Natasha Bulowski
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Canada’s National Observer
The federal NDP’s election platform “hit a lot of keynotes” on climate and is largely staying the course while the Liberals’ rhetoric has shifted, an expert posits.
The NDP is not joining the “cheerleading” for more pipelines, critical minerals and nuclear energy that “is increasingly apparent in the Liberal and Conservative platforms,” Mark Winfield, a professor at York University, told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview on April 22.
The NDP platform does not downplay climate and environment: it includes home retrofits for low-income Canadians, increased electric vehicle incentives, investments in public transit and more routes, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies by 2026, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2035 and more.
Though some might have feared the platform would be “wishy-washy,” that is not the case, Winfield said.
“There is a degree of consistency here, which I think is noteworthy.”
While both Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Liberal Leader Mark Carney have said they want Canadian oil and gas to supply the world for decades to come (albeit to different extents and with different framing) and to speed up major project approvals in response to the US trade war, the NDP platform does not mention pipelines.
Instead, to make Canada more independent from the US, the NDP is pitching “sector-specific industrial strategies for energy, mining, manufacturing, buildings and transportation” in consultation with workers and with the goal of decarbonizing essential industries such as steelmaking, cement-making and transportation.
Winfield said this notion, although light on details, is a more thoughtful approach than some of the pipeline-heavy discourse from recent months.
The platform does not say how the NDP would approach more than $80-billion in clean economy investment tax credits the Liberals introduced in Budget 2023. In an emailed statement to Canada’s National Observer, a party spokesperson said the NDP would maintain and strengthen these investment tax credits.
The word “oil” appears six times in the NDP platform, including a commitment to end oil and gas subsidies, implement a cap on oil and gas sector emissions and keep the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act in place, the latter two of which Poilievre has promised to scrap. The Liberal Party platform did not include the yet-to-be-finalized emissions cap.
An East-West electricity grid features prominently in the NDP platform and talking points. The party stays committed to the federal government’s current promise to achieve a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 — although the Liberals weakened the Clean Electricity Regulations after pushback from the provinces.
The NDP would keep the industrial carbon price, which is Canada’s most impactful emission reduction policy, according to a March 2024 analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute. The NDP would not bring back the consumer carbon price.
This makes sense because the consumer price is “just too unpopular,” Katya Rhodes, an associate professor at University of Victoria who analyzes climate policy, told Canada’s National Observer.
“There is no point in losing voters over this issue.”
The NDP’s platform does not clarify whether it would eliminate subsidies for carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) as part of its commitment to end all fossil fuel subsidies by 2026. NDP MPs, including environment and climate change critic Laurel Collins, previously criticized the Liberals for offering support and subsidies for carbon capture.
An emailed statement from an NDP spokesperson did not directly say the party would eliminate CCUS subsidies but seemed to suggest this, saying it “will force oil and gas companies to reduce emissions through implementing production emissions cap, with clear requirements for them to do right by their workers, rather than relying on a CCUS tax incentive and hoping for the best.”
On April 22, Collins announced a commitment to launch a $500-million Youth Climate Corps to train and employ thousands of young people in climate emergency response, community resilience, and renewable energy projects across the country. The Greens and Liberals also support a youth climate corps, with the Liberals pitching a two-year, $56-million pilot project.
Winfield noted the NDP’s “very strong emphasis on reconciliations with Indigenous Peoples, which is going to become an even more central issue if governments attempt to aggressively push these kinds of projects forward.”
The platform committed to “replace mere consultation with a standard of free, prior and informed consent, including for all decisions affecting constitutionally protected land rights, like energy project reviews.”
In the French language leaders’ debate on April 16, Carney said his government would never impose a project on an Indigenous nation opposed to it, while Poilievre said other nations would support it and his government would side with the majority.
The NDP platform also promises to pass an Environmental Bill of Rights and create an Office of Environmental Justice to address how different marginalized groups – like Black, Indigenous and racialized communities and youth — are disproportionately impacted by pollution. The NDP and Green Party have long pushed for legislation like this with some progress: Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May’s private members bill to create a national strategy to tackle environmental racism became law last June.
The Environmental Bill of Rights “is designed to counter the sort of deregulatory pressures that we’re seeing, particularly from the Conservatives, but to a certain degree from the Liberals now as well,” Winfield said.
“There is, in fact, now a clearer differentiation between those parties (Bloc Québecois, NDP and Green Party) and the Liberals and Conservatives in terms of where they stand on environment and climate change,” Winfield said.
“That is an interesting development, how much it will actually affect voting choices, we won’t know until election day,” he said, but it is possible some environmentally-minded voters could drift back toward parties like the NDP, Bloc Québécois and Greens, if they don’t like the two main parties’ rhetoric.
