By Canadian Press

Cut emissions twice as fast, ease worker anxiety, advocates say post-election

Nov 3, 2019 | 9:02 AM

OTTAWA — A coalition of climate-change advocates is urging Canada’s new minority Parliament to promptly develop a clear, effective and coherent strategy for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in order to prevent escalating anxiety in the oilpatch from impeding urgently needed progress.

Climate Action Network Canada, along with representatives from Unifor, Leadnow, Greenpeace and 350.org, say climate was the biggest factor in the recent federal election, and those parties that ran on climate platforms owe it to voters to organize a co-ordinated response.

“This was truly Canada’s first climate election and it demands a significant shift in the politics surrounding climate action in Canada,” said Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.

For too long, climate action has been a political football in a partisan game, and voters sent the message last month they expect that to change, Abreu told a news conference Friday in Ottawa. The Liberals, NDP, Green and Bloc Quebecois parties all had overlapping promises on climate change, which ought to make co-operating on the file easier, she added.

Logan McIntosh, executive director of Leadnow, said there was some disappointment earlier this week when NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh declared pharmacare, not climate change, as his top priority for lobbying the Liberals when Parliament resumes.

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“We are facing a climate emergency and we want to see all the political parties put climate change at the top of their agenda,” McIntosh said.

The fallout from the Oct. 21 vote saw Justin Trudeau’s Liberals reduced to a minority government, with no MPs at all from Alberta and Saskatchewan — provinces where anxiety about the economic impact of combating climate change is highest and where voters overwhelmingly backed the Conservatives, a party with no plans to reduce domestic oil and gas production.

Abreu said politicians have been using those anxieties as “a political weapon” and interpreting the fears as a rejection of climate action.

“Instead of using the anxiety that workers are expressing as they face a series of challenges as a reason to stall climate action, we need to use climate action as an opportunity to build those new jobs and those new economic sectors that will ensure workers and communities are safe into the future.”

Ken Bondy, national representative for Unifor, which represents more than 11,000 oil and gas workers in almost every province, said the union has heard clearly from its membership that climate change is an issue for them but they are also concerned about their jobs.

“We need a balanced approach to taking climate action and just transition for workers that may be affected,” said Bondy. “Quite frankly I don’t believe anybody has nailed down a specific explanation for just transition, or what it looks like.”

Workers have to be consulted about what they want and what will help them, he added, noting no one single solution will work for every affected community.

Last March, the federal Liberals heard from a task force that looked at transitioning coal power workers as Canada strives to eliminate coal as a source of electricity by 2030. The recommendations included local transition centres to help with retraining, as well as support for relocating, pension-bridging and job banks for workers looking for new opportunities.

Bondy and Abreu both said a similar task force for the energy sector is also needed.

Trudeau promised during the campaign to introduce a “Just Transition Act” to ensure workers can get training and supports. Such legislation was a critical part of the Paris climate change agreement Canada signed in 2015, but the specifics of the act are still unclear.

The Paris accord is also where Canada agreed to cut emissions to 70 per cent of what they were in 2005 by 2030. Abreu said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear in a report last year that target is nowhere near enough to prevent catastrophic climate change impacts.

To do its fair share, Canada must cut emissions twice as much as currently planned over the next decade, which will require significant policies that can be implemented quickly, Abreu said.

“It means a scale of mobilization that is unprecedented,” she said. “It definitely is not business as usual.”

That, she continued, would mean mass retrofit programs to make buildings in Canada more efficient, retooling transportation to accommodate electric vehicles and public transportation, and addressing emissions from the oil and gas sector. The carbon tax also needs to continue to rise by at least $10 per tonne every year, Abreu said.

Anxieties about the impact of climate change have ramped up even in the 12 days since the vote — one study in the journal Nature Climate Change showed warming Arctic soil now releases more carbon into the atmosphere every year than northern plants can reabsorb in the summer. Another recent study found sea levels are rising faster than previously thought, with 150 million people around the world living on land that could be underwater as early as 2050.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press