Conservative Party Climate Change Platform

[N.B. – The Conservates voted against the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act in the last Parliament.]

The Conservative Party would:

  • Eliminate the fuel charge (80% of which is returned to consumers under the “climate action incentive”) under Part 1 of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (GGPPA).
  • Replace the fuel charge with a system by which each time a consumer purchases fossil fuel, they will pay an amount into a “Personal Low Carbon Savings Account”. This will work like an affinity or rewards program. The money can be used for “green purchases” such as buying a transit pass or a bicycle or saving up and putting the money toward a new efficient furnace, energy efficient windows or an electric vehicle.
  • Reduce the carbon price, or “carbon tax”, from the current $40 per tonne to $20 per tonne, and gradually increase it, but never to more than $50.
  • Introduce Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Regulations (also called a “ZEV Mandate”), by which a fixed and increasing percentage of every automaker’s annual sales must be ZEVs. If the automakers don’t achieve the percentage, they pay a penalty per vehicle missed that makes it economically important to achieve the percentage. (They can do so by decreasing the cost of their ZEVs and making up the loss by increasing the cost of their gas-guzzlers, if they chose.) The Conservatives’ target is that 30% of all light duty vehicle sales will be ZEVs by 2030.
  • Work with the U.S. to strengthen vehicle emission standards.
  • Spend $1 billion on electric vehicle manufacturing and another $1 billion on hydrogen technology, including hydrogen vehicles.
  • Work with the U.S. to set a standard for charging and then add mandatory charging stations or wiring to the national building code.
  • Create Border Carbon Adjustments (BCAs) in cooperation with the U.S. [N.B.: BCAs are like tariffs on imports from countries that do not have climate change policies as stringent as Canada’s. For example, if Canadian steel is produced with less GHG emissions than Chinese steel but, because of that, Chinese steel is cheaper, BCAs would increase the cost of Chinese steel imports coming into Canada, so that Canada’s steel is competitive. Alternatively, if a Canadian steel manufacturer is exporting steel to China, it could be given a sum of money to compensate for the fact that it can only sell its steel in China for less money because Chinese steelmakers did not need pay any carbon tax in China. The first industries that could benefit from BCAs include steel, cement, and aluminum. Conceivably, once BCAs are in place, the “carbon tax” on these emissions could be made more stringent, so that something less than the current 80 to 95% of emissions would be “tax free”.]
  • Continue the OBPS. However, instead of continuing with the Liberal’s increasing carbon price, (also known as the “carbon tax”), the CPC will tie the carbon price to that of the European Union and the U.S. They will assess progress after two years and consider setting carbon prices on a path to $170/tonne by 2030 if necessary.
  • Introduce a Renewable Natural Gas Mandate (a regulation), requiring 15% of the natural gas consumed to be from renewable sources by 2030. This may come from capturing methane from farms and landfills.
  • Improve the Clean Fuel Regulations to reduce carbon emissions per litre of gasoline and other liquid fuels.
  • Proceed with a carbon offset system, by which transferable credits would be created for such things as good land management practices.
  • Provide tax relief to the first five facilities that use new technology that provides meaningful emissions reductions. [N.B.: This is to compensate those facilities for the fact that early adopters of new technology often pay higher costs, and take bigger risks, for it.]
  • Strengthen Canada’s electricity grid to make it cleaner and with better interties between areas.
  • Spend $1 billion on Small Modular [nuclear] Reactors, to be deployed across the country, including in the oil sands.
  • Consider imposing new taxes on frequent flyers, non-electric luxury vehicles, and luxury second homes.
  • Implement a Liquified Natural Gas export strategy to displace coal in electricity generation in overseas countries.
  • The Conservative target for emissions reduction is 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.