It’s a sad irony that Earth Day 2025 fell in the final week of a federal election campaign during which the environment has been barely mentioned. You would probably have to go back to the free trade election of 1988, also dominated by our relationship with the United States, to find a campaign in which the major parties and the mainstream media have had so little to say about protecting the environment. 

Admittedly, with threats to our economy and sovereignty coming from the Trump administration it’s understandable that other issues, including the environment and climate change, would be less prominent. However, in this campaign, the environment and climate change are not just being overshadowed – the rush to embrace resource extraction and pipelines in response to the current Trump-inspired crisis risks setting back the country’s already inadequate response to the climate crisis.

No surprise, for the Poilievre Conservatives it’s full speed ahead on oil, gas, minerals and the pipelines and “corridors” needed to rush resources to market. The Conservatives have made no secret of their ambition to turn this country into a petro state. 

Their platform makes passing reference to tax credits for clean energy investments and rolls out the old dodge about doing our bit for the climate by substituting Canadian LNG for coal somewhere in the developing world. But otherwise, it’s all about immediate de-regulation of fossil fuel production and distribution, unleashing (Poilievre’s favourite word) the oil and gas industry from restrictions imposed by the Liberals.  If the Conservatives form government, Mother Nature, to bend a Neil Young lyric, will need to put on running shoes. 

With the NDP, Greens and Bloc marginalized by the polarization marking this atypical campaign, the Liberals become, by default, the alternative to Conservatives’ scorched earth. The Liberals echo the Conservatives in promising to “aggressively develop projects that are in the national interest in order to protect Canada’s energy security, diversify our trade and enhance our long-term competitiveness.” But because Mark Carney was for a time the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance, the Liberals can, at least for now, claim to represent the greener of the two main contenders. 

Even though his first act as Prime Minister was to get rid of consumer carbon pricing Carney can be given the benefit of the doubt when he claims projects can be developed “all while reducing emissions,” and that Canada has the opportunity “to be the world’s leading energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy.” 

The Poilievre plan

While the Liberals have been vague about specific projects they may want to “aggressively develop,” the Conservative platform names a few specific priorities. These include increased oil production from offshore Newfoundland and Labrador, “greenlighting” an associated LNG project on Placentia Bay and reviving another LNG project in the Saguenay region.The Conservatives want to build roads to the long-touted mineral deposits in the so-called Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario. They  also promise quick approval for the second phase of an LNG project in northern British Columbia and acceleration of nine other projects supposedly “snarled in Liberal red tape.” 

But mostly what the the Conservatives want is to follow the dictates of Big Oil and Danielle Smith to relieve the industry of any responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They promise to impede the transition from fossil fuels while promoting the dangerous notion that de-regulation will lead to an economic boom. It’s all laid out in their costed platform, released this past Tuesday – Earth Day. The document was  called a “joke” by the Liberals, “magical thinking” by some headline writers and “highly dubious” by one credible economist. The reason for those snarky reviews is the unsupported claim that various measures in the Conservative platform will boost the economy to generate enough new  government revenue to significantly reduce the federal deficit.

In Poileive world, the oil industry will be one of the main contributors to this hoped-for bonanza. In the Conservative universe, unshackled from greenhouse gas emission restrictions and free from government-subsidized electric vehicle competition fossil fuel companies will invest like crazy, kick-starting an economic revival that will pour billions of dollars of new revenue into government coffers. 

According to the Conservative conjurors, getting rid of the clean fuel regulations will somehow generate nearly $2 billion in revenue over the next four years. Ditching the emission caps on oil and gas production will yield $5 billion while scrapping the carbon tax on large industrial polluters will lead to a revenue windfall of $8.2 billion. But the biggest ticket item is the promise to scrap the requirement that by 2035 all new cars and light trucks sold must be electric. Somehow, keeping more gas guzzlers on the road will generate $11.2 billion in government revenue over the next four years – abracadabra. 

Pipelines trump climate 

It boggles the mind that such a platform would be presented in 2025. According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the annual global temperature last year  was a record high 1.6 Centigrade above pre-industrial levels, surpassing the 1.5 aspirational limit under the Paris climate agreement. And according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2024 was Canada’s costliest year yet for severe weather-related losses – the result of  catastrophes like $3 billion damage from a hailstorm in Calgary, $2.7 billion from hurricane Debbie in Quebec and $1.1 billion from the wildfires in Jasper. Meanwhile, Canada’s legislated commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 is languishing at the starting gate – a reduction of only 8.5 percent as of the start of 2024.      

