Chris Ross: Where and how Tories and Liberals disagree on climate

And why our policies changed to match the politics.

By: Chris Ross

Why does Mark Carney, whose previous job was the UN special envoy for climate action and finance, not really talk about climate change?

Political parties used to jockey for climate credibility. In 2019, Justin Trudeau saw it as an asset to be photographed with Greta Thunberg. In 2021, Erin O’Toole ran on carbon pricing and we had a genuine debate over emission reduction targets and how to credibly get there. As a climate voter, it was good times.

But then inflation made this recent election a cost of living battle (Trump took centre stage for much of it, but the cost-of-living issue never really went away). Because of an incredibly effective, “facts-second” campaign by the Conservative party, which pinned the financial squeeze squarely on the carbon tax, the once-hailed climate plan became toxic — not even Liberals were on board with the policy by election day, with only 40 per cent of Liberal voters believing the carbon tax should be kept. That was down from 70 per cent in 2019. (I pulled these numbers from the Canadian Election Study surveys for those election years.)

This isn’t hard to understand. In an era dominated by stories of financial pain and geopolitical upheaval, climate concerns became a luxury belief in the eyes of millions of Canadian voters. But this must have been painful for Carney. As an economist, he knows the rebates ensured the poorest were kept whole whereas the richest Canadians, by far, paid for the cost. After all, carbon pricing is the most cost-effective approach to lowering emissions. Still. In the face of political reality, he retreated. Now, the Conservatives are saying they also want to cut the industrial carbon tax — a step that would have a much greater effect on carbon emissions in Canada than scrapping the consumer tax did.

Carney has shown a willingness to adopt Conservative policies, when political pressures demand it. Thus far, he has held the line on the industrial carbon tax. The Liberal platform states, “[We will] ensure that Canadians don’t bear the cost of achieving our climate targets, instead having big industrial polluters pay their fair share for emissions and supporting Canadians in making clean choices.”

That’s a big step for the Liberals, away from consumers and solely onto industry, but it is still a political risk — the Conservatives have clearly proven effective at using the carbon tax as a sword issue against the Liberals, and will probably continue to do so with the industrial tax.

But Carney seems unbothered. Why?

An explanation for this might be found in what polling done by my employer has found about Liberal and Conservative voters — specifically, how they both think carbon emissions should be addressed. During the election, the Canadian Digital Media Research Network conducted a survey of over 2,000 Canadians. The material has not yet been published publicly, but I kept track of it as it was coming in, and noticed something fascinating. There is a major difference in how Canadians who vote Liberal and Conservative weight the methods with which we should reduce our carbon emissions. (My employer did give me permission to use the data for this piece, but I am writing it as a private citizen — all views here are my own.)

If you ask Conservatives where they think emissions ought to be reduced, only 43 per cent think it is important for their own households to be reducing emissions. Basically double that number, 84 per cent, think it is important for other countries, like China and the U.S., to do the heavy lifting. This explains why mentions of emissions in the Conservative platform are in the context of selling Canadian gas to foreign countries, hoping to transition them off coal. For the Conservatives, the politics of their vote base encourage them to treat climate change as, essentially, a foreign issue — it will be addressed abroad by other countries, and our role is to assist those countries in their efforts to do something. We at home are not on the hook.

Liberal voters genuinely feel differently. While they also think it is important for foreign countries to reduce emissions, three quarters of them think that we have work to do in Canada, too.

The chart above lays out the fascinating divide here. There’s a big gap between how Liberal voters see their own role compared to the role of Canada as a whole or other countries — 19 points. That’s a big spread, if not a shocking one. But in general, Liberal voters still put roughly comparable importance on local vs. distant action.

Conservative voters, though, become consistently more supportive of intervention the further from them it gets. The spread for Conservatives, from most personal to most distant, is a whopping 41 points.

There is probably a fascinating philosophical debate to be had over why Conservatives and Liberals view this issue so differently. But for today, let’s focus on the political consequences. Liberal partisans judge the emission reductions by heavy industry (92 per cent) to be of the same importance as reductions made by other countries (93 per cent). This gives the Liberals more flexibility in how they can design their post-carbon-tax climate policies; they have more than one way to appeal to a huge majority of their voters. The Conservative climate policy designers don’t have this luxury. And it’s not just because of that 41-point drop from “my household” to “other countries.” Their partisans see a 24-point drop off in importance from other countries to domestic industry, 84 per cent to 60 per cent respectively, and 15 points from other countries to Canada.

These are huge gaps. Indeed, to put it another way, the Conservative gap from the first choice (other countries) to the second choice (Canada as a whole) is 15 points. That’s almost as large as the entire 19-point gap Liberal voters report between the most personal (household) and most remote (other countries).

So where does this leave us? Cost of living pains, largely felt in housing, are here to stay for years. Climate change, though, will eventually return as an issue, especially as the consequences of it become more severe and harder to ignore. Barring major changes in how their voting blocs view this issue, we are likely looking at how both major parties are going to devise policy on this issue for the foreseeable future. Conservatives will treat it as a foreign problem, and the Liberals will want to show action at home, but not actually in the homes of their voters.

This isn’t the most efficient way to address the problem, and Carney knows that. I suspect Pierre Poilievre does, too. But the politics, for now, are what they are. Until that changes, the policies won’t. And our new prime minister may choose to continue to not talk about this much.

Chris Ross is a survey analyst for the Canadian Digital Media Research Network. He has a MA in Political Science from McGill University, where he studied carbon pricing support in Canada. Follow him on Twitter here.

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