Daphne Bramham: Conservative leader Andrew Scheer stays far away from climate change protests
Credit to Author: Daphne Bramham| Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:47:20 +0000
While we waited Friday for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to arrive by car at the terminus of the Evergreen SkyTrain line, some placard-carrying kids hurried to take the train so they could join the climate strike in downtown Vancouver.
They joined an estimated 100,000 who met at Vancouver’s City Hall and marched downtown disrupting both transit and traffic. And they were among the millions of people around the world who walked out of classrooms and workplaces Friday in an effort to pressure politicians to do more to curb carbon emissions in the midst of a global climate emergency.
Those kids hurrying by, the Tories’ big campaign bus and the fact that Scheer had just flown from Montreal to Vancouver and would leave a couple of hours later to fly to Edmonton only highlighted the Conservative leader’s surprisingly tone-deaf day.
Rather than joining with youth in the streets, Scheer and Maxime Bernier — the People’s Party of Canada leader who denies that there is a climate emergency — were the only federal leaders who didn’t participate in climate strike events.
With a veiled reference to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau who loves a good parade, Scheer told reporters he plans to do what youth are asking for. He’ll take action.
What kind of action? He’s going to put “shovels in the ground” by funding critical infrastructure projects. Unlike the Liberals who promised $187-billion worth of projects in 2015 and never delivered, Scheer promised to spend the money.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his wife Jill board their campaign plane in Montreal on Sept. 27, 2019.
Essentially, Scheer promises to make it easier for people to drive their cars to work. He highlighted three examples, among them were a replacement for the George Massey tunnel and a tunnel in Quebec City.
That would lessen congestion and reduce commuting times with more and bigger roads. Less congestion means less idling and fewer carbon emissions. Faster commutes also means more family time.
What makes the Massey tunnel replacement such an odd one to highlight is that it doesn’t even fit Scheer’s other narrative that the Liberals have failed because they didn’t deliver on the 2015 spending promises.
The project foundered not because of Ottawa, but because Lower Mainland mayors rejected the $3.5-billion, 10-lane bridge that former premier Christy Clark tried to force on them.
The mayors argued for a smaller bridge and more investment in public transit and when Clark was defeated, John Horgan’s NDP government halted construction and went looking for other options that will be the focus of public consultations later this fall.
If anything, the Massey replacement is playing out exactly as Scheer says a Conservative infrastructure program would roll out. The decisions would be made collaboratively.
Given the theme of the day, the location and the expressed local preference for public transit over cars, Scheer’s announcement would have made more sense if it would have promised money for the Surrey-to-Langley extension or the Broadway line to the University of British Columbia.
But perhaps it all comes down to politics, with more votes likely to swing to the Conservatives in Delta and Richmond than in Vancouver or Surrey.
Scheer’s announcement wasn’t only about roads, bridges and tunnels. He highlighted the need in Toronto for the Ontario Line, a proposed rapid transit project for central and east Toronto, and an extension of the existing subway line that runs along Yonge Street, Toronto’s main drag.
What was absent, however, was any information about how much money a Conservative government would spend or how it might do that without increasing the deficit.
Given a chance by a reporter to show a human side and reflect on the future of his five children in a world where wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, species extinction and human misery will only intensify, Scheer rather stiffly responded that “we should not leave an economic or an environmental deficit to our children.”
To cap off his tone-deaf day, Scheer had an event scheduled with Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge candidate Marc Dalton, a former B.C. Liberal MLA who enthusiastically supported a carbon tax.
It’s a tax Scheer has vowed to eliminate and one that he has repeatedly misrepresented. Because as Dalton well knows, the tax works. In British Columbia, per capita emissions have steadily increased since it was introduced more than a decade ago.
On a day when millions of young people stood together demanding that adults do better, that politicians act decisively in the best interests of the planet to stave off a disaster that experts have long warned about, Scheer stood alone with few voters in sight.
On the environment, he has little to say that will appeal to them because we’re long past the time when a vague plan to build a green technology industry supported by heavy oil and coal exports, more building and inconsequential tax credits for transit and home renovation is enough.
Twitter: @bramham_daphne