But alas, threats from Trump, combined with concerns about the cost of living, have led to a decline in the public’s concern about climate change and an increase in support for pipelines as a symbol of national strength and unity. A Nanos poll, conducted in early March, found 79 percent either strongly or somewhat supported “building a national energy corridor which would have a pipeline to move Canadian oil and gas from Alberta to Eastern Canada, even if there are environmental and Indigenous land claim concerns about the route.”      

Oddly, despite this apparent public support for a west-to-east pipeline, neither Liberals or Conservatives are promising one. Carney has waffled on the subject and although Poilievre has expressed constant support for pipelines, he has not specified which ones he wants to have built.

The Conservatives have accused the Trudeau government of killing the Northern Gateway pipeline in British Columbia and the Energy East Alberta-to-New Brunswick line, but Energy East was withdrawn voluntarily by its sponsor amid declining oil prices and Northern Gateway was cancelled after its approval by the Harper government was overturned by the Federal Court. Gung-ho public opinion polls notwithstanding, neither Enbridge, proponent of Northern Gateway, nor South Bow, the successor to Energy East’s sponsor, have re-submitted proposals for those projects.

Aside from the politically sensitive matter of getting buy-in from affected First Nations or skeptical provinces like Quebec, there’s also the matter of the international oil market. 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) – of which both Canada and the U.S. are founding members – global oil demand is expected to peak by 2030 and then decline. The agency’s latest outlook reports that oil demand has already started to go down in Europe, Japan and Korea, and is expected to drop at an even faster rate over the next decade.

Pipeline dreams 

Even if an oil pipeline to one of our coasts is approved in six months (Poilievre’s preferred timeline), or two years (Carney’s choice), it would likely take at least five years to build. Canadian producers would then be trying to compete for sales in a shrinking market against lower-cost producers in the Middle East. And if the cost overruns for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion ( built under Trudeau for a staggering $34 billion) are anything to go by, the combination of expensively-produced oil and high-cost pipelines would mean that Canadian oil will not be competitive. Writing in the Globe and Mail this week Thomas Gunton, director of the Resource and Environmental Planning Program at Simon Fraser University, observes that “no private company has proposed building a new pipeline and will not consider the option without a massive taxpayer subsidy.” 

As for LNG exports to wean countries like India off coal (also known as the Conservative climate action plan), economic prospects are also not great. 

A  2024 report from the Ohio-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that “lacklustre demand growth combined with a massive wave of new export capacity is poised to send global liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets into oversupply within two years.” Moreover, according to a recent update from the non-profit think tank, instead of going directly from coal to LNG, countries like China and India are skipping over LNG and transitioning from coal directly to renewables.

The murky pipeline debate bears some resemblance to the way in which the the issue of national defence has been approached during the campaign. Even though the greatest immediate threat to our national security seems to be coming from the south, the parties are rolling out plans to defend our northern border. With pipelines, the talk is all about building corridors to the coasts so that someday – hopefully long after Trump has departed and taken Vance with him – we may be able to export more fossil fuels to Europe or Asia. There has been little or no talk about a more immediate threat – the pipeline carrying oil from the west to refineries in Ontario and Quebec dips south  from Manitoba through the U.S. before crossing back into Canada at Sarnia Ontario. Maybe that’s the pipeline we should be worried about during the dangerous Trump 2.0 era, not the ones up there in the sky, with the pie.  

Some of the ambiguity around fossil fuel and resource extraction in general and their relationship to the environment should be cleared up with the election. If the Conservatives win we can be pretty sure that to keep their industry sponsors happy a Poilievre government will, environment be damned, put the pedal to the metal – even if it means providing the subsidies that will likely be needed to get any major new oil or gas project off the ground. 

If, as is more likely, the Liberals get back in, who knows? Carney’s vagueness and waffling may turn out to be what’s needed to make progress on both energy security, environmental protection and emission reductions. That won’t be easy, but a necessary pre-condition to progress is to tone down the political rhetoric – on one side drop the Trudeau-style finger-pointing that has riled up many out west and on the other rein in the overblown claims of fossil fuels as an economic panacea.

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