Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is riding high in the polls, but roughly half the public say they are fearful about the prospect of a Poilievre government. More than half of Canadians suspect he has a “hidden agenda.” But there's no need for detective work — what he trumpets out loud is sinister enough.

Those public opinion stats come from the Angus Reid Institute, by the way. The Institute found 46 per cent of Canadians say they’re fearful of a Conservative government under Poilievre. Far fewer (35 per cent) are hopeful. And 54 per cent say the Conservatives have “a hidden agenda they won’t reveal until after they win the election.”

But Poilievre is revealing plenty. Very few Canadians are frequent Conservative party rally-goers. Only the most fervent partisans listen to the speeches in full. You surely know he’s made axing the carbon tax a centerpiece of his campaign, and his critics bemoan the nastiness and bullying. Even so, if you tune in longer than the memes and clips, the level of histrionics is stunning.

Case in point, Poilievre’s televised speech to his MPs last weekend where he set the stage for the return of Parliament after the summer. It was quite the stage. If you thought climate policy wasn’t central to our politics, Poilievre would like to dissuade you with sledgehammer subtlety:

Screenshot from CPAC, Sep. 15, 2024

If you haven’t been following closely, you might be shocked by the depth of Poilievre’s obsession with carbon. The focus on carbon is absolutely relentless. Poilievre spat out the word more than twice per minute. Twenty five times in the 13 minutes he spoke in English (he’s notably less opposed to climate policies when speaking to French Canadians). Three times more hits on carbon than on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

There was, as expected, the demand for a “carbon tax election” in order to campaign against the “carbon tax coalition.” But there were loads of other iterations — a carbon tax “sucker punch,” a “crazy carbon tax” and “the highest carbon tax in the world.”

This last accusation is just plainly untrue — some countries already price carbon higher than Canada’s plan ever proposes to reach. But the claim sailed by, undisputed by reporters covering the event.

It was not the most odious lie by a long stretch. Poilievre described scenes of absolute “carnage” (his word, echoing Donald Trump’s infamous inauguration speech). He’s not referring to the present-day scenes of fire and flood from spewing carbon but from its price. Already, he claims “the existing tax has forced two million people to go to a food bank and forced 25 per cent of our kids to go to school hungry.” 

These claims are patently absurd. No need to argue about carbon tax rebates — it couldn’t be more plain that inflation has been a global problem. But the break from reality is so disorienting, the absurdity so extreme, that such claims from a wannabe prime minister just flow into the public bloodstream.

The speech got graphic. As the carbon price rises, Poilievre says there would “obviously be mass hunger and malnutrition.” People would (again, “obviously”) “not be able to leave their homes or drive anywhere.” That would sound ludicrous to citizens in countries successfully cutting carbon, but apparently now passes for political discourse.

It was once newsworthy to hear Stephen Harper say a carbon price would “screw everybody.” Seems almost quaint today. On Sunday, Poilievre described it as an “existential threat,” forecasting nothing less than “a nuclear winter for our economy.”

Poilievre doesn’t quite manage Trump-level absurdities — he’s not fulminating about electrocution by electric boat, or pet-eating immigrants. But the echoes are unmistakable: Carnage, mass hunger, nuclear winter.

And the bullying nicknames: “Sellout Jagmeet Singh.” Or the latest: “Carbon tax Carney,” a moniker Poiliever tried to stick on Mark Carney four times in that one speech.

Poilievre was questioning whether Carney “had any economic prowess at all.” Whatever else you might think about Carney, that’s a bizarre line of attack on someone who spent over five years as the governor of the Bank of Canada and seven heading the Bank of England.

And what an extraordinary time to focus so relentlessly against cutting carbon. The hottest year ever measured. Active flooding on four continents. Oblivious to the actual carnage of heat deaths, floods and fire, Poilievre chooses to poison the well, eroding the mandate for action. No need to worry about a hidden agenda, just listen and he’ll tell you about it every 30 seconds. 

Maybe it’s a whimsical thought, but I do wonder if the fossil fuel lobby might come to regret Poilievre’s incessant focus on carbon. The industry has been so successful at sowing doubt about climate change and obfuscating its causes. The average person is still most likely to finger plastic straws or insufficient recycling as the culprits behind climate change. 

Poillievre has probably done more to publicize “carbon” than every news outlet and environmental group combined. Climate change may be down the list of priorities for now, but that too will change. And when it does, the public might discover where all that carbon pollution is coming from.

An early report card

The need to strengthen Canadian climate policies instead of axing them became even more obvious this week with the release of an “Early Estimate for 2023.” Instead of waiting till spring of 2025 to get the federal emissions update for 2023, the Canadian Climate Institute published its own early estimate.

Let’s take what passes for good news first. The rebound following the COVID-19 pandemic plunge may have stabilized. In the years since 2020, Canada’s emissions have risen. But 2023 finally showed a “modest decline” with a drop of 0.8 per cent, the institute reckons. Better than an increase but, yeah, “modest.”

The one sector making serious progress is electricity. Its climate pollution was down 6.2 per cent from the previous year. A remarkable drop of over 60 per cent since 2005, thanks to coal phase-outs and climate policies.

But no other sector is making anywhere near those kinds of carbon cuts yet. Transportation is still ticking upward, led by air travel. And the oil and gas industry keeps increasing emissions — now a whopping 31 per cent of our national total.

On the central project of electrifying everything, the institute’s number-crunchers are somber. The uptake of clean energy is “slow.” Producing electricity is getting cleaner but switching over to the electrification of vehicles, buildings and factories “is still lagging.”

It adds up to a “growing gap” from the targets Canada has set to cut heat-trapping pollution. We  “need stronger policy,” says the institute. Its visuals are acronym-laden. But you’ll get the picture — the top lines are what’s happening, the steep, dark, dotted line is what would be required to hit the target.