Navigator logo

Will voters be persuaded by Erin O’Toole’s daring new climate plan?

This week Erin O’Toole ended months of futile speculation when he announced details of the plan he hopes will take him to 24 Sussex (or at least Rideau Cottage) — also known as the Conservative Party’s climate change plan.

The plan is built around replacing the Liberal carbon tax with a lower levy (a levy, not a tax!) to be paid upon the purchase of gasoline and the like. The money from that levy would go into a personal low-carbon savings account which Canadians could then use to buy certain “green” things.

This differs from the current Liberal plan, which provides direct cash rebates to Canadians.

Let us begin by acknowledging that O’Toole daring to embrace a carbon price at all is worthy of praise. Real political courage is rare, and O’Toole is likely to face significant internal dissent on this proposal.

But, for months, he has promised to bring forward a serious and credible climate change plan. Wednesday’s announcement delivered on that promise.

It follows from the calculation that without it, the party simply would not have been viable in Ontario, and in the 905 specifically.

The problem is that the Conservatives have also spent a significant amount of political capital savaging Trudeau’s carbon tax, only for them to introduce a program that appears, on the surface, to be eerily similar.

But if we look deeper, important distinctions emerge.

Under Trudeau’s climate plan, households in the same province or region get (more or less) the same size cheque, regardless of how little or how big their actual carbon footprint may be.

The Conservative complaint has always been that this unfairly punishes suburbanites or farmers, who necessarily have a bigger carbon footprint because of the need to heat their larger homes or drive greater distances.

Under the Conservative plan, the solution to this problem is that money spent on fossil fuels will instead be given back to the people spending it, through the proposed special savings accounts.

Therein lies the crucial distinction: the Conservative plan is not so much a carbon tax, as a carbon personal mandate (or “pricing mechanism,” to borrow O’Toole’s preferred formulation). The only redistribution at work is taking money that consumers spend increasing their carbon footprint and requiring them to put it towards spending that decreases their carbon footprint.

Viewed this way, the plan is an effective wedge tool. Armed with this policy, O’Toole’s Conservative candidates in the 905 or other similar regions can tell voters that while Trudeau’s Liberals are taxing them because of their lifestyle and sending the money to downtown condo dwellers without cars, their plan puts the money back in their own pockets.

In principle, this is an interesting idea; clever even. But in practice, there are many potential problems. How will the federal government track how much gasoline or other carbon-intensive products people buy? Will the financial services companies even agree to play ball when it comes to implementing this scheme, and how much will it cost to bring them on board? What about people who buy gas and pay with cash? While the proposal describes Canadians using their new personal carbon savings accounts to buy things like bicycles, energy-efficient furnaces or electric vehicles, it’s not really clear how much money would even flow into these accounts at a price point of $20 per tonne.

No matter — doubts and challenges faced the Trudeau Liberals in implementing their own carbon tax. It was only with this month’s Supreme Court ruling that some of those very problems were resolved.

O’Toole’s work is not done. It may well be that when voters ultimately go to the polls, they are unpersuaded by O’Toole’s proposal. Proponents of a price on carbon may be more likely to prefer the Liberal plan; opponents may be upset that O’Toole has embraced the idea at all.

But Wednesday’s announcement will be viewed as a watershed political moment because it marks the first time that a Conservative leader has taken such a serious position on climate change. Going forward, this will hopefully become the baseline for party leaders, even as the party irons out the details of any eventual legislation.

One last point not to miss: Wednesday’s announcement was broadcast live from a new Conservative campaign broadcast centre. With all the bells and whistles of a modern television studio, it was a slick, well-produced and technologically capable display. One that showed the party is more ready than ever to fight a virtual election, whenever it may come.

Our eventual return to the office will take new policies — and a new mindset

As the pandemic marches inevitably on toward its second summer of lockdowns and physical distancing, it can be easy to lose notice of just how much our lives have changed.

This is especially true, I think, for those of us who have grown accustomed to working from home and to the reliable, quiet drift of each day into the next that comes with it.

