Canada’s climate agenda hit business hard but barely cut emissions

Canada is paying a steep economic price for climate policies that have delivered little real environmental progress

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In 2015, the newly elected Trudeau government signed the Paris Agreement. The following year saw the imposition of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which included more than 50 measures aimed at “reducing carbon emissions and fostering clean technology solutions.” Key among them was economy-wide carbon “pricing,” Liberal-speak for taxes.

Other measures followed, culminating last December in the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, targeting emissions of 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. It included $9.1 billion for retrofitting structures, subsidizing zero-emission vehicles, building charging stations and subsidizing solar panels and windmills. It also mandated the phaseout of coal-fired power generation and proposed stringent emission standards for vehicles and buildings.

Other “green initiatives” included the “on-farm climate action fund,” a nationwide reforestation initiative to plant two billion trees, the “Green and Inclusive Community Buildings Program” to promote net-zero standards in new construction, and a “Green Municipal Fund” to support municipal decarbonization. That’s a staggering list of nation-impoverishing subsidies, taxes and restrictions.

Those climate measures come at a real cost to the industry that drives the nation’s economy.

The Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway oil pipeline to the northwest coast, which had been approved by the Harper government, costing sponsors hundreds of millions of dollars in preconstruction expenditures. The political and regulatory morass the Liberals created eventually led to the cancellation of all but one of the 12 LNG export proposals.

Have all those taxes and regulatory measures reduced Canada’s fossil-fuel consumption? No. As Bjorn Lomborg has reported, between the election of the Trudeau government in 2015 through 2023, fossil fuels’ share of Canada’s energy supply increased from 75 to 77 per cent.

That dismal result wasn’t for lack of trying. The Fraser Institute has found that Ottawa and the four biggest provinces have either spent or forgone a mind-numbing $158 billion to create just 68,000 “clean” jobs, increasing the “green economy” by a minuscule 0.3 percentage points to 3.6 per cent of GDP at an eye-watering cost of more than $2.3 million per job.

That’s Canada’s emissions reduction debacle. What’s the global picture? A decade after Paris, 80 per cent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. World energy demand is up 150 per cent. Canada, which produces roughly 1.5 per cent of global emissions, cannot influence that trajectory. And, as Lomborg writes: “achieving net zero emissions by 2050 would require the removal of the equivalent of the combined emissions of China and the United States in each of the next five years. This puts us in the realm of science fiction.”

Does this mean our planet will become unlivable? A U.S. Department of Energy report issued in July is grounds for optimism. It finds that “claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts are not supported by U.S. historical data.” And it goes on: “CO2-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed and aggressive mitigation policies could be more detrimental than beneficial.”

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright responded to the report by saying: “Climate change is real … but it is not the greatest threat facing humanity … (I)mproving the human condition depends on access to reliable, affordable energy.”

That leaves no doubt as to where our largest trading partner stands on carbon emissions. But don’t expect Prime Minister Mark Carney, who helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) at COP 26 in that city in 2021 and co-chaired it until this January, to soften his stand on carbon taxes. His just-released budget imposes carbon tax increases of $80 to $170 per ton by 2030 on our already struggling industries.

Doing so increases Canadian businesses’ competitive disadvantage with our most important trading partner while doing essentially nothing to help the environment.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.