Not all GHG reductions occur through government intervention.

In the telecommunications sector, for instance, fixed and mobile broadband networks have facilitated positive environmental changes and helped reduce emissions, but the public discourse tends to be centered on the cost of services. 

With every sector of the Canadian economy being called upon to reduce emissions and decarbonize, broadband deployment and the technologies it enables can reduce emissions in a number of ways. For instance, they can facilitate more efficient energy use in manufacturing a product or delivering a service, or in eliminating wasteful consumption. 

There are also behavioural changes induced by broadband that affect our consumption and thus reduce emissions. Through remote working, for instance, digital connectivity decreases the demand for transportation. This in turn reduces the emissions associated with that transportation. One study estimates that reducing traffic congestion by only a tenth in Montreal would eliminate 130,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions, which is like taking 29,000 cars off the road. 

In fact, a recent systematic review concluded that remote working resulted in reductions of up to 15 percent in overall energy use and up to 80 percent in CO₂ emissions.

At the macro-level, according to one conservative estimate, in the average OECD country, between 2002 and 2019, basic and fibre-based broadband connections reduced CO₂ emissions by 67 Mt. This is not negligible, amounting to almost a quarter of the Canadian federal government’s ambitious 2030 emission reduction targets.

Deploying next-generation 5G and 5G-enabled technologies will have further positive impacts on our efforts to reduce emissions, due to both direct increases in the energy efficiency of the networks themselves and indirect impacts across all sectors that utilize ICT and other digital technologies.

In Canada alone, one study estimated that with a rapid rollout, 5G can enable emissions reductions of up to 10 Mt by 2030. Globally, according to another study, an expedited rollout could reduce emissions by 500 Mt by the end of the decade.

This is in addition to delivering connections up to 20 times faster and with up to 100 times the network capacity compared to 4G, not to mention the expected addition of another $120 billion to Canadian GDP by 2036.

We know the federal government is serious about reducing emissions. Budget 2023 pledged billions toward clean energy, decarbonizing, and various projects contributing to the government’s emission reduction priorities, as well as a handful of new investment tax credits with a net-zero aim. 

However, the budget barely mentions the telecommunications sector or broadband, except in relation to “junk fees” and in championing the recent attraction of 5G-related investments.

If the government really wants to attract investment in this area, it should carry out a focused review of the burdensome regulatory framework and public policies that stifle investment and innovation. For example, the mandated sharing of networks at below-market prices reduces the incentives for big telcos to make significant infrastructure investments and the incentives for smaller companies to invest in their own competing networks.

Research shows that over longer periods of time, investments in broadband infrastructure contribute to reduced CO₂ emissions. And that’s despite the initial increase after the introduction of broadband likely due to initial network infrastructure and increased electricity consumption. 

The numbers don’t lie: the increases in energy efficiency and decreases in energy consumption and emissions facilitated by broadband networks and the digital economy are considerable, and the potential for 5G networks to achieve further reductions is significant. All the government needs to do to encourage the infrastructure investment needed for the rapid rollout of this next-generation technology, and all its attendant benefits, is simply get out of the way.

“Are you serious?” a wide-eyed, Pierre Poilievre asked the reporter quizzing him about crime and bail reform last week.

Poilievre and the Conservative Party MPs behind him seemed genuinely shocked at the premise of the question. It’s a familiar feeling for many of us. Increasingly, regular people are left shaking their heads, baffled by the latest term they’re expected to use, premise they’re supposed to understand, or public policy trend they’re supposed to accept. It’s not that they don’t get it. It’s that it defies common sense.

In that moment, Poilievre was channeling our collective befuddlement, as the journalist clumsily tried to suggest that keeping repeat, violent criminals behind bars would somehow not prevent more crimes from occurring. The most generous interpretation of the journalist’s line of question is that he was trying to suggest there are root causes that initiate a first-time criminal’s descent into violence. But even if that were his intent (and given his follow-up questions, it seems unlikely), the fact remains that when criminals are in jail, they can’t commit more crimes…because they’re in jail.

