If there were ever a time for the federal government to be extra ambitious on climate change, it’s right now — not just for the sake of global warming, but for the sake of our own economy, too.
Over the next few weeks, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson will be setting out several key building blocks that will establish how Canada cuts emissions in the short and long terms.
With Joe Biden heading to the White House armed not just with good intentions on climate change but some intense planning as well, Canada has an opportunity to take these policy pieces and surge ahead — or risk being leapfrogged in the global competition to corner the burgeoning clean energy market.
Biden’s win means the goal to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is now completely mainstream, with the transition to a low-carbon economy becoming a basic assumption for countries around the world.
“His election will have a material impact on the future of climate policy internationally,” says Colin Guldimann, an economist at the Royal Bank of Canada who has been tracking the issue.
In some respects, Canada is well positioned. We’ve been thinking seriously about how to reduce emissions and have had a carbon price in place across the country for years now, despite all the griping.
But even as President Donald Trump diluted U.S. policy on emissions during his four years in office, the American private sector has been pushing the United States closer to its 2030 targets than Canada. And now, Biden aims to ratchet up the pace by rejoining the Paris accord, electrifying the country by 2035, and steering the oil and gas sector toward lower emissions.
Biden may not be able to implement his entire climate plan right away. He faces a sizable Republic minority in the House of Representatives, and control of the Senate remains unresolved.
But according to the Washington Post, a team of former Obama administration officials has already presented him with a 300-page plan that includes dozens of ways he can forge ahead despite those obstacles, by examining every decision through a climate lens.
One risk for Canada is that the clean technology sector in the United States will take off with speed and power as we plod along, says Michael Bernstein, executive director of Clean Prosperity.
The bigger risk, he says, is that the United States and Europe both move to impose a carbon border adjustment, essentially taxing carbon-heavy goods coming from outside their borders. There’s a possibility that Canada’s oil and gas, steel and manufactured goods could get caught in the crosshairs. Or maybe not, because it could be that such a tax exempts Canada because we have climate pricing.
Either way, the stakes are so high that we need to prepare.
That’s where Wilkinson’s moves over the next month take on added importance.
He will be tabling legislation to make good on an election promise to be producing netzero emissions in Canada by 2050. The bill will set up fiveyear targets and give Parliament and the public the tools to hold the government to account.
He will be publishing draft regulations on the clean fuel standard, meant to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use and push us towards cleaner energy. The regulations have been a long time coming, caught up in political controversy and pandemic delays.
And he’ll be setting out a climate plan that will propose concrete ways to reach Canada’s 2030 emissions goals, filling in the blanks to make up for the shortfall left by low carbon prices.
There’s a hydrogen strategy in the works and there’s an electric vehicle strategy in the works. And there’s a throne speech commitment to create a million jobs, mainly focused on building a low-carbon economy.
Taken together, the policy could form the basis of how Canada could meet its emissions targets and compete head on with the rest of the world as it moves to a lowcarbon economy as well.
But the building blocks need to be stuffed full of ambition and backed up by money in the next budget if Canada wants to take advantage of the moment.
Will there be carbon budgets and binding targets set out in the legislation, limiting the amount of carbon Canada can produce every five years? Will there be incentives to make carbon capture and other technologies worth the investment? Will there be subsidies to develop infrastructure so that the entire country can benefit from our ample ability to produce low-carbon electricity? And will there be support for those who are hurt by the transition?
In the past, we have held back, being extra-careful to move in lockstep with the United States for fear of losing market share or a competitive edge in the global marketplace for energy.
Those restraints have dropped away now, with a Biden victory, says Dave Sawyer, an environmental economist with the governmentfunded Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.
“It creates more political space, which is a big deal in this country,” Sawyer says.
Let’s take full advantage.