For a politician who Conservatives dismiss as a lightweight, @JustinTrudeau just lifted the premier of Alberta by the shirt collar, and threw him out of the province. https://t.co/aipIbAWwgO
— Charles Adler (@charlesadler) July 8, 2021
Category Archives: Politics
Federal Budget Puts $17.6 Billion into Green Recovery, Tips 36% Emissions Cut by 2030
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Photo by Joseph Morris, (CC BY-ND 2.0)
The federal government is getting decidedly mixed reviews for a 2021 budget that announces but doesn’t quite spell out C$17.6 billion in green recovery spending over the next five years, while tipping a 2030 emissions reduction goal of 36% that may be superseded within days by a more ambitious government target.
Many climate analysts and observers are greeting the mammoth, 724-page budget as a step in the right direction that doesn’t deliver nearly the funding or action commitment the climate crisis demands. With specific commitments spread across multiple chapters of the document, and new funding intermingled with past announcements, it wasn’t immediately clear what was included in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s pledge of “$17.6 billion towards a green recovery to create jobs, build a clean economy, and fight and protect against climate change”.
The Department of Finance hadn’t responded to a request for a full calculation by the time The Mix went to virtual press early this morning. But it was simple enough to compare the declared total, mostly spread over five-year spending commitments, to the minimum of almost $18 billion in subsidies and public financing the government lavished on the fossil industry in 2020 alone, according to an update released last week by Environmental Defence Canada.
Emissions Target Falls Short
The budget produced a much bigger flurry with a calculation that the new funding measures, coming on top of past federal climate programs, added up to a 36% emission reduction target for 2030, incrementally more than the 31% Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in mid-December. Days ago, Trudeau was expected to commit to a 40% reduction when he participates in U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate leaders’ summit tomorrow and Friday, and the budget reference triggered a flurry of Twitter traffic urging him to go farther still.
“The Canadian federal budget presentation could be the first good news of the week & a key step towards COP26,” tweeted European Climate Foundation Chair Laurence Tubiana, an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement. “@JustinTrudeau should commit to doubling Canada’s #climatefinance pledge & cutting emissions by 60% by 2030. This target would set Canada on a pathway to #netzero by 2050.”
“This is a big week for climate action!” agreed former U.S. vice-president and Climate Reality Project founder Al Gore. “As the US finalizes its commitment to reduce emissions, we need other leaders to step up also. I hope @JustinTrudeau & Canada will commit to reduce emissions at least 50% by 2030. Only through bold action can we address the climate crisis.”
“In light of Canada’s new budget and ahead of the #ClimateLeadersSummit, Mary Robinson encourages #Canada to step up by doubling its #climatefinance and ambition, with at least 50% cuts in emissions below 2005 levels by 2030,” added The Elders. Elders Chair Robinson, the former president of Ireland, stressed that “Canada needs to have a sense that it’s not just words at a summit,” during a news conference last week hosted by Climate Action Network-Canada (CAN-Rac).
It’s quickly becoming conventional wisdom that Biden will declare a target of 50% by 2030, the Washington Post reported Tuesday afternoon, though the White House has yet to confirm the figure.
The Dollars
Climate-related highlights of the budget include:
• $4.4 billion in interest-free loans to support deep energy retrofits in up to 200,000 homes;
• $2.3 billion over five years to address the biodiversity crisis, and conserve up to a million square kilometres of land and inland waters to meet the government’s 2025 deadline to designate 25% of Canada’s land and freshwater as protected areas, along with $976.8 million for marine and coastal areas;
• A spate of just transition measures, from a national early learning and child care strategy to a $15 federal minimum wage, that had one media analyst declaring that Freeland had swept away three decades of economic orthodoxy in a single budget;
• $5 billion in new funds and $8 billion in total for a Net Zero Accelerator, with a mandate for “decarbonizing large emitters, transforming key sectors—from steel and aluminium to cement—and accelerating the adoption of clean technology across the economy—for example, the auto and aerospace sectors”;
• $1.4 billion over 12 years for a new Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, along with $11.7 million over five years “to support projects such as wildfire mitigation activities, rehabilitation of storm water systems, and restoration of wetlands and shorelines”;
• $1 billion over five years to attract private sector investments to clean technology projects;
• A $319-million, seven-year program to support research, development, and demonstration of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology, along with a new tax incentive to speed up adoption of CCUS technology;
• $94.4 million over five years “to increase domestic and international capacity and action to address climate change”;
• $92.8 million in long-term funding for renewable energy certificates for federal buildings;
• $67.2 million over seven years to implement the federal Clean Fuel Standard;
• A plan to raise $5 billion through the country’s first-ever green bond.
