Q & A: Douglas Macdonald on Federalism and Canada’s Approach to Lowering Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The federal government under Justin Trudeau has consistently vowed to exceed its 2030 goal of cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels. Reaching that goal would mean a 30% reduction of GHG from the 2005 target. However, government data from December 2019 showed that Canada is on track to miss that target. The debate on how Canada should go about reducing its GHG emissions can be highly polarized and lack nuance.
In his book Carbon Province, Hydro Province: The Challenge of Canadian Energy and Climate Federalism, Dr Douglas Macdonald draws upon Canada’s previous failed attempts to lower GHG emissions to meet our international commitments.
I spoke to Dr Douglas Macdonald over the phone to discuss Canada’s approach to GHG emissions and the challenges the country faces. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Alexandris: Your book makes a distinction between a Carbon Province (Alberta and Saskatchewan) and Hydro Province (Ontario and Quebec). What is the basis of this distinction?
Macdonald: In essence, a Hydro Province refers to a province that is able to tap into hydroelectricity, which is a non-emitting source, in order to lower GHG emissions. A Carbon Province refers to a province that relies on resources that emit large amounts of carbon, and have had increases in its carbon emissions. It’s not an exact description of the different provinces but serves as a literary device.
An important part of the title is that from 1990–2017, the hydro provinces of Ontario and Quebec have reduced emissions and the carbon provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan have increased emissions significantly.
Alberta and Saskatchewan put together account for about half of Canada’s total emissions. If those two provinces are intent on trying to increase oil and gas extraction and export and that means, unless there is major technological change, emissions in those provinces will continue to go up. Canada as a whole is trying to reduce their emissions target of below 30% of 2005 level, meanwhile, the provinces that are responsible for half of the total emissions are going in the opposite direction. hat’s the basic problem that I’m trying to represent in my book.
Alexandris: In the book, you write about the West-East Divide saying that “the divide exists for the most part because of the differing interests that then carry forward into climate-change politics.” Can you expand on the differing interests in regards to fossil fuel energy and climate change policy?
Macdonald: The differing interests have come from a fact of geography. Alberta and Saskatchewan have got access to fossil fuel resources but in order to develop them, it takes a lot of energy to get oil and gas out of the ground and then move it and that energy comes from carbon-based fuels. So those provinces have the resources and for completely understandable reasons they want to extract the economic value from those resources. Provinces like Ontario and Quebec, on the other hand, don’t have access to oil and gas reserves (although this may change with fracking) so they haven’t had that same temptation to exploit fossil fuel resources. For the West, you have differing interests in respect for fossil fuels so there is an economic opportunity, and for the East, that opportunity doesn’t exist.
Alexandris: Why does it seem that the oil and gas sector has a lot more economic and political clout in Alberta and Saskatchewan than on the national stage across Canada?
Macdonald: In Alberta and Saskatchewan, the oil and gas industry has been referred to as “structural power” meaning once an industry is responsible for a significant portion of economic activity in a given jurisdiction, then governments are relying on that industry to keep the economy rolling along to provide jobs and government revenues. At one point, the oil and gas sector was responsible for a huge portion of the economy and government revenues for the West and it still holds significant structural power today. So those governments tend to do something that would benefit the development of that industry.
In contrast, the federal government in Ottawa, the oil and gas sector controls a much smaller portion of the Canadian economy, about 10% or less, so those industries lack the structural power in Ottawa when compared to in the Western provinces. However, they are big enough in the Canadian economy that the federal government still wants them contributing to economic development and government revenue.
Alexandris: You identify the inherent need to allocate GHG reductions as one of the key challenges to effective national climate-change programs. Why is this such an important issue?
