Front Burner - The push for Canada’s green recovery

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Canada’s Finance Minister, Bill Morneau, has just released a dramatic projection of the country’s deficit this year: $343 billion, largely due to pandemic-related support programs. The unprecedented amount of spending is a signal to many climate advocates that there is now an opportunity to fundamentally reshape the economy through something called a green recovery. Today, climate reporter Geoff Dembicki on what that might look like in Canada, and the challenges it may face.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Josh Bloch. This week, Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau gave a snapshot of Canada's fiscal situation. And let's just say it was grim. Some will criticize us on the cost of action.

They'll point to the size of our deficit in 2021. But our government knew that the cost of inaction would have been far greater. The deficit is expected to hit $343 billion this year. And the federal debt is projected to hit $1.3 trillion, with the worst drop in GDP since the Great Depression. It's a picture that's familiar all over the world, as countries struggle to rescue their economies from the devastating impact of COVID-19. But in this bleak forecast, many climate advocates, including here in Canada, see an opportunity for something called a green economic recovery.

One that would create jobs in low-carbon, environmentally sustainable industries. Today, the push for Canada's green economy and the challenges it might face. This is Frontburner. My guest today is journalist Jeff Dembicki. He reports on climate change for the Taiyi, and he just wrote a feature article for them about what a green recovery might look like here in Canada. Welcome back, Jeff. Hi, thanks for having me on.

I want to start with the basics here. Just briefly, what exactly is a green recovery? So the basic logic of a green recovery is that the coronavirus, in addition to killing thousands of people across Canada, has also devastated the economy. So we need to get tons of people back to work again. We need to make the economy much healthier. But at the same time, the climate emergency has not really slowed down at all. So as we recover from COVID, we need to be thinking about how we're going to build back a better, more resilient economy that can also address the climate emergency

so we're not just recovering from one crisis and then locking ourselves into another one. Well, on Wednesday, Bill Morneau didn't say any specifics about an economic recovery plan, but one will eventually be coming. What opportunity do climate advocates see right now? So it's really quite an extraordinary political moment in Canada right now. The Trudeau government has spent over $250 billion

on coronavirus relief. Our government took on debt to reduce the amount that Canadians themselves had to take on. And at the same time, there have been these massive demonstrations all over the world related to the police killing of George Floyd. to the police killing of George Floyd. And so the average Canadian can now see that when it's a political priority, the federal government is able to marshal huge amounts of financial resources. And the same Canadian is probably taking a hard look

at all of the systemic injustice in our society. At the same time as all of this, the oil and gas industry is facing a massive crisis, possibly its biggest ever crisis. And meanwhile, green technologies are rapidly going mainstream. So you combine all of these things, and we're just in a really unique window for transformative change. And scientists are saying that the next six months are critical when it comes to addressing climate change. Temperatures across Russia have averaged eight degrees higher than normal this year. That's the largest anomaly ever seen in a country's average.

The heat wave has lit a match to the Arctic. One of the world's coldest regions is witnessing a record number of wildfires. The decisions governments make in terms of their recovery plans are basically going to determine what the next three or four years of the global economy look like. And so if the recoveries mainly just prop up the polluting economic activities that we've already had, then this is going to squander crucial time. We need to be creating massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. And losing three to four years at this point could lock us into some truly terrible outcomes on climate change. Hi there. My name is Sven Biggs, and I'm the lead on Stand Under's Canadian oil and gas campaigns. Next, we're going to put pressure on our federal government to make sure that the stimulus that's coming to help us out of the economic downturn because of COVID is green and is focused on creating a sustainable economy instead of investing in old technology like oil and gas.

And I know this is the idea of a green recovery is something that Trudeau government is seems to be considering. They have three federal ministers looking into the idea. Yeah. And I think Trudeau is aware of a lot of these bigger macroeconomic trends because he speaks with leaders and business people from around the world. And so this idea that oil and gas is facing a major threat to its viability, this isn't some fringe thing. This is really quite a mainstream reality. And you even have industry outlets such as oilprice.com saying 2021 is going to be the year of renewable energy. And so Trudeau is aware of these shifts. He's aware that governments in Europe are preparing to potentially spend hundreds of

billions of dollars on a green recovery. And so Trudeau is looking at that, and he set up this panel with three ministers to study what that could look like in Canada, but nobody knows what the result of that will be yet. Well, as you alluded to, the calls for a green recovery are coming from many different sectors in society. I want to ask you about the different groups that are making this call. And some of them actually have conflicting ideas about how this should happen. Let's start with what seems to be the biggest push, which is coming from these 400 civil society groups who are calling on the federal government to invest in what they call a just recovery. What do they want Trudeau to do? So when they call for something that they're terming a just recovery, basically what it's