The budget envisions shifting refundable household tax credits for the federal floor price on carbon from annual to quarterly payments, and funding a five-year, $36.2-million initiative “to develop and apply a climate lens that ensures climate considerations are integrated throughout federal government decision-making.” Ottawa will also launch a consultation on border carbon adjustments, and mandate climate risk disclosure for Crown corporations with more than $1 billion in assets, beginning next year at the latest.
“I welcome the introduction of mandatory climate-related financial disclosures standards for Canada’s Crown corporations, therefore fixing important transparency issues around fossil fuel funding by Export Development Canada, for example,” Independent Senator Rosa Galvez said in a release. “This initial step should evolve in the direction set by France and New Zealand, which are legislating mandatory disclosure in the markets, not just for Crown corporations.”
The budget contains fewer than 10, mostly technical instances of the word “fossil”, and no reference to the small modular nuclear reactor program that has been lobbying heavily for federal support.
Cutting Emissions While Bankrolling Polluters
Reaction from the climate community mostly acknowledged the good news in the budget, but pointed to the much bigger, more transformative commitments the climate crisis demands.
“Some investments made by Budget 2021 are extremely helpful— particularly investments in clean transportation, energy-efficient homes, resilient agriculture, and Canada’s first green bonds,” said Teika Newton, CAN-Rac’s membership and domestic policy manager. “Some investments made by Budget 2021 are extremely worrisome—investments in carbon capture and storage risk perpetuating our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, and some of the forestry investments perpetuate a transactional relationship with nature that treats it like a commodity we can trade. Yet the big takeaway is this: we are in a time of changing norms, and Budget 2021 does not present a vision for climate-safe, transformational change.”
“The budget is a great step forward despite the fact that it comes at a moment where the country needs the courage to take a giant leap forward to recover from the impact of COVID-19,” Galvez said. “Despite progress towards more ambitious emissions reductions by 2030, our contribution still falls short of our fair share.”
The federal plan “contains unprecedented investments to tackle climate change and environmental priorities,” said Julia Levin, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence Canada. “However, hiding in the details of this budget are some concerning elements, including a new commitment of more than $6 billion in financial support and new tax breaks for high-emitting sectors, including oil and gas. Without robust conditions, this money may go to support technologies, including carbon capture and fossil fuel-derived hydrogen, that will delay a transition away from fossil fuels and lock us into decades of increased carbon pollution.”
The budget shows the Trudeau government “investing in programs to cut emissions in one breath, and announcing new financial support and tax breaks for some of the worst climate polluters in the next,” said Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas director at Stand.earth. “While we are glad to see an increase in the ambition of Canada’s emissions reduction target, it is still far too low. Canada needs to match the commitments of other leading industrialized countries to reduce emissions globally, and that means increasing Canada’s emissions reduction goal to 60% below 2005 levels by 2030.”
“Canadians demanded a green and just recovery,” said Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart. “Trudeau has responded with funds for Indigenous communities, child care, and climate action, but fails to tackle our fossil fuel addiction and deepening inequality. To build a better normal, we must build back fossil-free.”
Karri Munn-Venn, senior policy analyst at Citizens for Public Justice, acknowledged new federal dollars for early learning, child care, and expanded employment insurance and emergency benefits, all consistent with the principles for a just recovery that 150 Canadian non-profits and campaign groups adopted last year. “Still,” she wrote, “Budget 2021 makes it clear that the federal government has yet to grasp the severity and urgency of the global climate crisis or the devastating ramifications of inadequate action.”
