Why Catherine McKenna scares the heck out of me... and why she should scare you, too!

Art Lightstone

Recently, Michael Enright, the host of CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition, politely struggled through an interview with Catherine McKenna on the contradiction at the heart of Canada's current energy policy. This contradiction, as Enright points out, is that Canada is committed to reducing our carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement, while we are at the same time expanding Alberta's oil production. Not only that, but we are actually building new pipelines to get that oil to markets in the Pacific. 

Here's an excerpt from Enright's introduction to the topic ahead of his interview:

There does seem to be broad consensus in this country that climate change is real, that it's a problem, and that governments should do something about it.

And the federal government has made commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2030. 

The government insists it will meet its commitments, in large part through the introduction of a carbon tax. 

At the same time, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government is committed to seeing the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C. go ahead — over the fierce objections of British Columbia.

​That pipeline would enable further expansion of the oil sands industry — at a time when the oil and gas sector is already the biggest source of carbon emissions in Canada, and the oil sands are the fastest-growing source of emissions. 

If you're like me, then you are wondering how on Earth the federal government intends to reconcile reducing carbon emissions while expanding its single largest source of these emissions. Naturally, I listened with great interest to Enright's interview with our Environment Minister. I was listening for some sort of technical explanation. Even a cheap, silly explanation may have sufficed. I partly expected McKenna to say something like, "Well... we're just exporting the oil... we won't be the one's actually burning it, so, in the end, at least Canada will meet our targets."  To her credit, McKenna did not stoop that low.

However, McKenna's responses to the inherent contradictions within Canada's current actions on climate change still scare the heck out of me, and they should scare the heck out of you, too. Here's why. 

McKenna basically had an open mic on our national broadcaster for just over 30 minutes. She had plenty of time to explain the apparent contradictions within the Liberal government's actions on climate change. But, alas... she did not.

Instead, our Minister of the Environment and Climate Change dodged, redirected, pontificated, name-dropped, told stories, passed the buck, and threw around banal platitudes and tired clichés like they were cigarette butts at a Las Vegas smoker's convention. 

I was so incensed... so outraged at McKenna's sly and slippery responses to the increasingly direct and pointed questions put to her by Michael Enright that I decided to produce a Malarkey Matrix to analyze McKenna's responses. I categorized the Minister's statements into one of two rows, each under one of two columns. The rows were labelled as either Pro-Oil or Pro-Environment. The columns were classified as either Fact or Malarkey.

It is important to understand that "malarkey" does not mean lies. The standard definition of malarkey is something to the effect of "meaningless talk" or "nonsense." That, my fellow Canadians, is exactly what I feel Catherine McKenna treated CBC listeners to for just over half an hour on the CBC's March 18, 2018 issue of The Sunday Edition. 

To help make my point, I have presented the results of my malarkey analysis below.