We may not miss the jetsam of our former lives — the habits and activities we were able to gladly throw overboard in the face of COVID-19. But the flotsam of this pandemic, the chaos and destruction it has caused, the upheaval of entire neighbourhoods, is a reality we can’t escape.

Nowhere is this wreckage more pronounced than in the ghost town of Toronto’s PATH system.

These days, a stroll through the PATH is a stark reminder that the office as we knew it has been turned entirely upside down. For many companies, this pandemic has been a forced foray into the world of working from home, or as some wags prefer: live at work.

For the most part, employees seem to be content with the changes to their routine. In fact, a recent poll of Canadians suggests that one in three would look for a new job if asked to return to the office full-time. That is a remarkable figure, especially given the precarity and general insecurity many are still feeling about their lives, their future and their work.

What’s more, it speaks to the reality that is dawning on the other end of this pandemic. Just as they had to adapt last year, employers need to prepare for a return to work that is responsive to all that has changed — and with it the new expectations of their employees.

I don’t belong to the category of those who think we will never return to the office. Quite the opposite. In my view, people will return to the office, in part, because they miss their old lives. But also because business imperatives will push us back.

Fundamentally, there are three crucial things that are lost without the chance to work together in the same space.

First, the element of companionship and camaraderie that solidifies our working relationships. Part of what’s missing in a virtual workplace is the natural ebb and flow of professional and personal time. In the office, we go from coffee to meetings to lunch and then back to work, all the while establishing enriching personal bonds.

Second, we lose the opportunity for collaboration and collision to organically improve the work we do. No chance for a conversation overheard or some coincidental synergy to make all the difference to a project. Something that given the tightness and closeness of our country, matters more to us than most.

Finally, without a return to the office, we lose much of the benefit of mentorship — which just cannot have the same impact in remote work. This is especially a loss for younger professionals, who won’t have the opportunity for crucial advancement and learning from their colleagues.

There, three quick reasons why the office is not dead — yet. But I also recognize that change is necessary. The best answer? Most likely a hybrid model, where solitary work that can be done with minimal collaboration is done in a new way, while work that requires collaboration is conducted (at least more often) in a shared space.

And, of course, we must recognize that for all the changes we can expect to our physical office experience, the policies that underpin our work life will need to change too.

Many companies will be more flexible about work schedules. Some will reconfigure how workload is allocated. Our own firm has implemented a policy of unlimited vacation, recognizing that strict allotments of vacation time are out of sync with the reality of how we now work and live our lives.

Whatever the specific solutions, the important thing is for business leaders to recognize the tide of change that’s taken place, and adapt accordingly.

Pandemic failures are disheartening, but they must move us forward

This has become a dispiriting phase of the pandemic. This week, Ontario slammed the emergency brake on — again.

At times like this, as we enter our second year of missing Passovers, Easters and birthdays — feeling like we are all being held hostage to a string of disheartening failures — it can help to take the long view.

I’ve written in this space before that COVID-19 is the second pandemic that I have lived through — the first one being the HIV-AIDS crisis weathered in the 1980s and 1990s.

And while you can’t comparatively rate loss and pain, despair then seemed endlessly prolonged by a string of failures, and because of the lack of a pharmaceutical salvation.

It has been 40 years since researchers started looking for an HIV vaccine, and the story has been one of failure after bitter failure. Even some of the characters in that pandemic — like Dr. Anthony Fauci — are reappearing in this one, the same then as now.

So it made for some welcome good news this week to learn that, according to a new paper published by economist Jeffrey E. Harris at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all of those failures have amounted to something precious indeed.

Harris finds that more than 85 per cent of the technology powering the COVID-19 vaccine candidates can be traced back to prototypes tested in HIV vaccine trials, from the synthetic mRNA in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, to the viral-vector model used by Johnson & Johnson in their single-shot COVID-19 vaccine.

