Jean Charest’s climate plan would abandon a key part of the Liberals’ net-zero strategy

OTTAWA — A Conservative government led by Jean Charest would keep Canada on course for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but abandon one of the key ways the Liberals have promised to get there — by having a consumer price on carbon.

Charest, a former federal environment minister, unveiled a wide-ranging plan to tackle climate change on Tuesday, becoming the first candidate in the party’s leadership race to dive into a topic that’s cost it votes in the last two elections.

“Having a credible plan on the environment is the table stakes for any national 2022 Conservative leadership candidate who wants our party to win the next federal election,” Charest said.

His plan seeks to put to bed a question that has dogged Charest since he launched his leadership bid: would he keep the current Liberal policy that puts a price on emitting carbon dioxide into the air?

As Quebec’s premier, Charest introduced a carbon pricing system for businesses, and railed against a decision by the federal Conservative government of the day to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement on emissions reductions.

That record has been weaponized by some of his leadership rivals as proof he was offside with the party’s bedrock opposition to consumer carbon pricing as a tax that does more economic damage than environmental good.

Charest picked up on that theme Tuesday, referring to the current carbon levy as the “Trudeau consumer carbon tax,” and saying it places too great a burden on people already struggling with the rising cost of living.

“A tax on consumers is not a climate plan,” Charest’s campaign document said.

His plan, however, sticks to a price on carbon for industry. The oil and gas and transportation sectors account for more than 40 per cent of total emissions in Canada.

Charest would remove the HST on emissions-reducing products and increase the availability of zero-emissions vehicles. He’d work with the US on a common set of emissions reductions standards for industry, increasing the production and use of energy sources like hydrogen and nuclear power, pay for retrofitting to make buildings greener and work with business to ensure they aren’t scared of investing in green technology because of uncertainty around energy pricing.

All of that would be in service of hitting a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount as they are being produced — what’s known as “net-zero” — by 2050.

The Liberals promised to hit that target in the 2019 election, and earlier this year set out a multibillion-dollar plan to get there, which includes reducing Canada’s overall emissions by 40 per cent by the end of this decade.

Charest would jettison that goal and revert to the previous Conservative government’s target of reducing emissions by 30 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030, his campaign said Tuesday.

Charest’s plan was released the same day the Liberal government was taken to task for its track record on emissions reductions, as federal environment commissioner Jerry DeMarco released audits that poked holes in the government’s multibillion-dollar approach.

Among other things, DeMarco said carbon pricing hurts certain segments of the economy more than others, and that the government continues to fail to reduce even its own emissions.

Charest pointed to the findings as proof a change in direction is needed.

“My plan is a credible and realistic approach to reaching our net-zero by 2050 targets without putting an unfair burden on rural and Indigenous communities or our economy,” he said in a statement to the Star.

Whether that’s entirely true is unclear, observers said. The plan is high level and devoid of specifics, such as what the price on carbon would be for industry.

Still, the fact Charest’s proposal targets industry, promises to get the electricity grid to net-zero by 2035, and would invest in capturing and storing carbon are all elements that lend substance to his claim, said Michael Bernstein, executive director of Clean Prosperity.

“It moves the ball forward in terms of what might be seen as credible, in terms of putting out a climate plan during a leadership race,” Bernstein said.

But that’s the leadership race.

Whether voters in a general election will feel the same way remains to be seen, Bernstein noted. A political narrative has emerged around carbon prices being the required element for any serious plan to reduce emissions, he said — and it is one many policy-makers agree is essential.

Bernstein’s group is among those Charest consulted to build his climate plan. He also worked with Conservatives for Clean Growth, an organization that emerged in the early days of the race as a sounding board for candidates as they develop environmental policy.

The executive director of that group, Ken Boessenkool, said while his organization is happy to provide the assistance, it won’t pronounce on the political viability of any candidate’s plan.

“We will not endorse any specific plan because even within Conservatives for Clean Growth, there are different views about what a credible plan looks like,” he said.

But defining a plan as credible means proving that it will actually reduce emissions, Bernstein said.

Will Charest’s? So far, he has not released the modeling to back up his claims about him.

In 2019, Conservative MPs explicitly pointed to their party’s lack of a robust climate policy as a reason some lost their seats.

But those who disagree with the political imperative on carbon pricing point to Erin O’Toole’s experience as party leader.

In 2020, O’Toole won leadership on a platform that included a plan to ax the federal carbon levy, only to later declare that a Conservative government would adopt a retail price on carbon.

Even with that, his party failed to make meaningful gains in the 2021 federal election — a fact his detractors cited when MPs booted him out of the job in February.

There are currently eight candidates registered to run in the race to replace him, with the final deadline to qualify coming up this Friday.

COMPARTIR: