It is hard to imagine a more cynical picture: a former environmental activist who became Minister of Environment and Climate Change, just after the publication of an IPCC report reiterating the absolute urgency to act now to reduce global emissions of GES, announces the authorization of a new oil drilling project in the ocean, supposed to start in 2028.
Sounds like a bad joke, and yet, here we are. The day before the presentation of the federal budget by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, Minister Steven Guilbeault announced that the Bay du Nord project, which provides for the drilling of 300 million to one billion barrels of oil in the off Newfoundland, could go ahead — after an environmental assessment process that was heavily criticized by environmental groups.
This decision clearly contradicts the warnings issued this week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which recalls that any new oil exploitation initiative sabotages the hope of limiting global warming to 1 .5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. This is a position also supported by the International Energy Agency and the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who, in the wake of the IPCC report, declared on Twitter that ” [l]he real dangerous radicals are the countries that continue to increase their production of fossil fuels”.
It does not matter, therefore, that Bay du Nord was accepted subject to the “strictest environmental conditions ever imposed”. It does not matter that the project respects the GHG reduction plan unveiled by the government at the end of March (which is in itself insufficient, in particular because it sets a lower reduction target for the hydrocarbon and transport sectors). This is, in itself, an aberration.
“I did not come into politics to announce oil projects,” conceded Steven Guilbeault in an interview on Radio-Canada, a few hours before the presentation of the Freeland budget. He did not go into politics for that, but, despite everything, he is ready to defend it, this project. This oil is cleaner than that of the tar sands, he tells us without laughing, adding that we will still need oil by 2050, so we might as well continue to produce it. Minister Guilbeault did not go into politics for that, yet this decision tells us everything we need to know: the prognoses are very bleak and the Government of Canada is not ready to take its responsibilities.
This is also demonstrated by the Freeland budget presented on Thursday. From the outset, the government places this budgetary exercise in an unprecedented situation: geopolitical instability, health crisis, climate crisis, inflation of which we cannot see the end. It is thus proposed to invest in the green transition to continue to propel economic growth, posed as the main object of this budget – while insisting on the need to continue to reduce the deficit.
There is something paradoxical in the narrow place reserved for climate transition. Of course, a budget cannot be focused on a single issue. Still, a consensus is emerging as to the fact that the environmental issue is now the one that structures all the others. If one worries about the economic impacts of the health crisis, conflicts, shortages, the destruction of ecosystems and the disruption of supply chains, the current instability is only a taste of the decades to come. Without placing the climate issue at the heart of our public and budgetary policies, we will only reproduce it and constantly aggravate this instability.
Despite everything, the day after the approval of the Bay du Nord project, and a few days after the presentation of a GHG reduction plan that was complacent with regard to the most polluting sectors, it was suggested that we focus first on the private sector investments to reduce carbon emissions and propel “clean technologies”, including through a $15 billion growth fund as well as tax credits for technologies to capture, use and carbon storage.
There is a series of measures presented under the banner of environmental resilience, which outline the same general orientation: supporting companies in their operating choices and supporting individuals in their consumption choices. This strategy requires no political courage and it dramatically fails to take into account the need to fundamentally transform our economy and our way of life.
This budget, to say the least, is not that of the ecological transition. Nor is it that of climate justice. The question of housing, for example, is essentially left to projects carried out by real estate investors and prioritizes access to property rather than access to truly affordable housing. We know, however, that the climate crisis is bound to aggravate the housing crisis, and that it is the most vulnerable citizens who are already doing it and who will always bear the brunt of it.
If the vagaries of Minister Guilbeault gave us a foretaste of it, with this budget it is now clear that to the international institutions that summon states to act in environmental matters before it is too late, the Government of Canada is offering a clear answer: he is not listening.