Eric Deslauriers
Autumn has gently come upon Canadians as summer slips away. The breeze is crisp and the rustle of leaves now stirs every day. It is almost easy to forget that global climate change is knocking on Canada’s doorstep.
Yet, as the dust settles post-election in Canada, a stronger Conservative government emerges, its key to victory at least in part being its successful galvanization of support against the Liberal Green Shift carbon tax plan.
Assistant Professor of political science Dr. Andrea Perrella of Wilfrid Laurier University says that the Liberal Green Shift carbon tax plan had a part to blame in the Liberal defeat. “It would seem that it was a component,” he explains.
“Whenever the Liberal Party talked about Green Shift, they lost traction.”
The Liberals received almost 900,000 less votes than in the last election; a staggering blow for a party that dominated the Canadian political landscape through the 90s and up until Prime Minister Harper came to power in 2006.
Voters were, “turned off by the Green Shift plan,” and possibly, “had fear that Green Shift would cause economic upheaval,” Dr. Perrella says.
Considering such a defeat, in part due to an unpopular environmental plan, the question of how much Canadian voters care about the environment presents itself.
James Menzies, executive editor of Truck News and Truck West, is one who was adamantly against the Green Shift initiative.
“A carbon tax is not a very popular concept in the trucking industry,” he explains.
By James’, “conservative,” estimates, many truckers would have to pay additional taxes of at least, “$4000 a year.”
The reason the trucking industry is against the Green Shift plan can therefore be seen to be economic.
It isn’t that truckers don’t care about the environment; it’s that the specific plan the Green Shift initiative laid out would have been a, “killer for them,” James says.
As he also explains that, “any increase in cost has to be passed on to the consumer,” it can be seen that anyone with a connection to the trucking industry – which is every Canadian – would in at least some way see a rise in the price of anything that uses trucks to be shipped – which is virtually everything.
Perhaps Canadians are simply, “turned off,” by the price tag, weather their fears are justified or, “emotional,” as Dr. Perrella put it.
But when money is not an issue, is there still hesitancy in Canadians towards environmentalism?
In Dr. Paul Cary, Vice President of the Stop-The-424 organization, there is at least one Canadian who actively fights for the environment.
Stop-The-424 is a grassroots organization in the Cambridge and Brantford area which opposes the highway proposed by the ‘Brantford to Cambridge Highway Corridor’ plan the province is looking into.
“It’s a huge environmental issue, actually,” Dr. Cary describes the potential construction. “That is the drinking water supply they want to develop.”
The plan details potential routes through wetlands.
“People just don’t realize how they’ve lost and damaged water supplies,” Dr. Cary says. “You should be concerned with the preservation of the basics.
The ‘Brantford to Cambridge Highway Corridor’ plan is actually the second plan the province has put forward, after a first one was shutdown.
Stop-The-424 claims this was, as Dr. Paul puts it, because, “we fought vigorously on several fronts.”
“It’s tragic that it take an organization like us to derail a major project,” he concluded.
In organizations such as Stop-The-424, it can be seen that ordinary Canadians sometimes do actively get involved in environmental issues – even on local levels.
Therefore, for Canadians, perhaps the question isn’t, ‘is the environment an issue,’ but, ‘how much will we have to pay to fix it?’
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