Malarkey Matrix

​	Fact ​(not necessarily truth, but meaningful statements that address an issue.)	Malarkey (not necessarily lies, but meaningless talk or nonsense that does not address an issue)
Pro-Oil	​We are twinning one pipeline.   People are still using fossil fuels.
Pro-Environment	Our target is a 2030 target.   We’re bringing in a cleaner fuel standard.   In Ottawa, we’re building the second phase of light rail transit: that will be the largest reduction in greenhouse gas emmisions in Ottawa's history.    The problem is the bottom line is going to mean that we're going to have to spend more on reacting to impacts of climate change. And countries are going to leapfrog us.  ​Coal is not coming back, it’s cheaper to go to natural gas, it’s cheaper to go with renewables.	I have three kids.   I come from Hamilton... the Hammer! People need jobs. People need to feel part of this transition. We need to make sure that we're bringing people together.  I try to keep the rhetoric down.  ​ It’s a transition. Transitions don’t happen overnight.    Hard things are hard.  We’re all in this together. We need to figure this out.   So we have a number of other measures that we haven't been able to quantify. So we know that planting trees, for example, are carbon sinks. The big piece is on the innovation side. So I was at the Globe Conference here in Vancouver, that brings together folks from around the world who are coming up with new solutions, like, big game-changing solutions that will make a huge difference.    I’m a realistic optimist.  We are going to continue working hard.   Everyone is stepping up to do their part, and, of course, we have to be more ambitious.   We’ve been working hard over two years to figure out how to do a better job on major projects.    We have two NDP governments in Alberta and BC who are absolutely committed to combating climate change.    We care greatly about climate change.   Every country is trying to figure this out. Every country has their own challenges in a transition.   Canadians should be very proud that we’re leading the way on powering past coal internationally.   We are working directly with the United Kingdom... They’re also committed to getting off coal.   It is very cost competitive to go to renewables, there's a huge economic opportunity, but they need some support to do that.  We're trying to figure this out, and it's hard.   Ah, but, it makes no sense, so I would just put that out to Canadians: how many Canadians drove in a car that wasn’t an electric vehicle or a hybrid today?   But you can’t do this one day to the next.   You have to recognize that people need jobs.   We can figure this out together.   So we spent a whole year negotiating a climate plan with provinces and territories and Indigenous peoples, and everyone understood that you have to have a credible plan. A lot of focus is on what is the federal government doing, but it's actually what the provinces are doing.    You had four Ontario leadership candidates who didn't believe in taking action on climate change. This is hard.   You need a variety of different tools. I speak a lot to conservatives that support putting a price on pollution, because it doesn't tell you how to do it... I was with George Schultz… so you might remember George Shultz: he was the Secretary of State under a number of American Presidents, including Reagan, and I was with him in the states, and he's got a bipartisan caucus in the US, a climate caucus, and they're all about putting a price on pollution, and there are a number of conservatives in Canada that have been pushing this, and saying "give the revenues back to people." It just makes sense. It's the cheapest way of doing that.     I talk to governor Brown, we’re working very closely with California, they’re all-in on climate change.   For provinces we've said, "Do your own system. You figure out what you think is right." And in British Columbia, they've been giving the revenues back... all the revenues back. In Quebec and in Ontario, they're in a cap and trade system with California, so it's great to see markets linked, and they've decided, you know, money should go back to the most vulnerable, but also they're going to invest in energy efficiency... they're going to invest in electric vehicles.  So, I mean, in this context, we're talking about the twinning of one pipeline. We're talking about the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and people, as I say, are still using fossil fuels, and we're working with Alberta, and I'm very concerned right now that we're at risk of losing our climate plan. That you have two progressive, NDP governments, in Alberta and BC, who are absolutely committed to climate action, but in one province they're trying to figure out the transition, and we might lose this climate plan, weirdly, because progressives are fighting. That's not a good place to be because on the other side, I have folks, and you can go visit my trolls on Twitter, other folks who are attacking us for doing anything on climate change. ​ The Chinese are all-in on climate action. They have an air quality problem, so they need to take action.   The problem I was really scared about when I was growing up ...  the hole in the ozone layer... yeah I was worried that everyone was going to get cancer, and was there going to be leadership? Where are the politicians at? I was young, I didn't know anything about politics, but I said, "Are these folks who say they care, were they going to do anything about it? And who was it? It was Brian Mulroney: a conservative. I talk to Brian Mulroney, actually a lot, to get advice, and I ask him, how do you deal with an administration that isn't committed to the same things you are, especially on critical environmental issues? And he said, "You keep on talking to them, and he said with Ronald Reagan, it took a long time.  Just keep talking to people." So, whether or not it comes to our pipeline, see, people are still using fossil fuels. I know I'm repeating the transition piece, but we need to fund this transition.  We make decisions based on science and evidence. But Canada standing alone and saying, okay, we're going to take this stance: this pipeline that was approved isn't gonna go ahead, that's not going to change the world. What's going to change the world is if we get Canadians on board, they understand that we need to put a price on pollution, that there's a huge economic opportunity, and that we're going to take advantage of that, and that takes time, and I worry that we're going to lose the opportunity if we're not focused and we just put all our attention on one project.  No. We've got to change the world, and the world is changing: who would have thought that we'd be talking about the end of the internal combustion engine? Everyone's part of this, and I think we just have to make sure everyone feels a part of this.   I know a lot of people say, "Oh you just say gender and you don't mean it." Women are leading the way. I like to say, "They're kickin' it on climate."

The statements presented within the above matrix are all direct quotes from Enright's interview with McKenna. Invariably, the choice of quotes and the placement of these quotes within the four quadrants of the matrix are subjective in nature. However, I think I have presented a fair and balanced summary, and I think the summary does a sufficient job of highlighting a profound lack of substance behind the Minister's defence of the federal government's current actions on climate change. It is precisely this lack of substance that should give all Canadians, and, indeed, all citizens of the world, great pause regarding Canada's current course of action on climate change. 

My general assessment of McKenna's position on climate change would be that she is attempting to drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror. She is making decisions based on where we have been, as opposed to where we need to go. She points out that most Canadians still drive gas cars, therefore we need to expand our production of oil and gas... expand it! 

McKenna points out that transitions make people uncomfortable, but, in truth, it's not the transition that makes me uncomfortable: it's the lack of transition. Specifically, it's the current federal government's clear and unapologetic investment in a carbon-based future. McKenna talks gleefully about a new light rail transit system in Ottawa while glossing over the fact that we are making huge investments to expand Alberta's oil sands operations: Canada's largest and fastest growing contribution to greenhouse gases. I hate to quote Bill Cosby at this particular time in history, but I can't help but think of his famous quote: "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

It seems to me that the federal Liberals are trying to please all the stakeholders in Canada's current oil economy, while at the same time engaging concerned Canadians with a lot of shallow talk about the environment and climate change. The problem with all this, however, is that climate change is real: climate change is not some political shell game that can be exploited for political gain, corporate profits, or photo opps. Climate change is happening. Climate change will not wait.  

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. The world cannot wait for governments, NGOs, or private enterprise to address climate change. We must all, as individuals, take decisive and meaningful action on climate change, and we must take this action now. Yes, it would be especially helpful if governments would join the fight, but if they're not willing to, then the people will just have to go this one alone. 

People everywhere, please take this to heart: you have more power than any government, organization, or corporation on Earth. Never forget that.

It is the people of the world who depend of this planet, and it is the people of the world who can shape the future of this planet.

So... know this:

Corporations can produce all the oil they want, and governments can even help them do it... but nobody, absolutely nobody, can MAKE US BUY IT!