Mark Carney is the new Prime Minister of Canada and he’ll be running against Pierre Poilievre in the next election. His first and loudest policy announcement has been the cancellation of Trudeau’s flagship climate policy — the carbon price and benefit.
Carbon pricing was a good policy that fell to a relentless and well-funded misinformation campaign. Not only did carbon pricing make it easier for Canadians to make good climate choices, it was also a way to help out low-income Canadians who are more likely to live in a small apartment and take the bus. All Canadians receive carbon benefits, but they are mainly funded by those who paid additional carbon tax heating their mansions and filling up their SUVs.
Mark Carney has been vocal about climate change for a long time, even before he got involved in politics, a sign that he is serious about this issue. Unfortunately, his efforts didn’t deliver results, because he had faith in bankers doing the right thing voluntarily. Hopefully he won’t fall into the trap of treating corporate forces as good faith actors.
Before his name came up as a potential successor for Trudeau, Mark Carney was the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and then the Bank of England and he was a major force in the launch of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Read more) a voluntary association for global banks who wanted to align their lending and investing with net-zero emissions targets. Ending loans for fossil fuel expansion has been something we have long advocated for, because it’s the simplest and most effective way to wind down the fossil fuel industry. Unfortunately, the Net Zero Banking Alliance was far too lenient on bad banks (like the big 5 Canadian banks) and didn’t end up doing much more than greenwashing big financial conglomerates that were still lending billions for fossil fuel expansion.
That said, Climate Pledge Collective has always been an all-of-the-above advocacy group. Reducing emissions will require transformations throughout society, so there’s no climate policy silver bullet. In fact, there are lots of other policies we would prefer, like subsidies for low-emissions renovations and technologies, policies that promote walking, cycling and public transit and just banning shit — which is free.
If the carbon tax has become politically impossible, we would much rather have a Prime Minister who replaces it with other climate policies than a Prime Minister who replaces it with lies and expanded fossil fuel subsidies, which is what we are likely to get from Poilievre. Carney’s promise to axe the tax isn’t the end of the world, as long as he replaces it with other policies that will do as much or more to reduce our carbon emissions.
Mark Carney’s plan does have some good points. He is keeping carbon pricing for large industrial emitters. He wants to subsidize EVs and heat pumps, especially for low and middle income Canadians. Which is great. He is also proposing a ‘Carbon Border Adjustment’ which is something we have always wanted to see. Countries with carbon prices need to band together and put prices on imports from countries without carbon prices so we don’t end up exporting all our emissions to countries with large manufacturing sectors. Carney also has a number of proposals to regulate the financial sector towards funding climate action — which is probably the simplest path towards transitioning our economy. But the devil is in the details here.
Our biggest worry is that a Mark Carney government will be tempted to try to ‘work with’ bad-faith actors like Canadian banks and fossil fuel companies, instead of regulating them properly. Banks and fossil fuel companies have proven again and again that they will happily greenwash their activities and then lobby against policies that actually reduce emissions behind closed doors.
We’re big fans of multi-solving at Climate Pledge Collective and Canada is facing a lot of problems right now, so there are big opportunities on the horizon which Mark Carney hasn’t mentioned yet. Climate Pledge Collective would love to see big investments in net-zero social housing and no-interest loans for new, net-zero co-operative housing. The government of Canada will likely spend big to stimulate the economy in the face of the current trade war, so why not spend on something we desperately need, like housing? Given the slow-down in construction, there will be lots of construction workers looking for work in the coming months and years. Adding a net-zero clause to those investments would also bring down future emissions. Unlike writing blank cheques, this form of stimulus would also leave the Canadian government with assets in the form of housing stock they could rent out or loan repayments from coop housing developments!
While we would love to hear Mark Carney talk about social housing as a climate policy, even the worst-case scenarios for Mark Carney are likely better than the best-case scenarios for a Poilievre government, so we encourage our readers to support him and the Liberal party in the next election (unless you have a good chance of getting an NDP or Green MP elected in your riding).
Climate Pledge Collective 