Conservative leader Andrew Scheer cannot own the activities of
Progressive Conservative governments as his party’s “proud legacy”
because the PC governments were progressive and the Conservative Party
is not.

Scheer’s claim that Stephen Harper was responsible for the “net
decline of greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2015” is also
bogus. The Harper government closed research laboratories, gutted
environmental regulations and threatened bird clubs with Canada Revenue
Agency audits for even mentioning “climate change” in the same sentence
as “species loss.” There was a big drop in Canada’s greenhouse gas
emissions that closely corresponds to the 2008 recession which led to a
corresponding slowdown in fossil fuel production. Our emission levels
have been increasing since 2009.

The Globe and Mail: “It’s nothing more than a sad joke”

An opinion piece
by national affairs columnist Gary Mason asserts that the Conservative
climate “plan” is a fraud and decries Scheer’s motive to scrap the
national carbon tax.

“Climate change is the greatest threat the world has faced since the
rise of Nazism in the early part of the last century. Given the
importance of this issue, given the havoc that will be unleashed if
nothing is done, how depressing it is to realize that this sham of a
document is the best the Conservatives could do,” he wrote.

Clean Prosperity: “Andrew Scheer’s plan is going to cost Canadians more“

Progressive think tank Clean Prosperity published a press release
with a run-through of why Scheer’s climate plan misses the mark. “By
repealing the carbon tax, Andrew Scheer is taking away the best and
lowest cost way to fight climate change.  It’s like trying to build a
house without a hammer,” said Michael Bernstein, Executive Director of
Canadians for Clean Prosperity.

Maclean’s…

It’s worth noting
that those four sentences are made to sprawl, in really large type,
across five pages of Scheer’s document. Anyone who was once an
undergraduate humanities major cannot help but notice the feats of
margin-stretching and creative font selection that have produced a
61-page document from a guy who was really hoping climate change
wouldn’t be on the exam.

There’s 20 pages of throat-clearing and
Liberal-mocking before the document gets to its first actual proposal.
(Here’s that proposal: Scheer promises to “Set emissions standards for
major emitters that will lower greenhouse gases and drive Canadian
businesses to the highest standards of green technology.” What standards
will produce that result? No answer, in any font size.)