When the history of how Canada struggled to address climate change is written, a cranky chapter should be aimed at the managers of the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA).

This for their unhelpfulness on the climate change file.

And then some stick should also be applied to progressive politicians and strategists like me who chose to live with that.

But before I explain that, a little family history.

When I was a child, I liked to play in our living room in the little bungalow I grew up in, bathed, as it was, in warm afternoon sunlight. My mother would usually be sitting on the sofa under our big picture window. It was fun (but possibly not healthy for young lungs) to watch her cigarette smoke eddying in the light.

Periodically she would open her baby bonus cheque in that living room—a little help from the government of Canada to bear the cost of three sons. That was always a happy day for my mother because that cheque was the only income she ever saw addressed directly to her (she was a homemaker in the classic early-1960s style). She deposited those cheques in her own bank account—“my money” as she would always happily say. She spent it all on us.

So then, some years later, in Premier Rachel Notley’s office in Alberta (which was also often bathed in beautiful sunlight), we chose to adopt carbon pricing on the B.C. model to address climate change.

We believed there were many reasons to do this.

Harmonizing with B.C. would promote consistent policy in Western Canada.

Most of the principal Alberta energy industry CEOs at the time supported a B.C.-style economy-wide carbon pricing so that their industry would not be vilified as the only cause of carbon emissions.

Leading economists at the time argued that economy-wide carbon pricing was the least economically damaging policy tool to address the issue.

And—importantly—it seemed like a way to achieve an all-party political policy consensus on climate change that would survive changes of government.

Most Canadian conservatives had finally stopped disputing the reality of climate change and its causes. A center-right government under Gordon Campbell had introduced carbon pricing in B.C. And leading conservative voices like Preston Manning had participated in the “Eco-Fiscal Commission” (funded in part by Alberta-based energy producers) to think through and endorse this approach.

The problem with an “economy-wide carbon price” was that it would impose direct costs on low-income families. A model to address this is present in federal HST/GST rebates. So we wrote that into our plan—low- and middle-income families would get a rebate. They’d get the “nudge”—the price signal that the time has come to reduce carbon emissions—but they’d also get the money back so they weren’t the poorer for it.

We were imagining this rebate as a cheque. What we didn’t appreciate was how inflexible the tax administration system truly was.

Alberta (like all Canadian provinces other than Quebec) has long delegated its tax administration to the CRA, and (as I remember it) Alberta officials reported that not only was the CRA no longer technically equipped to deliver physical carbon levy rebate cheques, but also, that they refused to even discuss the matter. All such payments had to be delivered through direct zero-visibility electronic bank transfers because that is what is inexpensive and convenient for the federal government and its tax agency.

It was a very serious mistake indeed to accept this.

We should have printed our own cheques, in red-bordered envelopes illustrated with the provincial flag, and we should have pre-paid the rebate.

But we didn’t.

And we did not find an all-party policy consensus that climate change is real and that the best way to deal with it is through price and market mechanisms designed by conservative economists. 

Instead, we have laid the table for a Trump-like populist campaign messaging—“Axe the Tax”—delivered every day in Ottawa by His Majesty’s Loyal Official Opposition.

Notwithstanding the Conservative Party’s disciplined message or even the Parliamentary Budget Office’s contested research, most Canadians actually get the consumer carbon fully rebated. However, those “most Canadians” don’t have that rebate in their daily lived experience.

And there’s more. As it turned out, many people who are aware of those rebates still don’t support them. In focus groups I sat through as this policy played out, many Albertans told us they’d rather the revenues from carbon levies be used to improve health care and education, to build public transit, or to invest in renewables.

“Why the hell are you collecting it and then giving it back? What’s the point?” they said.

All of this is, I believe, why the federal NDP recently took a step away from the consumer carbon levy and said they’ll present their own plan in due course.

How material a problem would that be?

The Canadian Climate Institute figures the consumer carbon levy (basically, consumer fuel levies) is supplying about 8 to 9 percent of the solution we need.

That’s not nothing. But it’s not a comprehensive retreat to climate denial, either.

Is stepping away from a consumer carbon levy a policy defeat?

Yes, for everyone who believes in market-based solutions to public policy challenges through price signals.

For social democrats, on the other hand, this is an opportunity to work up more direct regulatory solutions.

It’s an odd moment in Canadian governance, in other words. A moment for social democrats to say to conservatives: “You don’t like your own policies, even when they had an all-party consensus? Ok. Have it our way.”

What is not going to happen is wishing away climate change with alliterative slogans. Anyone who believes that should drive the Jasper Parkway north from Calgary to the Jasper National Park Icefield and go look at what is happening to Canada’s glaciers. Then keep going to Jasper itself and look at what the coming wildfires will do to cities and towns in the Boreal Forest across Canada. Climate change is real. It must be addressed. Including by us in Canada. One way or another.

