As the election season approaches, the federal Liberals are attempting to claim the high ground on climate change by drawing a stark contrast between themselves and the NDP — and the NDP are fighting back.
On Friday, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson published a letter addressed to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, accusing him of caving to the Conservative Party after he backed away from carbon pricing earlier this month.
“It was very disappointing to see your New Democratic Party, once an advocate for climate action, fall victim to the Conservative Party of Canada’s disinformation campaigns and empty slogans surrounding carbon pricing,” the letter reads.
“Unfortunately, this has only further reinforced the view of many Canadians who saw during the last federal election your party lacks a credible climate plan.”
The letter comes two weeks after Singh hinted the NDP may abandon its support for carbon pricing. Singh did not say he would ditch the policy, but in his own attempt to distance his party from the federal Liberals, he accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of playing politics by offering “advantages” to Atlantic Canada, referring to last year’s decision to pause the carbon price on home heating oil.
The NDP shot back Friday night with its own letter, addressed to Guilbeault and Wilkinson and signed by Singh.
"The reality is that you bought a pipeline," the NDP letter read. "Your government has spent nine years letting the biggest polluters off the hook."
In response to the Liberals needling Singh with an offer to explain carbon pricing, the NDP returned fire.
"There are no lessons to take from you about fighting the climate crisis, because your record is one of broken promises, watered down policies, and caving to oil and gas lobbyists," Singh wrote.
James Rowe, an associate professor at the University of Victoria, says the letter sent to Singh is important to see in its political context.
“It’s not meant for Jagmeet Singh; it’s meant for the rest of us,” he said. “It's an effective electoral play on [the Liberals’] part, claiming they're taking the principled stand on climate change and climate policy, and the NDP is blowing with the wind.”
The letter also notes NDP MPs Laurel Collins (who serves as the party’s environment critic) and Alexandre Boulerice (the NDP’s Quebec lieutenant and ethics critic) have previously endorsed carbon pricing, suggesting their words “now ring hollow.”
That was a smart move on the part of the Liberals, Rowe says, because it supports the Liberal narrative that the NDP is flip-flopping for political gain. Essentially, the Liberals are casting Poilievre’s Conservatives as climate deniers, and the NDP as “dancing to Poilievre’s tune.”
“That's the narrative that they're going to be pumping out,” he said. “Without the NDP filling the vacuum with a really compelling alternative, then it's hard not to be somewhat convinced by that strategic play on their part.”
It was a tactical mistake for the NDP to hint at opposition to the Liberals’ carbon pricing without offering an alternative plan, he said. Without explaining how the NDP would focus on the fossil fuel industry, perhaps by using a windfall profits tax and redirecting the revenue to support climate action, it’s left to the public to imagine what the party might pitch. That left the door open for Liberals to pounce, he said.
It remains to be seen if this strategy will pay dividends for Liberals, but in the 2021 election the Liberals were widely seen to outflank the NDP on climate change, suggesting it could happen again.
Queens University political studies professor Jonathan Rose told Canada’s National Observer that as an election nears, it makes sense the Liberals will try to make the case that they alone are the party to stand up to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.
“The challenge for the NDP will be to navigate the very fine line between maintaining independence between the Liberals and not appearing to support the Conservatives,” he said. “In some sense, the tactics now are a bit of inside baseball. What really matters is how the public responds to the competing narratives.”
As the Liberals attempt to distinguish themselves from the NDP, Poilievre is still trying to frame the next election as a “carbon tax referendum.” He is effectively still setting the terms of the public debate, and is trying to drive wedges between the NDP, Bloc Québécois, and Liberals using the carbon price.
Despite the carbon price leaving more money in most people’s pockets through rebates, the weakness of the carbon price is its timing.
Even though the carbon price is not a major driver of inflation, it has contributed to the rising cost of gas and home heating before clean alternatives are widely available and affordable. Some experts suggest the carbon price should have been implemented after other climate policies were put in place.
“That order was wrong, and always made the policy prone to the precise attack that Poilievre is launching right now,” Rowe said. “They left themselves with a super soft underbelly by pursuing the policy in the way that they did, and now we're reaping the consequences.”
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