Thread by @TrevorsIdeas

Andrew Leach has written an excellent series of articles on climate platforms. They stand on their own, but I will include some ramblings and context below if interested.

GPC first up. Article pre-dates release of costing. I'll provide context for this.

cbc.ca/news/canada/ca…

GPC calls their plan "Mission Possible." Andrew Leach calls it "Mission Improbable." Whatever term you call it at best it can be described as a plan to have a plan. It's a wish list with little details, or costing, of how to achieve it.

The GPC have an ambitious target but having a target is meaningless. Targets only have value if backed up by a credible plan to meet them. Let us preface this with an image from the GPC's platform costing.

greenparty.ca/sites/default/…

If you read the opening article detailing the key initiatives of the GPC and then compare it to their costing document you'll notice that practically all of those initiatives are missing.

Reasons?

1) They are prohibitively costly
2) They are out of federal jurisdiction

This leaves us with questions: Is the GPC truly committed to these changes as they left them out of their document? Do they wish to hide the cost to make the changes more palatable? Or do they believe full retrofits and complete transition away from oil are free?

The GPC promises to ban oil imports. Leaving aside the international agreements this would require us to abandon (including NAFTA) let's look at some issues.

First unless you are reducing the quantity of oil simply shifting the import/export columns a bit won't change much.

Second if the resulting changes require more distant transport of oil you are actually making the emission problem worse.

Third, although Ms May claims otherwise, as Andrew Leach points out banning oil imports would result in an insufficiency in parts of Canada. An insufficiency that would require construction of pipelines or other infrastructure.

Fourth Ms. May also describes the need for more "upgraders" or "refineries" to use our domestic product. This would require billions of $ and also serve to increase our GHG emissions.

So in summary banning oil import would result in increased GHG emissions, increased pipeline capacity needs, new refineries or upgraders, and would not reduce our demand for oil.

I can only ask: Why?

Of note as the article points out, the GPC is strangely silent on the oil sands. Although they generally want to do something (upgrade in AB is a common phrase) beyond that they are lacking details. "Transitioning" is not a plan. It's a word.

GPC also promise to eliminate subsidies. That sounds great. But what are they? The claim is Canada spends 3.3B in subsidies a year on O&G.

This claim is out of date. It comes from a Harper era study done by the IISD.

iisd.org/faq/unpacking-…

An up-to-date figure, provided by Andrew Leach, suggests this number is around $380M. Further most of those subsidies come from Alberta and BC. The GPC would have no influence over them.

So much for eliminating subsidies. It's already done, federally.

Next we come to the electrical grid. A handy reference below indicates how much (or how little) our grid actually depends on GHG emission sources.

Many are proponents of fully renewable and clean sources. They are great but they have issues. The cost of storage and dealing with peak demands is tricky. You still need some alternate sources of energy unless you are willing to go with nuclear, which GPC also opposes.

A major issue again is jurisdiction. Energy generation is provincial. How is the GPC going to convince Kenney to abandon coal, oil, and gas power generation or any other reluctant premiers? Who is going to pay for it?

Construction of power plants is slow. Construction of inter-provincial frameworks is slow. Both have their associated GHG emissions due to construction themselves. The costs are high. The time requirement is high. And this only represents a small portion of the pollution.

Finally the proposal (the only one semi-costed in the GPC platform) is to retrofit all 14M dwellings in Canada in 10 years. The GPC have allocated $550M a year for this. Does that sound likely at that cost? No? Yeah I don't think so either.

And even if we somehow achieved this we would need still more power generation (increased electricity demand vs less fossil fuel use). That requires money. That requires time.

Neither of which is accounted for in the GPC platform.

The GPC have either ignored the costing of sloughed it off on the provinces just assuming they will fall into line, despite obvious evidence they have no intention of doing so.

And on the subject of their platform here is Kevin Page giving it a failing grade.

thestar.com/politics/feder…

Other analysis indicates the GPC have assumed Harper era level revenues and production in oil while simultaneously arguing a full transition away from those products. You don't make money from something you aren't producing.

On a final note: international competitiveness. While Canada needs to lead the way here we cannot do this all by ourselves. And if we cripple our economy trying to achieve this we will only end up failing. I am by no means saying this is China's problem - let them deal with it.

I am saying we need a plan that achieves the goals while leaving our corporations reasonably competitive. This will give us the financial backing to act and encourage other countries to fall into line when we succeed.

You can't lead the way if you shoot yourself in the foot.

As a corollary to this here's another GPC platform assessment. Hint: it's not good. 3 big red fails.

ifsd.ca/en/blog/last-p…