There is a certain poetic beauty in this realization. After a long winter of suffering and discontent, there comes a hopeful spring. (This is true in HIV-AIDS research as well, which still has no vaccine, but does have a prophylactic in the form of Truvada, a once-daily pill that can prevent HIV infection, in addition to the breakthrough antiretrovirals that truly turned the tide back in the mid-1990s.)

But in Harris’ finding, there is also an important lesson for the rest of us.

And by the rest of us, I mean here is where politicians and policy-makers can learn from scientists. Success can grow from failure — but only if we are honest with ourselves, rigorous and transparent in our approach, and clear-eyed about what works and what doesn’t.

The difficult part is that we can never know which failures or dead ends today will be redeemed tomorrow. That process begins with a clinical examination of what went wrong, and we are in the earliest stages of that process, even as we continue to grapple with COVID-19 in real time.

Auditor General of Canada Karen Hogan’s recently released report is only the first of what will no doubt become an entire genre of bureaucratic literature: the COVID-19 post-mortem.

In her report, Hogan found that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was unprepared for the pandemic, with some of the issues marring the early response to COVID having been flagged as far back as 20 years ago.

The picture of the agency that Hogan paints reflects a broader failing of the federal government, which is the atrophying of Canada’s state capacity (i.e., our ability to effectively mobilize its decision-making apparatus in a crisis). For a country that was traumatized by SARS to have a federal public health agency unprepared for a pandemic is inexplicable. It reflects a concerning inability to learn from our past failures.

On the other hand, it is not all doom and gloom. Hogan found that while PHAC’s response was fumbled, other branches of the federal government did an admirable job in quickly ushering out new support payments for workers and businesses in the pandemic’s early days.

If we accept that part of the reason for that decline in state capacity is our general inability to proceed without endless box-ticking and other forms of bureaucratic red tape, the rapid response exemplified by CEWS and CERB were the exception that made the rule. Turns out it actually was possible to move fast and adjust later.

These are our earliest learnings, but the trick will be to not be deaf to them. The trick will be to find the confidence to allow us to have our failure move us forward.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on carbon pricing is a political windfall for the Liberals, but also a chance for Erin O’Toole to make hay

The Supreme Court has spoken. Climate change — and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — is a matter of national concern.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act is constitutional and that the federal government indeed has the authority to implement or require provinces to implement a minimum price on carbon.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Richard Wagner argued that the issue of reducing GHGs to address climate change meets the definition of a “matter of national concern” and thus can fall within Parliament’s exclusive jurisdiction.

In the majority’s view, climate change “is causing significant environmental, economic and human harm nationally and internationally, with especially high impacts in the Canadian Arctic, coastal regions and on Indigenous peoples.”

The majority also agreed that the provinces do not have sufficient ability to address climate change independently. Provincial governments, they reasoned, do not have authority to implement a consistent standard across the entire country and, further, the withdrawal or refusal of a single province or territory would “jeopardize its success in the rest of Canada.”

In short: we are all in this together.

The prime minister has used similar reasoning before. Speaking about the pricing act in Parliament in 2016, Trudeau remarked that “because pollution crosses borders, all provinces must do their part.”

The ruling itself is a gift to the Liberals ahead of another election, because it finally settles the prolonged debate over the constitutionality of the law. Opponents will continue to attack carbon pricing in the court of public opinion, but for now at least, the legal challenges have ended.

Beyond that, the language in the ruling is a boon for team Trudeau. Having identified climate change as a matter of national concern, the court’s decision seems to imply that a federal government — regardless of politics — is not just empowered but expected to take appropriate action. Canadians respect the impartiality of our highest court, so the language of the ruling will serve the Liberals well as they gear up for an election.

At the same time, the decision presents a unique challenge for the leader of the Opposition.

Last week, Erin O’Toole attempted to usher in a new era for his party by declaring, in his speech at the CPC policy convention, that the debate over the reality of climate change was “over.”

Not so fast.

Delegates later voted against a motion recognizing that climate change is real (albeit one with wider policy implications). After the vote, O’Toole continued with his stake in the ground by declaring, “I am in charge.”

