We have known for a long time that Jean Charest is capable of defending a position and its opposite with equal conviction, according to his interest at the time. Going from Ottawa to Quebec, and vice versa, also requires certain adjustments.
Whether in the Mulroney government or during his nine years in power in Quebec, he had nevertheless managed to maintain the image of a man who had understood more quickly than others the importance of the fight against climate change. .
In his autobiography titled I chose Quebec (1998), he wrote: “In this field, we cannot allow ourselves a single moment of retreat or rest. The stakes are too high, first for future generations, but also for our economy. »
The role he played at the June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro gave him political birth. The recommendations adopted at this conference have remained a dead letter, but Jean Charest has won a green varnish, which he knew how to polish skillfully even when the policies of his government seemed to contradict his speech. The population understood that reconciling the imperatives of the environment and the economy was sometimes difficult.
If the carbon market did not yield all the expected results, the former Prime Minister could claim to have been the instigator, which was no small feat at a time when the rest of the country seemed wallowing in its “dirty energy”.
After a brief honeymoon, which ended abruptly when Mr. Charest cheated Stephen Harper by devoting the $700 million he had asked for to fund health care to a tax cut, he found in his Canadian counterpart the ideal foil for its environmental pretensions.
On the strength of Quebec’s hydroelectric capacity, he had good reason to reproach it for its lack of ambition in its GHG reduction objectives — and he did not hesitate to do so, in the same way that François Legault never misses an opportunity to point out that Quebec has the lowest GHG emission rate in North America.
COP15, held in Copenhagen in December 2009, turned into a rat race when Mr. Charest accused the Canadian government of lacking leadership in the fight against global warming and of being towed by the United States. This cantor of Canadian unity went so far as to say that there were “two Canadas”: one, whose timidity in environmental matters was illustrated by Ottawa, and the other, whose determination he himself testified. Mr. Harper was struggling to contain his rage.
Now that he is a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Mr. Charest has undertaken to strip off his green varnish. Now the Trudeau government’s GHG reduction targets are too ambitious; we should rather go back to those of… Stephen Harper, which he considers more realistic. According to him, Canada should now align itself with the objectives of the major emitting countries.
While the Parliamentary Budget Officer believes that the current level of the “carbon tax” remains insufficient for Canada to be able to comply with the Paris Agreement, Mr. Charest proposes eliminating it in order to “emphasize on businesses, not families,” and let the provinces decide how best to reduce their emissions.
If the Trudeau government decided to impose a tax, it was obviously because certain provinces refused to introduce an equivalent pricing system. If we rely on them, how can we think that the oil-producing provinces will constrain the industry?
It is true that the objectives set over the years have never been achieved, but should they be reduced? Many motorists do not obey speed limits, but raising them will not improve public safety.
Mr. Charest knows very well that supporting the maintenance of a tax on the consumption of hydrocarbons would deprive him of any chance of beating Pierre Poilievre. The misadventures of Erin O’Toole have demonstrated the need to avoid any ambiguity on this subject: the majority of conservative activists simply do not believe in the reality of climate change.
“We cannot afford a single moment of retreat or rest, the stakes are too high,” he said. This is exactly what he offers today. A certain amount of opportunism is generally accepted in politics, but there are times when cynicism goes beyond measure.