“This budget does not reflect that we are in a climate emergency,” said ClimateFast Co-Chair Lyn Adamson, citing an energy retrofit investment equal to just 10% of what would be needed to hit the country’s 2030 carbon reduction target. “Right now, climate is a side show, not central as it needs to be for civilization to continue,” with the result that “we are abandoning our children and grandchildren with inadequate action.”
Published with permission from The Energy Mix
Supreme Court Carbon Ruling Could Trigger ‘Start-Up Explosion’ but Loopholes Undermine Federal Floor Price
Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash
“With the roadblocks removed, entrepreneurs and investors around the world expect the carbon scheme to quickly boost the prospects of Canadian start-ups,” Tech Crunch writes, reacting to the Supreme Court of Canada’s strongly-worded decision late last month that held the federal floor price on carbon constitutional. “Companies that stand to directly benefit from a carbon tax in Canada include businesses like Kanin Energy, which develops decarbonization projects, including waste heat to power; CERT, which is currently competing in the carbon Xprize and is working on a way to convert carbon dioxide to ethylene; and SeeO2, a company also working on carbon dioxide conversion technologies.”
The California-based publication points to geothermal, transportation electrification, and hydrogen as technology areas that stand to advance as a result of the court ruling, noting that Ottawa’s target price of C$170 per tonne in 2030 is a bit higher than California currently pays, and about four times the carbon price set by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the northeastern U.S.
“The high price on carbon has the potential to make Canada a powerhouse for scaling up breakthrough decarbonization technologies and for deploying solutions like carbon capture, industrial electrification, and hydrogen electrolysis,” one start-up investor told Tech Crunch.
“This represents underlying government support and a huge pot of money. If you wanted macro support for an underlying shift in sectoral developments that could substantiate and support tech companies working on climate change mitigation, what better then when the government has told you that we care about this and money is free?” said BeZero Carbon founder, Tommy Ricketts. “There couldn’t be a better condition for start-ups in Canada.”
“Think about the gas at the pump. That is going to get charged extra,” added an unnamed fossil investor. “For cleaner energy, the price will definitely be reduced. And think about where this tax is going. Most of the tax is going to go to government funding into cleantech or climate-tech companies. So you have a double boost for start-ups in the carbon footprint reduction area.” [Actually, the largest share of the federal floor price is rebated to consumers—Ed.]
But some of that boost may be lost to loopholes Ottawa has allowed along the road to entrenching its floor price on carbon. “The special deals and exemptions the Liberal government has endorsed over the past three years mean there are gaping holes in that floor, with the incremental carbon charge in most of the Atlantic provinces far below the supposed federal minimum,” the Globe and Mail writes.
The paper details exemptions in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick that make a national minimum carbon price “less of a reality and more of an aspiration,” giving those provinces a significant financial break compared to Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Now, “some of the provinces that opposed carbon pricing in court are clamouring for the same kind of special treatment, even as Ottawa tries to close those holes.”
“What these mechanisms are doing is undoing any effect that the policy might have,” said Nicholas Rivers, Canada Research Chair in Climate and Energy Policy at the University of Ottawa. The Globe says there are signs that the special deals are running their course, but details the jockeying going on in as many as five provinces to undercut the national floor price.
Simon Fraser University sustainable energy specialist Mark Jaccard said the exemptions “disrupt the price signal that carbon pricing is supposed to deliver to consumers,” the paper adds. “But he said other parts of the government’s climate change strategy, including clean fuel regulations, will be less susceptible to distortion.”
Jaccard added that the reasoning behind the exemptions had everything to do with politics, not economics. “They were just trying to find friends.”
Reprinted from this article, with permission by The Energy Mix
Reference re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act
The Supreme Court of Canada rules the federal carbon pricing law is constitutional.
