Much of the climate rhetoric being deployed by the Liberals is an effort to distract from facts that don’t line up with the government narrative.
If you were to believe what the Liberal government says, you would think that Canada’s emissions have been surging for a long time, and things only started to turn around after Justin Trudeau won in 2015.
The Harper years were supposedly a time when our country was filled with industrial revolution-era smokestacks everywhere as Canada singlehandedly wrecked the climate.
The Liberals repeatedly claim that Harper ‘didn’t take action’ on the climate crisis, and insinuate (not subtly), that Pierre Poilievre would continue that supposed lack of action.
By contrasting themselves with Harper-era ‘inaction,’ the Liberals portray themselves as more enlightened when it comes to the environment, and that ‘enlightened’ perspective has led to the carbon tax, excessive regulations, and a hostile attitude towards the energy sector.
But what do the facts say?
Is the Liberal narrative correct?
Is their record better than Harper’s?
Turns out, a comparison of Canada’s emissions during Harper’s time in office and Trudeau’s time in office yields some surprising results.
Emissions declined under both
Most notably, Canada’s per capita emissions declined by a similar amount under both the Harper Government and Trudeau Government, and that’s even with Trudeau ‘benefitting’ from emission stats that are still based on the incomplete recovery from the massive drop in 2020 caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Let’s look at the numbers:
The Conservatives took power in early 2006, so we will start there. In 2006, Canada’s per capita emissions were 17.47 tons. In 2015, their final year in office, Canada’s emissions per capita had fallen to 16.32 tons, a 1.15 ton per person decline.
Since the 2015 election occurred with just 2 months left in the year, we will start in 2016 when looking at the numbers under the Liberals.
In 2016, Canada’s per capita emissions were 16.13 tons per person. By 2021 (the last year for which full data is available) Canada’s per capita emissions had fallen to 14.86 tons. That’s a 1.27 ton decline per person.
Again, remember that the Liberal number is still skewed by what happened in 2020. Canada’s per capita emissions dropped from 16.32 tons per person in 2019, to 14.59 tons in 2020, as much of the global economy was shut down. As economic activity began to recover in 2021, the number crept back up, but it is almost certain that the 2022 number will show an increase that will wipe out the very narrow Liberal emission reduction advantage when compared to the Harper era.
Now, some will argue that the numbers under Harper are also skewed, since Canada’s emissions dropped from 18.25 in 2007 to 16.23 in 2009 amid the global financial crisis. However, Harper was in power for another six years after 2009, and Canada’s per capita emissions in 2015 were almost exactly where they were in 2009, even as the economy grew on a per capita basis.
Taxation & stagnation with nothing to show for it
What does this indicate?
First, there is something bigger going on in the developed world that transcends partisanship. The increasing digitization of vast swaths of the economy, combined with rapid technological advancements – particularly in free market nations – has meant it is possible to produce more economic value with fewer emissions.
This process has been occurring for quite some time, as per capita emissions in both Canada and the United States – and most industrialized countries – have been declining for decades.
To see how this is largely unrelated to what any individual government does, consider that emissions in the United States fell from 16.05 tons per capita in 2016 to 14.04 in 2020. Obviously, this was largely due to the pandemic, but it was a bigger drop than we saw in Canada, despite the Trump Administration being seen as much less pro-environment than the Trudeau Government.
What this means is that the stagnation of our economy, our declining standard of living, our higher and higher taxes, and our increasingly anti-competitive business environment are being imposed on us all to achieve absolutely nothing. We could have lower taxes, no carbon tax, a pro-business attitude, and be supportive of the energy sector, and our emissions would likely be almost identical.
It is essential for Canadians to understand this, because it is that understanding which can help us see past the dishonest climate rhetoric of the Liberal government and start returning to logical economic/environmental policy.
Spencer Fernando