doing is it takes the idea of the green recovery and adds the concept of justice to it. We need an economic relief directly to the people, regardless of our status right now. And it says it's not enough to merely invest in low-carbon industries. We need to make sure that the benefits of any green recovery go to workers and go to help people who are already struggling in the economy before COVID. And so I'll just give you, I know that sounds kind of abstract, so I'll give you a concrete example of what this could mean in practice. So you could have a federal government say, we want to make

the greenest buildings in the world, and we're going to invest a lot in that. And then that results in these luxury condo towers going up in Toronto and Vancouver that have very high environmental standards and chargers for electric vehicles. But to buy a condo, it costs a million dollars. And instead, what the Just Recovery people are pushing for is a solution that would see the government, for example, create tens of thousands of affordable social housing units all across the country that are energy efficient and close to mass transit. So that solution would be much more accessible to regular people. accessible to regular people. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Just Recovery is based on these six principles that they laid out. One of them is upholding indigenous rights. And I know you spoke to Lindsay Bossigal from the group Indigenous Climate Action. I'm curious how their vision for a green recovery is different from the calls from more mainstream environmental groups.

sort of described a just recovery that goes a bit further to include the specific needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. And she said, unless you have Indigenous people at the table from day one crafting a just recovery, it might not actually be all that just in the end. So, for example, if the federal government were to decide to spend billions of dollars on doing energy retrofits in buildings and houses, this could potentially create a lot of jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and it would also reduce Canada's carbon emissions. So Indigenous Climate Action looks at something like that and says, you know, that's great, but this might not benefit Indigenous people unless there were resources to fix a huge housing crisis in the north, to fix the drinking water on reservations across the country that's

contaminated, to put Indigenous women in housing who are at greater risk of going missing or being murdered. And so that's what it means to really incorporate the voices and needs of Indigenous peoples into this. So it sounds like there's a diversity of views and opinions, even among the people who support the Just Recovery Plan. But there's also this whole other sector that supports a green recovery who you might not traditionally associate with the environmental movement. For example, there's this group called the Task Force for a Resilient Recovery. And this includes senior members of the Royal Bank, the corporate law firm Bennett Jones, the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

What's their version for a sustainable recovery? I mean, they're looking at everything that's happening right now in the global economy. And they're seeing that lower carbon, greener technologies are just growing exponentially right now. And they're also seeing that investors are starting to get a bit wary about the business case for fossil fuels. So there's massive economic momentum behind this shift. And potentially a lot of people are going to make a lot of money.

Potentially, a lot of people are going to make a lot of money. And they're also looking at a lot of interesting studies on job creation related to greener industries. There's one study that estimated if you spend a million dollars on fossil fuels, you'll get roughly 2.65 jobs. And if you spend that same amount of money on renewable energy, you'll get seven jobs. And, you know, we're even seeing that there are people in the oil and gas industry themselves who are supporting at least a certain kind of green recovery as well. And so there's starting to be some thinking now in the oil sands industry about what could this industry look like if it wasn't producing fossil fuels anymore. And one idea is to take the bitumen that's pulled out of the ground and turn that into carbon fiber, which is a material that can be used in the

construction of electric vehicles. And so this would potentially create a huge amount of revenue for Alberta. And it would also result in a massive drop in carbon emissions because you wouldn't be burning all of that gas and diesel anymore. But then if you... You would continue to be working in the oil sands. Yeah, you would still have an oil sands industry. And I think that's why this vision is kind of appealing to some people in the industry. But when I asked the spokesperson for Indigenous Climate Action about this, she said, well, you know, transitioning to a carbon fiber oil sands industry doesn't really solve the toxic

tailings ponds and huge mines that are disrupting the lives of First Nations and other communities across that area. So it might be a greener version, but it's not necessarily a more just version. Right. But collectively already between the just recovery movement, these corporate entities that are also backing a green recovery, I mean, how significant is the pressure right now on the federal government to take a green recovery seriously? I think Trudeau, when he's weighing his options about how to create a recovery to COVID, he's seeing all of the compelling arguments for a green recovery, but he's also having conversations with the heads of all of the large banks who are pretty

outspoken defenders of oil and gas expansion. So really, he could be pushed either way at this point. Well, I want to ask you more about the pressure that's coming from the other side, the banks and the corporations who do not support this kind of green shift. What kind of pressure is there from those sectors? The most obvious place to see the competing vision to a green recovery is in Alberta right now. vision to a green recovery is in Alberta right now. And Premier Jason Kenney has called any sort of Green New Deal or green recovery basically an ideological fantasy pushed by environmental extremists. When you talk about a trend, the Green New Deal. Listen, our focus is on getting people back to work in Alberta, not pie-in-the-sky ideological schemes. We are actually not trying to amplify, but to fight back against the political agenda of the green left that has been trying to landlock Alberta energy.