Parliament passed the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in 2018, based on the consensus that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global climate change. Countries around the world committed to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement. In Canada, the federal government passed the Act to implement its commitments.
Specifically, the law required provinces and territories to implement carbon gas pricing systems by January 1, 2019 or adopt one imposed by the federal government.
Why is the federal Act constitutional?
Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote for the majority of the judges, which found the Act to be constitutional. They noted that global warming causes harm beyond provincial boundaries and that it is a matter of national concern under the “peace, order and good government” clause of the Constitution.
The majority noted the Act would only apply where provincial or territorial pricing systems are not strict enough to reduce global warming.
A rarely applied doctrine of Canadian constitutional law
The majority noted that national concern is a well-established but rarely applied doctrine of Canadian constitutional law. The application of this doctrine is strictly limited in order to maintain the autonomy of the provinces and respect the diversity of confederation. However, the federal government has the authority to act in appropriate cases, where there is a matter of genuine national concern and where the recognition of that matter is consistent with the division of powers.
Federalism
The Constitution divides federal and provincial powers. The majority of judges observed that Canada, which has a federal system of governance, requires a balance between federal and provincial powers. They recalled that this concept, known as federalism, is a foundational principle of Canada’s Constitution.
Not a tax
The majority noted that the term “carbon tax” is often used to describe the pricing of carbon emissions. However, they said this has nothing to do with the concept of taxation, as understood in the constitutional context. As such, they also concluded that the fuel and excess emission charges imposed by the Act were constitutionally valid regulatory charges and not taxes.
How did the case get to the Supreme Court?
Three provinces – Saskatchewan, Ontario and Alberta – challenged the constitutionality of the Act by referring the legislation to their respective courts of appeal. The courts of appeal for Saskatchewan and Ontario found the Act constitutional, while the Alberta Court of Appeal found it unconstitutional.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether the federal government had the authority to pass such a law that puts a price on carbon.
What were the main arguments?
The provinces said they had their own climate policies, tailored to their own circumstances. They also argued that they have jurisdiction over natural resources.
For its part, the federal government argued that it has the authority to address issues that are national in scope. It also maintained that the law was a backstop (or safety net) to ensure minimum carbon pricing standards across the country.
Climate change is real
The Supreme Court also pointed out that all of the parties agree that global climate change is real. It’s caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities and it poses a grave threat to the future of humanity.
Cases in Brief are prepared by communications staff of the Supreme Court of Canada to help the public better understand Court decisions. They do not form part of the Court’s reasons for judgment and are not for use in legal proceedings.
Fact Checker Scorches Kenney’s Keystone Claims as Premier’s Political Woes Deepen
Keystone XL photo by AB Gov on Flickr(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
The Edmonton-based Parkland Institute is out with a detailed fact check of Premier Jason Kenney’s recent pronouncements on the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, while Maclean’s magazine speculates on whether this is the job Kenney was looking for when he sought the Alberta premiership.
Ever since U.S. President Joe Biden kept his promise and rescinded Keystone’s presidential permit on his first day in office last month, “Kenney and others continue to spread misinformation about KXL, the oil sands industry, and the energy transition,” Parkland Research Manager Ian Hussey writes on the organization’s blog. “Unfortunately, some media commentators are repeating Kenney’s talking points without fact checking.”
But contrary to those talking points, Hussey says Alberta fossil producers don’t need KXL (or the Trans Mountain expansion), the pipeline would not have reduced tar sands/oil sands producers’ operating costs, and the construction project would have created far fewer jobs than Kenney and other KXL proponents have been claiming.
“Alberta has so much to offer Canada and the world,” Hussey writes. “We need our elected officials to begin to take seriously the need to support these economic diversification possibilities and others that may arise through the ingenuity of Albertans.”
Hussey takes a close look at a half-dozen claims Kenney has been making on behalf of the now-defunct pipeline project, beginning with the “devastating consequences” he insists tar sands/oil sands producers will face in its absence. Citing analyst David Hughes, Hussey says the industry has enough “takeaway capacity” with existing pipelines, plus other expansions and “optimizations” that have already been announced, a reality that undercuts demand for Trans Mountain as well as KXL.
