Depending on your political affiliation, the 2019 election results were either disappointing or relieving. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was re-elected with a minority mandate of 157 seats (170 seats are required to win a majority government). The Conservatives will continue to be the Official Opposition with a stronger base of 121 seats, and the Bloc Québécois, New Democratic Party (NDP), and Green Party have 32, 24, and 3 seats respectively. What does this mean for environmental policy in Canada?

Parliament

Let’s start off with the fact that the Liberals lost their majority mandate. Majorities are relatively common in Canada and, due to the nature of our Westminster parliamentary system, minorities are usually considered unstable. This instability arises because the leading party has to either appeal to at least one other major party (in our case, the Conservatives, Bloc, or NDP) to gain at least 170 seats in the House of Commons, or risk triggering another election.

The reason why this electoral outcome is important for environmental policy is because the carbon tax and most other similar carbon pricing mechanisms have been incredibly unpopular with the Conservatives as a feasible way to fight climate change. If the Liberals wish to continue pushing through their current environmental policy, they need to compromise with either the NDP, Bloc, or Conservatives.

The good news is that all of these parties believe in climate change and have proposed substantive (if controversial) policies to combat climate change. The bad news is that nobody can agree on what is best. How do you balance economic development, climate change efforts, and federalism in a minority government situation?

It is important to consider each party’s policy on this issue, as well as how the minority Liberal government might find common round with the Opposition parties.

Liberals

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed Canada onto the Paris Agreement in 2016 and the first four years of his mandate involved introducing a carbon pricing system meant to curb Canada’s usage of greenhouse gases and other emissions.

For the 2019 election, the Liberals proposed a more robust environmental policy, including banning single-use plastics by 2021, planting two billion trees in ten years, creating a “Clean Water Agency” in collaboration with other governments, Indigenous communities, and scientists to protect our water supply, as well as mandating that all federal buildings be completely powered by clean energy by 2022, among other policies to which they had already committed.

Conservatives

The Conservatives, known for their opposition to carbon pricing, waited until June 2019 to release what they considered to be a viable alternative to the carbon pricing model. They adopted a more business and innovation-oriented approach, proposing emission standards that would force major emitters to invest in the research, development, and adoption of green technologies if they exceed their emissions limit.

This policy is meant to punish emitters and incentivize the private sector to be greener. Other policies include a Green Patent Credit, meant to incentivize entrepreneurs to develop green technologies in Canada, and creating an online hub for green innovators to seek talent and resources.

Bloc Quebecois

Despite their name, the Bloc Quebecois under leader Yves-François Blanchet has found a way to appeal to a larger Quebecois base without invoking their infamous calls for separation from Canada. Part of that appeal involved proposing an environmental policy similar to cap-and-trade, where Ottawa would tax higher emitting provinces and reward lower-emitting provinces with the proceeds from the tax. Further policies included ending fossil fuel subsidies and rejecting the Energy East pipeline project.

New Democrats

The New Democrats proposed a number of ambitious policies, including declaring a climate emergency, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and supporting Indigenous leadership on climate action. The NDP proposed providing subsidies to boost national investment in renewable energy and low-carbon technology, including re-directing federal funds to low-carbon projects and electrifying all public transit by 2030.

#Wexit?

Going beyond simply party policies and how they might cooperate, it is crucial to look at the implications for Western Canada. In the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, almost no Liberal MPs were elected (in Saskatchewan and Alberta, none were elected). Obviously, the question that ought to be asked is: why not? What was it about Liberal policy that persuaded most living in the Prairies to vote Conservative or NDP?

The generally accepted opinion is that the Western provinces have felt alienated, especially energy workers in Alberta. With the environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty issues that have come to the fore regarding the Trans Mountain pipeline, the Liberal government under Trudeau has infamously flip-flopped, angering both supporters and detractors of the pipeline.

Although the Liberals did purchase the pipeline for $4.5 billion in 2018 and have pledged to move forward with it, action will depend on the role that the government chooses to play with activists that both want and do not want the pipeline, as well as reckoning with the fact that the party has to cooperate with one of the three Opposition parties to get bills passed in the House of Commons.

However, the fact that nothing is set in stone regarding the pipeline does not seem to be enough for the West. In light of the re-election of the Liberals and the fact that 33 out of Alberta’s 34 seats went to the Conservatives (one in Edmonton went to the NDP), there have been increasingly radical calls for the West to separate from the rest of Canada.

Part of this is due to a continuation of federalist conflict between Edmonton and Ottawa. Any energy policy proposed by the government needs to take into account the economic consequences for Westerners. The Liberals did not have to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline, and there may be merit in a system which transitions workers from the oil sector to the renewable energy sector. However, this transition would take time, patience, and cooperation on the part of the government. Not all decisive governments are unpopular, but all indecisive ones are.

Room for Cooperation?

In the words of the BBC, “Albertans’ common concerns can be summarised with three words: representation, equalisation, and oil.” Environmental policy, especially under the Liberals, needs to reflect the needs and proposals of the NDP and Conservatives to succeed. Both these parties, albeit in different ways, see the idea of investing in businesses and entrepreneurs as tantamount to a successful transition to a green economy. They both look at the structural basis for oil reliance and try to transform it.

Nobody would reasonably object to the Liberals’s idea of a “Clean Water Agency”. Clean water is necessary, but so is the economic and job prospects of those from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and every other province. However, even in the most ambitious scenario—where the pipeline is scrapped and the carbon tax is successfully rolled out through Canada—we need to convince all Canadians that the benefits are worth the costs.

The Conservatives won the popular vote in the 2019 election. For anybody who is not Conservative, their victory could have been a nightmare scenario, but the goal of pushing for every party to have a feasible policy for fighting climate change was almost reached in this election. The only party who did not have any climate policy, Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, did not win a single seat.

Where do we go from here? As we transition to a minority parliament, the two themes we need to keep in mind are cooperation and climate action.

Cooperation is necessary for a democracy to function and to get the concerns of constituents to the table, especially to allow for a synthesis of views on environmental policy.

Climate action is necessary to ensure that the next generations of Canadians live in a land that is as beautiful, clean, and liveable as the one we live in today. The end is not political—it never has been. What is political is the means of getting there.