A group of longtime Conservatives is advocating for leadership hopefuls to develop credible climate plans at the same time as cancelling the federal carbon price has emerged as one of the first promises out of the race.
Ken Boessenkool, executive director of the recently launched Conservatives for Clean Growth, said Friday it doesn’t view a consumer carbon price as the make-or-break feature of a good plan to tackle climate change.
The group announced itself shortly after the Tories began their search for a new leader and Candice Bergen, its interim leader, shelved the party’s support for the carbon price policy introduced by former leader Erin O’Toole. Bergen has left the matter to be decided in the leadership race.
On its website, Conservatives for Clean Growth defines itself as believing in the need for the party to have a “stable, credible, long-term” plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are many ways to get there,” said Boessenkool, who previously served as an adviser to different conservative leaders, including former prime minister Stephen Harper. “There’s incentives or smart regulations, relying on technology.”
Pierre Poilievre, the high-profile Ottawa-area MP who was the first to declare his candidacy last month, travelled to Saskatchewan this week to release his energy policies, which began with a promise to cancel the Liberal government’s consumer carbon price.
Calling it a “tax,” Poilievre framed the issue to be one around cost and instead pledged that his environmental plan would focus on technology.
“I’m the only candidate for prime minister that will protect people’s paycheques and make life more affordable by cancelling the carbon tax,” he said in Regina on Friday.
Boessenkool said the new group, which he co-founded alongside former federal cabinet minister Lisa Raitt and ex-Alberta cabinet minister Jim Dinning, wants to work with any candidate on their proposals.
“What policy is Pierre Poilievre going to use to develop a credible climate change policy that is going to use technology? And that is the question that Conservatives should be asking him,” Boessenkool said.
“He said he’s going to address climate with technology — great, how?”
“If all Canadians hear about our climate plan is what we’re against, they can be forgiven for thinking, we’re against climate. And that’s not enough.”
In terms of details, Poilievre said he would put in place targets to reduce carbon-related emissions and then leave it up to provinces to decide how to proceed, naming off the use of nascent technology like carbon capture and storage as well as small modular nuclear reactors.
During his stop in Regina, he also trotted out popular rallying cries for party members to whom the development of the oil and gas industry matter, particularly those in Western Canada. He pledged to repeal a Liberal government ban on oil tankers off the coast of northern British Columbia as well as build more pipelines.