“I love nature, I just don’t want to get any of it on me.” – Woody Allen

Nature makes some people nervous. It certainly unsettles conservative policymakers in Canada and the U.S. We live in nature, and voters value what nature produces such as air, water, food, shelter, energy, and a temperate climate, but conservative policymakers are reluctant to discuss it. They shouldn’t be.

To deny nature and her gifts is to deny the earthy origins of conservatism and life itself. Conservatism sprang from the soil and the farms, fields, woodlots, and small towns of Britain, America, and Canada. It still flourishes there today. We instinctively cherish wild landscapes. We still look with wonder when we glimpse a moose, wolf, or a burrowing owl.

This hunger for nature resonates in cities too, where it draws us by the millions to lakes, cottages, beaches, and parks every warm weekend. Nature soothes our minds and helps us heal. It provides so much that is essential that it is difficult to understand the fussy refusal of conservatives to speak up and protect it. We better find our voice quickly. Time is running out.

We have drained our vibrant prairie wetlands and ploughed nearly 80 percent of our grasslands. We lose more every year. Doing nothing is negligent and unconservative. Prime Minister Harper urged us to be a “community of stewards.” We should listen. Stewardship means speaking up instead of excusing away the destruction of pristine nature, family farms, small towns, and our rural and outdoor heritage. A drained wetland does not care if the leveler is a developer or farmer. Either way, it is gone, forever.

But we can reverse the trend. Protecting nature shouldn’t eat into a landowner’s bottom line. But how do we conserve nature while also making a living?

First, conservationists should adopt language that persuades. Words like “Anthropocene,” “ecosystem,” and even “environment” clank and grind, like they emerged from the furnaces of the industrial revolution. We are more likely to act to save a reed-fringed pond or a beloved patch of prairie than a damaged ecosystem or a threatened environment. Stories and particular places convey something richer, deeper, and dearer than technical or bureaucratic lingo. Chesterton’s advice applies: we should treat and speak of nature like we would our little sister.

Second, conserving and restoring nature aligns with economic growth. Nature is the annuity that pays us a stream of interest comprised of life’s essentials. Nature is our grocery and hardware store, pharmacy, lumber yard, gas station, power company, recreation centre, therapist, and, according to a new study, our doctor. Most of what nature provides is renewable and we can thrive on what it pays out if we don’t squander the original asset. We already know what works. Incenting and paying landowners to conserve the most valuable and vulnerable pieces saves nature and keeps farmers and ranchers on the land.

Third, Canada’s approach to climate policy should be bottom-up, collaborative, affordable, and practical. The goal should be continuous progress, not unattainable perfection. It should engage those with the most at stake from a changing climate: farmers, ranchers, Indigenous communities, and Canada’s hundreds of thousands of anglers, birdwatchers, hunters, hikers, campers, cottage owners, and nature lovers. It should also engage those most impacted by the accelerating energy transition, such as resource companies and workers and technology innovators.

Fourth, climate change needs a new cast of spokespeople. Farmers, ranchers, Indigenous elders, anglers, hunters, grandparents, and conservationists who have successfully restored lands and cleaned up rivers, are all better advocates of climate than most climate change activists. Jet-setting celebrities, finger-wagging politicos, and Greta Thunberg and her UN rants only alienate the conservative-leaning people needed to make long-term progress on climate and conservation. And make no mistake, conservative voters want progress.

In May an Abacus Research poll noted “80 percent of Canadians want the Conservatives to have a serious plan to deal with climate change, including 74 percent of those who would vote Conservative today.” The numbers are clear, conservatives need a plan for climate and conservation, one that is practical and achieves results in the short and medium term.

We already know the answers: carbon sequestration, natural gas to replace coal, energy storage, geothermal, the continued rapid growth of regenerative agriculture techniques, scaling up nuclear with small modular reactors, and the almost weekly technological innovations that mitigate GHG emissions.

Renewables should continue to expand because, when the sun shines and the wind blows, they produce our cheapest and cleanest energy, but they should only be approved after accounting for their impacts on nature, the land, and landscapes.

Canadians will get enthusiastic about reducing GHGs if the process also cleans up their favourite lake or saves a treasured piece of prairie. Nature-based solutions leverage tax incentives or direct payments to conserve and enhance forests, wetlands, and grasslands such as carbon sequestration. Natural areas also provide homes for endangered animals and pollinators, capture toxic heavy metals from the air and water, and buffer streams and lakes from agricultural chemical run-off that causes algae blooms. Natural solutions enhance opportunities for outdoor recreation.

But we are falling short. We don’t replace what we destroy and therefore deny our grandchildren their sacred stand of trees, or wetlands where they can explore and get comfortable with getting a little nature on them. Protecting these places and restoring what we’ve lost honours the admonition to leave the world better than we found it.

Conservative leaders owe voters clear and practical policies on conservation and climate. It is just the right thing to do. As Wendell Berry says, “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”