Conservatives Avoid Two Major Climate Policy Surveys, Leaving Canadians Clueless about their Environmental Plan

Conservatives Avoid Two Major Climate Policy Surveys, Leaving Canadians Clueless about their Environmental Plan

By Matthew SalamonWith just ten days away from the federal elections, Canadian environmentalist groups have yet to figure out why the federal Conservatives have not completed two major surveys on climate change policies, even though every other main party has given thorough and descriptive responses to both of these surveys. A member of the Environmental Defence, Tim Gray, even specifies that they would prefer to receive responses from all the parties regarding these questions in the surveys because it is important for them to take these questions seriously. The Environmental defence, which is a section of a 14-strong coalition of Canada’s biggest environmental associations, was not the only group to issue the results to their survey. The other environmentalist group known as the Climate Action Network, which speaks for 110 first nations and environmental groups, also released the responses of their survey, but similarly to the coalition, they also never received answers from the federal Conservative party.

Instead of answering the two surveys, the Conservative party opted to contribute a concise blanket statement outlining its basic climate plan. However, to even acquire this blanket statement from the Conservatives, the Canadian Press had to make an inquiry about the issue. This would go onto cause the Conerservative party to finally release this description, even after the Climate Action Network had asked so many times for it. Of course, this blanket statement that was given to the public by the conservatives does not answer the questions from either surveys, in fact it completely avoids them. This leads members of both environmental groups to believe that the Conservative party does not truly take the issue of climate change very seriously. Which is quite concerning considering that climate change is a major issue in our world at the moment and the Canadian government would definitely need to do something to take action against the growing problem.

Both of these surveys were quite important mainly because they asked such questions as whether the party was going to propose a plan to reach Canada’s greenhouse gas reduction goal, what methods they would use to cut down on emissions, and how would they try to conserve vulnerable parts of the workforce and economy. The coalition survey went even further and asked about the protection over precious resources and the reduction of pollution. The other major parties in the election have answered these surveys questions at length, one Liberal response was almost 1,000 words, while a New Democratic reply was longer than 500 words. The members of both environmental groups are actually quite pleased to receive such lengthy responses to these surveys. This allows the members of these groups to believe that the federal parties do conclude that the environment is a very important campaign issue and worth spending the effort to try and offer the best platform to solve this concern. Although, as expected the Conservatives are receiving backlash for not actually submitting these surveys, this forms the idea that the conservative do not find climate change a major issue and perhaps thinking that their voters will just ignore the fact that they have not addressed the concerns over the environment.

The Conservatives were contacted and even their spokesperson, Simon Jeffries, stood by the responses given and directed any further issues and questions to the party’s policy document, as to which he referred to it as “the most comprehensive environment plan ever put together by an opposition party”. In reality, their plan is truly quite basic and not very descriptive at all. Their climate plan is established on developing new technologies and managing to influence other nations to give Canada more credit for its attempts at tackling climate change. To the Conservatives this climate plan is very effective and precise, however to the environmentalist groups it is actually very unsatisfying due to the fact that the coalition actually tried to speak with the party a couple months ago, to review their platform and provide them with some input, but the coalition attempts to reach them were never answered.

Overall, with the Conservatives dodging all these surveys and even a major climate rally that took place a few weeks ago, it has made many Canadians worried about what the Conservatives will do about climate change and biodiversity loss if they are put in power. The party is still dismissing many of the environmental surveys, which really does not help voters learn more about them. These surveys are meant to help the voters appraise all of the different party’s environmental policies, so without the survey results from the conservatives a proper evaluation cannot be completed.