So we're not going to cooperate with the folks that are trying to shut down Canada's single largest subsector. And so what he's trying to do instead is build back the oil and gas industry and attract corporations to Alberta by cutting the corporate tax rate. At the same time, the Alberta government is pledging around $7.5 billion to get the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline built. So he's already putting a lot of money towards basically a status quo recovery. And it will remain to be seen how federally the balance of power decides things. The middle of a pandemic was not the time to raise taxes. The Trudeau Liberals went ahead with their planned increase on the carbon tax. I have a lot of farmers in my riding that had to pay for drying grain this harvest.

That's going to increase their costs, going to increase a lot of costs for Canadians around the country. So as you mentioned, the federal government is feeling pressure from and competing pressure from many different sectors in society and also facing this $343 billion deficit. What signs has the Trudeau government given so far about what they might do here? So far, the coronavirus policies that have come from the government have been a bit incoherent. And an example of that is the federal government created a fund and oil and gas producers could apply for loans and then use those loans to help lower their methane emissions. But at the same time, methane emissions are exempt from the Canadian carbon tax. And so the US outlet Politico highlighted this fact and said, with Trudeau, there's always a catch. There's always some sort

of compromise between the environment and the oil and gas economy. But at the end of the day, is he not going to have to make some sort of decision? I mean, does reorienting to a greener economy and not relying on fossil fuels mean at some point the government's going to have to say, look, people that work in this sector are going to lose jobs or these companies are not going to make as much money anymore. Isn't that unavoidable? Yeah, it's definitely unavoidable. And the fact is Canada can't achieve its Paris climate targets with the oil sands industry expanding as it is right now. It just can't happen. But then Trudeau could say, we're going to do everything possible to ensure that people who lose their jobs in this transition are taken

care of. And we know that the federal government can do this because it just did that with coronavirus. Without government action, millions of jobs would have been lost, putting the burden of debt onto families and jeopardizing Canada's resilience. At a time when Canadian workers and families are facing significant hardship, austerity and tightening your belt is not the answer. And so the federal government has already studied what a just transition away from fossil fuels could look like for workers. And it did that with the coal industry. So a lot of this research exists. There were reports produced.

There are experts. Now it would be a matter of finding the political courage to actually put that into action at a larger scale in Canada. courage to actually put that into action at a larger scale in Canada. And it seems like there's another layer of pressure on Canada, as other countries and other jurisdictions are starting to move into this space. I mean, there was this big international summit on green recovery that just happened. The EU is planning on investing billions of dollars in a green recovery. And the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has also suggested that he'd put a lot of money into a green stimulus package if he wins. If these other countries go ahead with these really bold proposals,

how much pressure will there be on Canada to act? Well, I think what you would see is if Europe does go ahead with a pretty aggressive Green New Deal, and if Joe Biden wins the election in November and brings forward a massive stimulus package that gives a lot of priority to green investments, and if China can move forward in a really green direction, as it has been doing at the same time that China has been building coal plants, you would have a very large section of the global economy committed behind a shift away from fossil fuels. And now, if you look at Canada in that sort of scenario, if we're still putting a lot of our economic hopes in an oil and gas industry and a lot of polluting extractive industries, that's not just an environmental risk

at this point. That's a massive financial risk. And so I think what a lot of the advocates for a green recovery, whether they come from the environmental sector or civil society or business, they're basically saying the same thing, which is we want to avoid the types of devastating economic crises that we've seen with coronavirus. And so a green recovery is the best way to prevent those types of crises from happening again at an even larger scale. Jeff, as someone who has been reporting on this for so long, I mean, you were on our show a year ago talking about the Green New Deal. And I think it was fair to say at that time it wasn't really a mainstream movement.

And here we are a year later and you have this real diversity of supporters for this green recovery. How surprised are you that we've arrived at a place where this seems like it might be a possibility? I'm very surprised, to be honest. The politics and the economics of fighting climate change are changing so fast. And we really have countries all around the world saying that fighting climate change is going to require massive investments. It's going to require huge job creation programs from government. And it's going to require addressing all of the injustices in our society and doing all of this at the same time. And really, we're talking about a shift that's occurred in a matter of months. And so to me, that gives me a bit of cause for hope because a lot of the news around climate change is so scary and disempowering right now.

Jeff, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Thanks so much for having me on the show. An update on a story we covered earlier this week. It turns out members of the Trudeau family have in fact been paid for their appearances at We Charity events. We Charity had previously claimed that it had never paid an honorarium to Margaret Trudeau. On Thursday, We Charity provided details of speaking fees paid to both Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau's mother, Margaret, and brother, Alexandre. Margaret spoke at about 28 events and received payments amounting to $250,000. Alexandre spoke at eight events and received approximately $32,000. We'll continue to follow this story. That's all for this week. FrontBurner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Imogen Burchard, Shannon Higgins, Allie Janes, and Derek Vanderwick. And a special thanks to Ashley Burke. Mandy Sham does our sound design

with help from Mac Cameron. Our music is by Joseph Shabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of Front Burner this week was Elaine Chao. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening. Back on Monday.