And while he is indeed in charge, he is going to have to deal with the court’s commentary on the “national concern” standard and the responsibilities attached to it.

But here is where there may be a silver lining for O’Toole.

Notwithstanding the inevitable protests of Western MPs who fiercely oppose any form of carbon pricing, the party desperately needs a sincere strategy on climate action.

It has become rote for pundits — and pollsters — to say that the CPC cannot win another election without a serious climate plan, so why do we keep ignoring them?

My hope is that the settled legal case allows O’Toole some breathing room to develop a Conservative approach to carbon pricing — and in so doing, garner the party enough support in Ontario, and elsewhere, to win an election.

A genuine Conservative climate plan could achieve what O’Toole and his predecessor have failed to do to date: prove to Canadians that the CPC is a modern party, open to change, reflective of and responsive to their concerns.

Let the opponents find support in provincial governments who — like the three dissenting justices — can attack what they see as the law’s jurisdictional overreach rather than climate action generally.

Two elections and, now a decision of the Supreme Court, have settled this matter.

It is now time for the federal Conservatives to pick a different fight.

2021 Ontario Budget: Insights and Analysis

For Ontarians, this week has been a stark reminder of just how truly unalike their provincial and federal governments are. For Premier Ford, that may be very welcome news.

On the one hand, we awoke on Tuesday to news that federal Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland will table her first full budget since taking on the role—and the government’s first in two years—on April 19.

On the other, Ontario’s minister of finance, Peter Bethlenfalvy was delivering his first budget as well, the third fiscal update provided by the province since COVID-19 began last spring.

It is a remarkable study in contrasts that speaks volumes about each government’s political priorities. For the Ford government, accountability and transparency are the hallmark of their appeal to voters, but they have also focused squarely on their core competencies within their jurisdiction – investing in health care and education.

The federal Liberals, alternatively, have focused more on delivering big ticket items throughout their pandemic response.

Unsurprisingly, the differences did not end there.

In “finishing the job” they began last year, Ford and Bethlenfalvy have tried to strike a difficult balance between fiscal stewardship and pandemic response until vaccines are in every single arm. To do so, they’ve tabled a budget that relies on a measured approach, bolstered by claims to focus specifically on the “lives and livelihoods” its title invokes.

Not only does the budget commit multi-billion-dollar spending to vaccine rollout, hospitals, testing, contact tracing, personal protective equipment, and long-term care, but it also makes a concerted effort to shore up funding for business supports, skills training, and parental supports.

These commitments will be crucial at a time when many Ontarians are experiencing cognitive dissonance between the good news they’re hearing and the less rosy facts on the ground. We have a way to go yet—and investments likes these will be the ones carrying us over the finish line.

The same goes for additional investments in long-term care and their ambitious commitments to provide 30,000 new long-term care beds over 10 years. True to his record, Bethlenfalvy wants to be seen not as delivering one-offs but rather making capital investments that will pay off in the long run.

To be sure, the spending taps are open (to the tune of $190.3 billion this past fiscal year) but they are flowing less freely or widely than those in Ottawa. It’s a difference in approach that Canadians will notice, and the Ford government is betting that Ontarians will appreciate the value of their method.

Don’t expect them to play on the contrast, however. Having watched Trudeau for the past few months, Premier Ford is keenly aware that Canadians have no appetite for divisive politicking until the pandemic has been managed and decisively put to bed by mass vaccination.

Instead, expect Ford to let his government’s approach speak for itself. And once the vast majority of Ontarians have been vaccinated in the fall, expect the Premier and his cabinet to launch a full recovery plan in the form of an election budget to carry them into the next campaign.

The good news is that until then, they have committed to doing and spending more than enough to keep Ontario afloat.

As for the deficit—Bethlenfalvy has conceded that it will be with us for a decade at least and he will certainly not be alone among governments, not only across the country but around the world, in that legacy.

That will be cause for fiscal hawks to gripe, but at the end of the day, the Tories can argue: who better than Ford and his team to chip away at that deficit?

All they will to need to do so, they can conveniently claim, is four more years.