Indeed, the data is so compelling that even the Trudeau government is now carrying out some much-needed reform. And yet, the reporter felt the need to carry water for an ideological approach that defies all logic, either because he genuinely believes loose bail policy works, despite the evidence to the contrary, or, more likely, because he’s captured by a new, progressive worldview increasingly dominant in Canadian institutions, including the Parliamentary press gallery, that is completely out of touch with reality. 

It’s hard to define the new bias of elite liberal institutions. Calling it wokeness feels overdone, and maybe a bit cheap. But a week before Poilievre shook his head at the reporter’s ridiculous question, Canada’s prime minister opted to drape himself and his party in the moniker, so it seems as useful a descriptor as any. Whatever it is, you know it when you see it. A contradictory blend of liberal individualism and critical theory, new progressivism puts language before action, identity before community, and future before history. It cancels people, it virtue signals, and it experiments with radical public policy. More importantly, it can be alienating. Woke culture tends to champion what Rob Henderson calls luxury beliefs, views that are alienating in their substance (you’re unlikely to be able to justify defunding the police if you live in a crime-filled neighbourhood), and their language (comprised of a dictionary of new terms that seem to change on a weekly basis).

But railing against wokeness will only get Canadians who oppose it so far. The culture war dynamic has become so predictable as to be boring, and the fact that it often happens online means that regular Canadians, the mainstream normies who will make up most voters in the next election, will need more than just anti-woke railing to capture their attention. Poilievre has landed on exactly the right frame for communicating a positive, alternative worldview, one that doesn’t just oppose wokeness, but that champions good old-fashioned common sense.

Poilievre mastered the anti-woke attack during last year’s Conservative Party leadership race. He called out cancel culture on campus, exposed the hypocrisy of Trudeau’s virtue signalling on climate change, and targeted the government’s out-of-control spending on pet issues while inflation raged. Each attack was accompanied by a detailed alternative policy proposal—free speech protections on campus, approving Canadian oil and gas projects, a pay-as-you-go spending commitment, and many, many more. But the effect was to draw a contrast, to enhance the negative, and to show voters what Poilievre opposed—and for good reason, he was auditioning to be leader of the opposition. Now, as the next general election nears, Poilievre’s challenge is to bring a stronger, positive narrative framework to his policies, and he’s starting to do just that.

In response to Trudeau’s Liberal convention appeal, Poilievre posted a video in his signature, on-the-go selfie style, juxtaposing Trudeau’s woke policies with his own common-sense approach. Where Trudeau would ban hunting rifles, attacking innocent farmers and sport shooters, Poilievre would bring in bail reform, targeting repeat violent criminals. Where Trudeau would support the so-called “safe supply” of harmful addictive drugs, Poilievre would prioritize treatment. Where Trudeau would raise the carbon tax, Poilievre would cancel it, and so on.

Poilievre’s focus on framing his commitments through the lens of common sense isn’t entirely new. He’s railed against the gatekeepers and spoken passionately about the common people for years, peppering his speeches with appeals to the many over the few and revealing a personal vision of a Parliament that serves the people, instead of the other way around. But it wasn’t until recently that Poilievre combined the battle against wokeism with the case for common sense policies for common people, and by doing so, Poilievre takes his online culture war credibility and gives it mainstream, in-real-life appeal.

Poilievre’s common-sense frame does what the left has done so effectively over the last decade—it wrenches open the Overton window on his side of the ideological spectrum. By asserting that his views, while substantive and principled, are common sense, he allies himself with mainstream public opinion. And as the Liberals overplay their progressive hand, hoping no one will notice their experimental policies are failing, his mainstream language resonates. The reason regular people feel so befuddled by wokeism, the reason we all nod our heads when Poilievre asks “Are you serious?” is because, to use a common expression, people don’t like to be urinated on and then told it’s raining. Until recently, dominant voices in the media and the halls of power have successfully made common views out to be radical and their own views out to be reasonable.

Within this frame, conservatives seem like reactionaries. But as liberal elites have become more captured by woke ideology, their values have increasingly become inaccessible to everyday Canadians. By championing bourgeois virtues, speaking to the common people, and appealing to common sense, Poilievre is rejecting that frame and putting himself and his party smack dab in the regular, boring, mainstream centre of Canadian public opinion. And that’s a winning strategy.