Macdonald: In the book, the model I use is the European burden-sharing agreement. This concept is that if a given jurisdiction agrees at the national level for reducing GHG emissions, then the question that comes up is: how is that total reduction going to be divided up? The answer is that it will have to be divided up into two ways. The first being divided among the different sources of GHG like transportation, buildings, industry, etc. Ideally, the government wants to distribute emission reductions to maximize efficiency, meaning that the sources with the highest per-tonne emitting cost should be reduced the most. The second being divided among geography in a way that would allocate our reductions among each of the provinces. This would help address the fact that Alberta and Saskatchewan make up half of the countries emissions are going in one direction and the rest of the country is going in the other. So I’m suggesting adopting a burden-sharing agreement would allow Canada to begin to address this problem and then negotiate some kind of an agreement with those provinces to lower their emissions.
In the past 30 years of climate change politics, the federal government has avoided talking about allocation or t burden-sharing. I’m convinced they don’t want to do this because this issue can inflame East-West tensions which need to be properly addressed. So, my analysis is counter to the last 30 years, but it is informed by the fact that what we are doing now isn’t working. In the past 30 years, Canada has never reduced total GHG emissions.
Alexandris: One of your recommendations going forward is for a new national dialogue between the West and the East. What would that look like and what would it accomplish?
Macdonald: Most of my recommendations in the book are directed at governments, but this is more for civil society and Canadians as a whole. We need to start talking about the problem that we are never going to reduce our total emissions when two provinces make up nearly 50% of Canada’s total emissions. We need to open this discussion up and talk about the problem.
But I’m also trying to walk this difficult line and say but we need to have that dialogue in a way that is polite, respectful, positive and constructive. There may be skeptics who think that this will not be successful, but unless we start talking about the problem, we will continue to be trapped in this system of climate change policymaking that is just failing. I think we need to put the dialogue in a larger context by recognizing the fact that Alberta and Saskatchewan have some very valid grievances about the way they have been treated and the way they are being treated now. We need to accept the fact that reducing emissions carries a much higher per capita cost in Alberta and Saskatchewan than it does in other provinces.
So the rest of the country has to avoid villainizing Alberta and Saskatchewan, instead, they should be understanding of their reliance on the oil and gas sector and try to help by working with those provinces to share the total cost which is seen by involved as equitable and fair.
That’s why all my recommendations hinge on the notion of a burden-sharing agreement. If we were to launch into the process of a burden-sharing agreement, we can find a way to tackle this great problem.
Alexandris: Climate change politics can be very emotional, especially for the West that is experiencing the harsh impact of falling demand for extracting resources from the Oil Sands, so a national dialogue would need to recognize this.
Macdonald: Absolutely. Especially because it is built off of 100 years of distrust of Ottawa from the West. So the reaction has just been to not do anything and not cause trouble which is completely understandable. However, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking and working on this, and in my mind, it’s worth the risk to engage in a new national dialogue. We might come out with a stronger, more united country if we were to have this conversation.
The national dialogue should be initiated by civil society, but at a certain point, governments have to get involved and lead the dialogue into action. Eventually, Ottawa should start a negotiation process with the provinces using the machinery of inter-governmental relations to basically answer the question, “what would all governments see as an equitable and fair allocation of a total given reduction cost?”
Alexandris: Another one of your recommendations is for Canada to accept a target less ambitious than the current minus 30%. Why should Canada do this considering the urgency of addressing climate change and Canada’s impact on global GHG emissions?
Macdonald: I agonized over that recommendation as I was writing the book. I have colleagues and friends of mine who told me “Don’t publicly say that we need to adopt a less ambitious target,” for the reasons you stated. My argument is that what we are doing now is not working. What we are doing now is using targets to make ourselves feel good.
In the past, whenever we have had an emissions target, time goes by and it becomes clear that we aren’t going to meet the target and in response, Ottawa creates a new lower emissions target instead of putting new programs so we actually can meet the old target. We have done that over and over again and it does not solve the basic problem that Ottawa is setting these targets all by itself instead of having first reached an agreement with the provinces on what targets should be.
So what I’m saying is that we need a less ambitious target than Alberta and Saskatchewan can commit to, and see the mechanism to reach it as a fair allocation of the total cost. This approach would be far more likely to have met the targets that we have had in the past, that did not have provincial buy-in and which have not been met. So, it’s a tradeoff: a less ambitious target but you might actually achieve it, unlike the current situation where we haven’t had success.
