Climate Change; COSN Votes 2021

*Over the course of the next week leading into the Federal Election, Q101 will be showcasing the five local candidates’ thoughts and positions on proof of vaccination, support for health care and aging in place, the affordable housing crisis, and climate change.

The Interior of British Columbia faced a summer of drought and fire in 2021. When the election was called in August, the City of Merritt was under an evacuation alert, with many of the surrounding communities faced to flee their homes.

The turbulent summer has led to many candidates in COSN mentioning hearing about climate change from constituents across the riding. Today, the five local candidates were asked why their party’s plan to tackle climate change is the best for Canada’s future.

*Candidates are listed in alphabetical order

Dan Albas (Conservative) Incumbent

We know in COSN that many people depend on the resource sector so that they can put food on the table. We believe that we can make our climate goals while at the same time adopting tested and true policies that work in British Columbia.

In this platform, we’re taking things that we do provincially well, for example, an electric vehicle mandate, and we’re going to roll out what works well in BC right across the country. The same goes for our renewable natural gas mandate, we go natural gas well in BC but we can make it cleaner and we can lower carbon emissions that way. We also have a low carbon fuel standard, we want to roll that same standard out across the country so we can lower our emissions.

We also know that our countries are burning coal for their power generation, we want to use BC LNG, want to use things like hydro to lower those emissions in our BC LNG and be able to ship that and displace the coal.

These are all things we can do supporting local jobs in our riding and at the same time taking action on climate change.

Sarah Eves (Liberal)

It has more than one solution. Our track record shows that we are on track to meet our targets of 40-45% by 2030. We’ve introduced a carbon tax across the Country, in BC we already had one, but that was a big deal across the rest of the country by putting a price on pollution.

You can look at what the experts are saying, Andrew Weaver, Former Green Party Leader, came out and said we have the only credible plan on the Federal level. More and more people looking at the plan are saying this is the plan that keeps our targets but also makes sure we are supporting workers. We can’t forget we have workers in the oil and gas industry and we need to help them transition from where they’re at into a green economy as well.

Kathryn McDonald (People’s Party)

No comment

Joan Phillip (NDP)

It’s a double-edged sword, because on the one hand (the other parties) are saying they want to tackle climate change and then the Liberals bought a pipeline, and the Conservatives want to resurrect a dead pipeline, the Northern Gateway.

We’re talking about discontinuing $900 million in subsidies to the oil industry and investing it in good clean energy. Would also provide also good clean long-term high-tech jobs for people.

Brennan Wauters (Green)

The whole foundation of the party has been to address environmental considerations. In terms of longevity, we’ve been there much longer than the other parties. So we have been thinking about this intensely for a long time, we’ve been thinking about drawdown and how it would be done justly and appropriately, so it doesn’t leave people behind, so it doesn’t leave people bitter because they may be losing their jobs.

The Green Party is concerned about work, not necessarily jobs because there is actually more work to be done in the grand scheme of things. That’s how we want to approach climate change.

Climate change is actually climate instability, which really translates to food instability or work instability. There is a whole series of disruptions that take place as a result of climate change.