Singh backpedals on carbon levy

NDP leader appears to break from previous support for Liberals’ climate plan

This article was written by Mark Ramzy and was published in the Toronto Star on April 12, 2024.

In a speech Thursday at the Broadbent Institute’s annual policy conference, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh distanced his party from the Liberals’ flagship climate policy, saying that working families shouldn’t have to bear “the cost of climate change while big polluters make bigger and bigger profits.”

The federal New Democrats no longer believe a consumer carbon price is necessary to fight climate change, Jagmeet Singh suggested Thursday.

The new position, which appears to break with the NDP’s previous support for the policy, was outlined in a speech Singh delivered at the Broadbent Institute’s annual policy conference in Ottawa on Thursday. In it, he distanced his party from the federal Liberals’ flagship climate policy, which has drawn criticism from across the country as the levy and its accompanying rebates increased this April.

Singh condemned the approaches of both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to the climate crisis, and said tackling it “can’t be done by letting working families bear the cost of climate change while big polluters make bigger and bigger profits.”

Referring to a March report that concluded industrial carbon pricing systems were far more effective than the consumer levy on fuel, Singh told reporters that the New Democrats “want more attention on the policies that are the biggest drivers of lowering emissions,” such as the industrial price on pollution and methane regulations. He said the NDP would release its own climate plan.

“It can’t just be that our only approach to fighting the climate crisis is using free-market solutions,” he said. “That is not sufficient to meet the seriousness of what we’re up against.”

A senior government official, speaking on a background-only basis, said Singh’s backpedalling does not jeopardize the supply and confidence agreement by which the NDP has propped up the minority Liberal government.

But the Liberals welcome what they see as the NDP potentially taking a weaker stance on climate action, the official said, believing it would present a political contrast between the two in the next election campaign.

Singh’s speech followed the NDP’s decision Wednesday to vote in favour of a non-binding Conservative motion demanding Trudeau stage a televised summit on the carbon price within five weeks.

Abacus Data CEO David Coletto said the NDP’s shift away from the consumer price on carbon could be due to fears its voters might move toward the Conservatives and Poilievre, who has routinely linked the consumer levy to issues with affordability while targeting several key NDP ridings.

New polling from Abacus, shared exclusively with the Star, suggests support for the federal price on pollution among NDP voters is decreasing. In January, the first time Abacus polled on the issue, 51 per cent of NDP voters who responded to the survey said it was a good policy, while 26 per cent said it was bad. By April, 46 per cent had said it was good, compared to 36 per cent who said it was bad, a significant decrease in the gap.

The NDP has supported carbon pricing, which puts a cost on pollution, as far back as the 2015 election campaign, when its platform included a national cap-and-trade system. In the 2019 and 2021 campaigns, the New Democrats maintained their support for the Liberals’ consumer carbon levy — although they pushed for even stronger measures on the industrial side.

Overall, the Abacus data showed a small increase in respondents who don’t support the federal carbon pricing system, although it also revealed they were skeptical of all political messaging around the issue — regardless of whether it was positive or negative. When it comes to which of the two major federal leaders was providing the most accurate information around the policy, 27 per cent of responders chose Trudeau, 32 per cent chose Poilievre, and 41 per cent said neither.

Using online panels, Abacus surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 Canadian adults between April 3 and 9. Although opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Laurel Collins, the NDP’s environment critic, justified Wednesday’s vote by saying it was important to hear what alternative plans the premiers have, so long as they match the emissions reductions of the current plan.

That vote, and the NDP’s apparent shift in position, drew a strong rebuke from Green Leader Elizabeth May, who referred to it as a “clear example of cynical politics prevailing over principle.”

“By prioritizing political gamesmanship over effective climate action, the NDP is failing Canadians and undermining our collective efforts to combat climate change,” May said in a statement Thursday.

Collins told the Star the NDP still believes Canadians get more from their rebates than the consumer levy costs them, but said there should be an increased focus on climate solutions that will “actually make life more affordable for Canadians” such as greener transportation and retrofits.

“I agree with (Singh) that big polluters need to pay, but it’s also important to have a comprehensive plan that creates the right incentives for people to actually think about the choices they make,” said Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

Author: Ray Nakano

Ray is a retired, third generation Japanese Canadian born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. He resides in Toronto where he worked for the Ontario Government for 28 years. Ray was ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2011 and practises in the Plum Village tradition, supporting sanghas in their mindfulness practice. Ray is very concerned about our climate crisis. He has been actively involved with the ClimateFast group (https://climatefast.ca) for the past 5 years. He works to bring awareness of our climate crisis to others and motivate them to take action. He has created the myclimatechange.home.blog website, for tracking climate-related news articles, reports, and organizations. He has created mobilizecanada.ca to focus on what you can do to address the climate crisis. He is always looking for opportunities to reach out to communities, politicians, and governments to communicate about our climate crisis and what we need to do. He says: “Our world is in dire straits. We have to bend the curve on our heat-trapping pollutants in the next few years if we hope to avoid the most serious impacts of human-caused global warming. Doing nothing is not an option. We must do everything we can to create a livable future for our children, our grandchildren, and all future generations.”