Former Husky Energy CEO Art Price said as much in a comment on Biden’s Keystone decision. “Pipelines today make no sense,” he stated. “There’s a surplus in the market. Stop trying to focus Alberta’s economy on growing oil production. Drop it. The industry has.”
While Kenney has been calling the cancellation “a gut punch for the Canadian and Alberta economies,” Hussey says the pipeline wouldn’t have reduced transportation costs for Alberta bitumen producers, and its cancellation won’t open the door to “retroactive” cancellations for other pipelines between the U.S. and Canada, as the premier has claimed.
“Line 3 and Line 5 have been facing legal and regulatory issues for years,” he writes. “Right now, the main sticking point for both pipelines pertains to water issues—permits, easements, and concerns about drinking water.” That’s why Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been casting a critical eye on operation of the 68-year-old Line 5. And in that political context, “it certainly isn’t helpful to Alberta or Canada that Premier Kenney suggested in November that Governor Whitmer is ‘brain dead’” for trying to shut the line down. Particularly not when Whitmer “was the national co-chair of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.”
Hussey takes aim at Kenney’s “tall tale” that the U.S. will replace Canadian tar sands/oil sands imports with product from Venezuela or the Middle East, points to the many other economic diversification options Alberta could take advantage of, and puts the pipeline’s direct employment in Alberta at 1,400 during construction—a far cry from the 59,000 the Alberta premier has been claiming. Read the blog post to get all the numbers and details.
While Parkland takes aim at Kenney’s facts and arguments, Maclean’s writer Jason Markusoff says the premier doesn’t appear to be having a very good time in his latest gig. “He returned from Ottawa with a suitcase full of ideas about who Albertans are and what they want from their premier,” the magazine writes. But now, a “seemingly perfect political match” looks to be going wrong.
Markusoff chronicles Kenney’s five-year “quest to restore the province” by merging two right-leaning political parties, defeating Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party government, and holding fast to Alberta conservatives’ consistent promises to balance budgets and “use government muscle to boost the [fossil] energy sector’s reputation and might. He bombed around the province in a blue pickup truck and told supporters at rallies: ‘We get ‘er done.’” And “the formula appeared to work, at least electorally.”
But governing has turned out to be a lot tougher than spinning an election win.
“Nearly two years into Kenney’s stint as Alberta premier, nothing is what it seemed,” Markusoff writes. “The disorientation runs deeper than the common, pandemic-induced challenges and public malaise that have undone the political agendas of leaders around the world; deeper even than the profound hardship and unemployment inflicted by the downturn of the [fossil] energy economy. Albertans are coming to realize they’re in the midst of a deeper, structural change, not another bust to be succeeded by another boom. Kenney has taken halting steps toward that new era. But he’s largely stuck with his pre-pandemic agenda—drawing outcry from Albertans angry about cuts to the public sector or government spending on private interests.”
After running on a platform that contained 375 specific policy commitments, “this is not the Alberta that Jason Kenney came back for,” Markusoff says. “It’s different in outlook, and in its reception to the Great Right Hope he presented himself as. He has time in his mandate to figure out what Albertans want, but a track record with so many missteps leaves him with so much more to fix.”
Markusoff goes deep on the mix of challenges Kenney must contend with in the two years before he has to face the voters—more than half of whom now believe their province’s best days are behind it. The premier has “the benefit of time before Alberta’s 2023 election—time to figure out how to balance his rural base’s demands with those of urban moderates, and bring the economic revival he’d promised, and manage a structural fiscal crisis without alienating everyone who relies on public services and salaries, and figure out a way forward for the energy economy, either through transition or steely resilience,” he writes.
But it’s going to be a tough slog. “When he set off on his complicated quest to swoop in and unite two warring conservative parties and lead this united group to victory, political watchers’ refrain was: if anybody can do it, Jason Kenney can. With problems all around him, who’s saying that now?”
Article used with permission from The Energy Mix