Poilievre's Climate Box

We Can And We Will

“We can, and we will.”

I’m sure Leafs fans reading this will know the context of the quote -  then Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, on 31 Thoughts, when asked if he could keep the Core 4 together – but it’s a quote that’s been rattling through my mind in recent weeks, as Dubas has been fired in Toronto and his legacy has been picked apart. It’s a quote that wasn’t untrue – Dubas could, and did, extend and keep all three of Nylander, Matthews, and Marner, - but it’s a quote that’s become emblematic of the Leafs the last five years. They were boxed into a corner of their own making, and therefore unable to react to the circumstances as they evolved.

I’m especially thinking of it as my hometown has been under wildfire smoke the last few days, a situation which seems to be easing here but is worsening elsewhere, and how the Conservatives have boxed themselves into a corner of their own making on climate politics. Not just by tying themselves to the oil industry, but by tying themselves so much to the idea of a politics of nostalgia and of anti-global institutions (though, gratefully, we still command a common cause on NATO, Ukraine, and related issues), the Conservatives have put themselves in a climate box that could represent their undoing.

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The problem with “we can and we will” was that the Leafs made clear that they were all in on one strategy – one where they were going all in on the high end talent and betting they could make it up on the backend through good depth signings and veteran discounts to come play for a contender, and for many, play for a contender in their home town. Hilariously, they did get guys to do that – Jason Spezza played 3 years in Toronto, Wayne Simmonds played a couple, hell even Joe Thornton’s corpse came around for a bit – but they also told the three guys they had to negotiate with that they could be put over a barrel.

The Leafs immediately lost all leverage in negotiations with Matthews, Nylander, and Marner, and there’s a reason all three of those negotiations ended with the Leafs capitulating. Those contracts were too much money given that the Leafs didn’t get the term they wanted, and the players have run the show in Toronto. And that, plus the bad luck of a pandemic that fucked with their plans (albeit, at the same time and in the same way everyone else’s plans were fucked), is why Toronto is where it is now, having wasted 5 years of elite talent.

In the same way, Pierre Poilievre has locked himself into a climate position that is untenable moving forward – anti-carbon tax, on the record as an electric vehicle sceptic, and attempting to block the budget which will give the Canadian government any chance of operating in a post Inflation Reduction Act world. It’s probably too much to call Poilievre’s CPC a climate denialist party – I have taken the view that policy from the convention floor is not determinative, so the CPC convention climate motion should be ignored – but it’s not much to say it’s a climate ambivalent party. And that’s not much better.

The problem for the Conservatives is that there’s every chance climate will be a bigger issue in the next election than it has been in the last two, and there’s no sense that the Tories have reckoned with that fact. We have seen in Australia at the federal level and in both Victoria and NSW that climate change and a failure of the right to adequately do anything about climate has hurt the right’s vote in inner city and wealthy inner suburban electorates – places like Milton, St. Catharines, Kitchener, and Kanata, also known as places Pierre Poilievre needs to win the next election.

This sort of climate ambivalence could work better when the impacts of climate change were either theoretical or distant, but with the near yearly occurrence of once in a long time events at this point, that’s less tenable. The evidence from Australia suggests that climate policy is a mover of votes, and yet Poilievre has boxed himself into a policy and an outlook that will help a certain segment of his support, but not help him enough to win government.

Yes, there are a swathe of CPC targets held mostly by the NDP in Northern Ontario and BC (and then Liberals in Atlantic Canada) where the swing voter isn’t going to be a tree hugger, but even if the Conservatives win a dozen seats between those three areas, that’s not enough to win. You’d still need swings to the CPC in some suburban seats, and these areas are increasing populating with young ex-urbanite professionals who had to sprawl there to try and get a fucking house. For all the talk about the Tories trying to appeal to the aspirational young fucked over by the housing crisis, climate apathy seems like a bad way to close that deal.

The problem for the Conservatives in a broader sense is simple – they’re running against a government that has done a few big things very, very well and is incredibly easy to pick apart on the rest. Their idiotic refusal to admit they were ever wrong about anything has made some of their political problems so much worse than they needed to be, but the Conservatives are not making an offer that 2021 Trudeau voters are willing to listen to.  And unless you actually believe this will be the time the NDP actually performs as well at an election as they do in the pre-writ polling – the Canadian politics equivalent of Lucy with the football – then they’re up shit’s creek without a paddle.

The Tories have boxed themselves in with a climate policy they can’t do anything about, because the second a Tory leader tries even a climate half measure, the membership and the caucus will melt the fuck down. O’Toole’s climate plan was idiocy on stilts, but honestly he would have been better off just accepting the federal carbon tax, because anything on climate action will be too much for a portion of the Tory party.

If Climate’s the fifth most important issue at the time of the next election and Chinese interference is 2^nd, then yes, the Tories have a decent chance of winning 145 seats and maybe being able to scrape together government. If you believe that the issue mix will be as favourable to them then as it is now, you’re living in the delusions of anti-Trudeau vitriol.

What we have right now is a Tory Party that has locked itself into too many “we can and we will” moments, too many things that we will reference endlessly when they lose as the reason for it. I still believe crypto as a way to “opt out of inflation” will hurt, but the climate ambivalence will genuinely hurt the Tories.

If Alberta showed anything, it’s that areas with lots of white voters with degrees are continuing to punch above their weight for a left wing party. The idea that Kitchen or St. Kitts won’t also trend left in a real and substantive way for a given Ontario result is for the birds, and one of the ways Poilievre could try and slow the train of the Global Fucking Realignment would be an attempt at climate seriousness. But he can’t, and he won’t.

And that fact will hang around his neck when he loses just like We Can And We Will hangs around Dubas’.