Would a Conservative prime minister kill the Liberals’ climate plan?

OTTAWA—The road map unveiled by the Liberals to slash greenhouse gas emissions will force the Conservative party to answer a major question: will they follow the plan if they end up in power?

By 2030, the Liberals want to reduce emissions to at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels and on Tuesday unveiled a $9.1 billion plan to get there.

The deadline falls five years after the next scheduled election, meaning when Canadians next go to the polls, work to achieve those targets will be well underway.

That could have significant implications for the direction of Conservative climate policy, observers say.

For Conservatives angling for an end to the carbon tax, for instance, the Liberals new plan could pose a major problem, said Michael Bernstein, executive director of Clean Prosperity, a policy think tank that advocates for market-based solutions to climate change.

Among the details released Tuesday: the Liberals’ desire to provide certainty around carbon price increases, which they say could involve legislation or contracts with industry.

Bernstein said that approach — which he welcomed — will give the private sector the ability to plan and plot the investments they’ll need to make in order to reduce emissions, especially if the government agrees to make up any differences.

But it would make scrapping the carbon tax a costly proposition, said Bernstein.

“It is going to make it more difficult and more expensive to remove the carbon tax if in fact that’s what the next leader decides to do.”

Many of the candidates are already committed to going down that road.

In recent days, their main talking point on carbon pricing has been the planned increase coming into effect this Friday, which both elected Tories and leadership candidates say is unfair in the context of rising prices overall and they’ve been calling for a pause.

Most candidates — including the front-runners Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest and Patrick Brown — have also committed to scrapping the federal carbon tax. Brown and Poilievre both repeated the pledge on Tuesday.

Elements of their climate plans are slowly coming together.

In response to the Liberals Tuesday, Poilievre said he wants to reduce emissions through technology, while Brown said he will present a plan that “that protects our energy sector and your pocketbook.”

Having a robust approach to combating climate change is now taken as a must for the party to form government, and in an effort to help candidates understand that, a new working group called Conservatives for Clean Growth was formed by Conservative strategists and former politicians explicitly for the leadership race. The group is offering its help to campaigns to craft climate policy and has spoken to all of them.

While detailed policy will emerge in the coming months, there have been glimpses of the direction some candidates will take.

Charest, who implemented a carbon tax during his time as premier of Quebec, has suggested in recent interviews that he now backs only an industrial price, not a retail one.

In a statement Tuesday, his campaign called the Liberals’ new plan “incomplete and unserious.”

“It does not specify the emissions caps that the government plans to impose on sectors, specifically oil and gas. That is not only unfair, it is reckless, ”his campaign said.

The Liberals said what caps they will place on the oil and gas industry — responsible for more than a quarter of Canada’s emissions in 2019 — will be developed via consultations this year.

Those caps will have resonance for leadership candidates because of how much Conservative support lies in Canada’s oil-producing provinces.

Poilievre has suggested his plan to double Canada’s oil and gas output is part of his climate change agenda, because it means cleaner Canadian energy can displace that produced in countries with fewer environmental regulations.

An oft-repeated refrain among Tories is that driving down emissions is impossible without curtailing oil production and that in turn would devastate the economy.

Brown recently rejected, for example, the concept of a “just transition,” which provides federal support to workers who may be at risk of losing their jobs as the energy sectors realigns itself with emissions-reductions goals.

“The only ‘just transition’ is Justin Trudeau transitioning out of office,” Brown said in a policy statement on Western Canada, launched earlier this month.

But, Bernstein pointed out, the Liberal plan showcases a path to emissions reductions with an increase in oil production.

“The bar has been raised,” he said.

The Conservative leadership race is in its early days. Candidates have until April 29 to pay the full entry fee needed to run.

To date, 10 people are trying to qualify: Poilievre, Brown, Charest, MPs Leslyn Lewis, Scott Aitchison and Marc Dalton, former MP Leona Alleslev, Ontario MPP Roman Baber, lawyer and former Tory candidate Joel Etienne, and Saskatchewan businessman Joseph Bourgault.

The vote will take place via mail-in ballot and a winner will be announced on Sept. 10.