NDP set to unveil $15-billion climate plan that would slash greenhouse gas emissions

Thestar.com
May 31, 2019
Alex Ballingall

The NDP is pledging to spend $15 billion on a new environment plan to create 300,000 jobs and put Canada on a track to exceed its current emissions target under the Paris Agreement to fight climate change.

Billed as “the most comprehensive environmental plan the NDP has ever proposed,” the party’s election-ready green platform claims a New Democrat government in Ottawa would spend billions to aggressively slash greenhouse gas emissions and spur economic growth.

“It becomes more clear each day that the time for talk on climate change and economic inequality is over,” says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in a preamble to the plan, which was provided to the Star in advance of its release Friday morning.

“It’s time to act, and it’s time to fight like our future depends on it, because it does,” Singh says.

Titled “Power to Change: A new deal for climate action and good jobs,” the plan proposes to spend at least $6.5 billion on public transit and transportation. The NDP would create a new, “permanent” mechanism for direct and predictable funding for public transit, and push for all public transportation to be electric by 2030. An NDP government would also help willing cities and provinces pay to make public transit free, the plan says.

To push Canadians toward cleaner cars, the NDP would provide rebates of at least $5,000 and waive federal sales tax when people buy new zero-emission vehicles. While the Liberals already implemented $5,000 rebates this year, the plan aims to spur the domestic auto industry by increasing those rebates to $15,000 when people by zero-emission vehicles that are made in Canada. The NDP would also build charging stations at federal buildings and Canada Post locations and offer residents up to $600 to install their own plug-in chargers at home.

Meanwhile, the party would make Canada’s electrical grid and all new buildings emissions-free by 2030. It would pursue energy-efficient retrofits in all buildings across the country by 2050, create a $3-billion “Canadian Climate Bank” to support low-carbon developments, and implement a smattering of programs to help workers, including unspecified requirements for employers to spend money for worker training and new rules to allow people to use employment insurance to pay for training programs before they get laid off.

The plan would also ban single-use plastics across the country by 2022 and create an Environmental Bill of Rights to “ensure that all communities can enjoy a guarantee to clean water, land and air.”

As a whole, the NDP says the plan would cost more than $15 billion in the first mandate of a New Democrat government. Some of this money would come from cancelling an estimated $3.3 billion in subsidies currently given to the fossil fuel industry, the plan says. The party would also change the tax system to make sure “the wealthiest pay their fair share.” Party spokesperson Mélanie Richer said this means closing tax loopholes, tackling tax evasion, and making changes to rake in more money from capital gains taxes.

The party claims the environment plan would create “at least 300,000 good jobs within a first mandate” and reduce Canada’s emissions to 38 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The current target, set by the former Conservative government and maintained by the Liberals, is to slash emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by that year. Government projections released last December say Canada is on track to fall short of that target by 79 million tonnes of emissions, though Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna insists future innovation and the impacts of policies that haven’t been modelled yet will close that gap.

But the NDP acknowledges its plan to exceed this target is only “an important first step.” The party’s plan says further reductions will be needed to place Canada in line with the strictures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which in a dire report last October said global emissions will need to be cut in half by 2030 and hit net-zero by mid-century if the world is to keep global warming above pre-Industrial temperatures to just 1.5 degrees C.

Exceeding that would bring calamitous consequences, the report says, including species extinctions, more extreme weather like floods, wildfires, droughts and storms, shrinking glaciers and Arctic ice, the disappearance of coral reefs and significantly rising sea levels.

In the face of that, the NDP plan would declare a “climate emergency” and create a legal requirement for Canada to hit “ambitious, science-based” targets in line with keeping warming below 1.5 degrees. A new “Climate Accountability Office” would perform regular audits on Canada’s progress toward this new goal, which isn’t specified in the plan, but which Singh has previously described as about 40 to 50 per cent below current emissions levels.

The NDP would also keep the Liberal government’s federally-enforced minimum carbon price, a policy that has fuelled intense opposition from federal Conservative and provincial governments in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. But without providing any details, the NDP says it would make the government’s carbon price rebates that offset increased costs “fairer,” while also “rolling back” the performance standards pricing system the government designed for heavy polluters. The system means industries that emit more than an average set for their sector will pay a price, and those that emit less than average will earn credits they can sell for cash.

Asked how the NDP would change this, Richer, the party spokesperson, said “millionaires shouldn’t be getting rebate cheques, and heavy emitters won’t be exempt from the industrial carbon price.”

In his preamble to the plan, Singh attacks Liberals and Conservatives for not having “the courage to do what is needed” to fight climate change -- and singles out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion from Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based oil company.

In recent weeks, however, the Green party has emerged as a more visible force in the political debate around climate change. The Greens placed a strong third in a February byelection in Outremont -- a riding that former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair held for a decade -- and then defeated the NDP on May 6 in the British Columbia riding of Nanaimo--Ladysmith.

Prominent New Democrat Svend Robinson called it a “wake up call” for the party, and in the wake of the defeat Singh walked back his support for natural gas developments in northern B.C., including the $40-billion LNG Canada export terminal and proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline that is opposed by some hereditary Wet’suwet’en chiefs along the route.

The Greens own environment platform calls for a halt to all new fossil fuel development in Canada and cross-party co-operation to reduce emissions to 60 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The Liberals, meanwhile, have defended their carbon price from Conservative attacks, and point to billions of dollars the government has spent on public transit and support for clean technology, while promising to remove coal-fired energy from the power grid by 2030 and implement stricter standards for clean fuel.

The Conservatives vow to reduce emissions without a national carbon price, and are set to release their environmental platform in the coming weeks.