party can match the boldness of Liberal emission reduction proposals. It is also true, however, that all we get from the federal Liberals is more promises, including this past week, and that the Liberals themselves can never meet their own proposals.

They have no real plan at all, merely aspirations, which are clearly not good enough.

Robert Parsons, PhD, MBA, teaches at the I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba on topics of sustainability economics, mathematical methods, logistics and supply-chain management.