A Real Platform Should Clean Up Our Pollution Messes
This election, taking responsibility for cleaning up our pollution is once again a ballot issue. With the consumer carbon price gone, attention is shifting to whether it’s reasonable to expect industrial polluters to help protect our future by cleaning up their messes today.
Most Canadians want to take responsibility for protecting our kids from pollution. Politicians betray this family value when they propose to end all pollution pricing, because it forces our kids and future generations to pay even more dearly for the messes we leave them. Dropping pollution pricing also undermines efforts to resist US threats with diversified trade and economic countermeasures.
What You Need to Know to Avoid Being Duped
It’s important to pay for our pollution, because there’s no better planet to protect for our kids.
Don’t be duped. That protection took a major blow during this campaign, since all parties backtracked from supporting a consumer price on pollution.
This makes it more important than ever to ensure big industrial polluters pay for the emissions that put our kids’ futures at risk.
Recent polling shows most Canadians agree.
We should be proud that the ‘axe the tax’ campaign hasn’t dissuaded Canadians from the responsibility they feel to protect our kids from pollution. Most agree that when you make a mess, you clean it up. Politicians who ignore this family value betray our kids, making them pay even more dearly down the road for the messes we leave them.
Fortunately, voters can count on the support of many Canadian business leaders who view industrial carbon pricing as the “most flexible and cost-effective way to incentivize industry to systematically reduce emissions.”
As we ramp up efforts to diversify trade relationships in response to US threats, Canadians should also look to the international community that continues to seek measures to reduce pollution. The European Union already prices pollution, and uses pollution tariffs to protect their high-emitting industries from unfair competition in countries that don’t regulate pollution levels. The United Kingdom is following suit. Retaining the industrial price on pollution will help Canada to increase trade with these partners as we recalibrate our relationship with the US.
This election, let’s remember that paying for pollution is important because we love our kids – and there’s no escaping that our kids’ health and safety are put in jeopardy when we pollute too much. Young people across Canada already report feeling betrayed, abandoned and anxious about our slow response to the escalating climate risks and costs they will inherit. Let’s insist that the leaders of all parties show them that we have their backs.
Industrial carbon pricing is a cornerstone of our efforts to reduce harmful pollution. This single policy reduces more carbon pollution than any other Canadian policy tool. We’ve already made much progress, on the emissions cuts we want to achieve as a country. We should protect these hard-won gains by standing firm now.
Learn more with our Pollution Pricing Toolkit
Gen Squeeze and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) are teaming up to call on federal leaders to match the climate ambition of Canadians. With your help, we can flood party inboxes with reminders that good ancestors across Canada expect strong climate action.
To all the moms and dads, aunts and uncles, grandparents and more, click here to send a letter demanding climate action to each federal party.
To all the young people who already report feeling betrayed by the climate risks and costs you will inherit, tell party leaders that you expect better here.
If you’re part of an organization concerned with our climate legacy, your group can join our movement by signing up here: Organizational Sign On
Dupe-O-Meter Party Assessments
With the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals all retreating from the consumer price on carbon pollution, there’s no denying that all three parties betray our kids and future generations.
The 'free lunch' each party is offering may look like a good deal, since they're telling us we don't need to worry about cleaning up the pollution messes we've already made. But in reality, it's our kids and future generations who will foot the bill. Party leaders are asking our kids to pay more down the road for pollution messes that their parties are unwilling to pay for today.
The deepest betrayal comes from the Conservatives
Mr. Poilievre led the charge to “axe the tax.” Now he promises he won’t stop with axing just the consumer carbon price. He also plans to eliminate the price charged to big industrial polluters.
This move would dismantle what the Canadian Climate Institute identifies as the single most important policy measure that Canada has to reduce carbon pollution. Ending this price would double down on the betrayal of our kids by gutting the core of Canada’s climate strategy. To date, the Conservatives have offered no clear measures to compensate for the one-third of emissions that the industrial carbon price is set to cut. Cutting the industrial price would also ramp up uncertainty for the Canadian businesses, global markets and trading partners who have planned around the current policy, and undermine the clean investment and job creation that carbon pricing is driving.
The NDP betrayal is on a smaller scale than the Conservatives, but bigger than the Liberals
The NDP has pledged to stand by the industrial price on pollution, and implement carbon tariffs on imports from countries lacking stringent carbon-pricing mechanisms. These are critical commitments in this election.
However, Mr. Singh did help open the floodgates for consumer carbon price opponents when he joined the misinformation fueled political retreat from this policy. In April 2024, the NDP leader abandoned the family value we all teach our kids: when you make a mess, clean it up. Instead, he suggested that our pollution messes only need to be cleaned up when it isn’t too hard or inconvenient: "We don't want working people to feel like they're shouldering the burden [of paying for their pollution]. That's not fair. And frankly, not a New Democrat solution to the problem."
It’s true that no one wants to feel duped into paying for their pollution when large-emitting industries evade doing their fair share. That’s why it’s essential to retain industrial pollution pricing, and to tighten other regulations on emissions from sectors like energy, transportation and agriculture.
It’s also essential to recognize that we are all polluters – in fact, everyday Canadians are among the highest polluters in the world. Fairness doesn’t mean giving all of us a free pass to continue to create messes that we aren’t willing to clean up. That’s not fair to our kids, grandkids and future generations who will inherit these messes, and pay the steepest price for our failure to clean them up.
The smallest betrayal comes from the Liberals – but a betrayal nonetheless
Under Mr. Carney, the Liberals ultimately killed the consumer carbon price that the party fought hard to implement just 6 years ago, following overwhelming evidence about the efficacy and low cost of this policy tool. Mr. Carney has been clear that he chose to drop the consumer carbon price because it had become politically “divisive,” not because it is ineffective. This distinction matters, because Mr. Carney plans to offset the loss with two important adaptations:
- Strengthening the price paid by large industrial emitters, and
- Introducing carbon border tariffs, which could also support Canada’s response to Donald Trump’s tariff war.
- (It's worth noting the NDP now affirm these ideas too).
The bottom line in this election is that history is unlikely to judge favourably the erosion of Canada’s leadership on pricing pollution for individual consumers.
