Letter to Thomas Mulcair on NDP Energy Policy

 

 

The NDP has not even one tiny shred of credibility left on the environment

I have had to leave the NDP after forty years because its advocacy of cheap energy is the worst possible environment policy.  Pollution and global warming are energy issues.  Making energy less expensive always leads to increased emissions.  

The core of an awful position

• Advocating cheap energy by removing the HST on fuel and electricity.
• Opposing any carbon tax.
• Rejecting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard for cars (Honda and Toyota build fuel efficient cars in Ontario that could easily meet any sound CAFE standard but they are non-union.)

For the NDP to express concern about greenhouse emissions and oppose the tar sands development while promoting low energy price and slack automotive standards is disingenuous.

The Ontario NDP is even worse

The announcement last year by Andrea Horwath that an NDP government would turn back the restructuring of the electricity industry and effectively resurrect Ontario Hydro defines the gold standard for dumb.  They seem to have forgotten that the process of restructuring the electricity business was started in 1993 when the NDP appointed Maurice Strong to run Ontario Hydro. 

Under the ONDP government, Ontario Hydro was at first run by former Broadbent staffer Marc Ellison.  Their Demand Management effort was run by Bob Rae’s friend Norm Simon.  They offered coupons for cold-water Cheer and distributed low power light bulbs that burned out quickly.  It was a pathetic farce.

Social ownership may appeal to the left caucus but historically it has resulted in terrible energy policy.

The NDP position effectively advocates subsidies for the oil companies

The easiest way to increase sales of a product is to lower the price.  It’s easy, but it costs the company money.  NDP policy would increase sales for the oil companies by reducing the public share of the revenue from energy instead of the oil companies’ share.

Increased oil consumption leads to increased emissions, and inevitably to increased price.  Demand driven price increases will wipe out any fleeting benefit to the consumer from cutting the HST on fuel.   Increased demand will also promote tar sands development.

Demand driven price increases will provide substantial windfall profits for the owners of existing conventional oil reserves.  Big oil makes more, while the taxpayers get less.

Instead of subsidizing oil exploration and production, the NDP wants to subsidize consumption.  This alters the structure of oil industry subsidies without actually eliminating them.

The ONDP position effectively advocates corporate tax cuts

Electricity in Ontario is used mostly by the industrial and commercial sector.  Single family homes account for less than one quarter of electricity use.  In those homes, electricity is a small part of the household budget.

Cutting electricity prices is effectively a corporate tax cut in populist clothing.

If the NDP wants to subsidize business, it would be better for the environment for them to promote a straight forward corporate tax cut and not use electricity price as a disguise.

Can the NDP makes gains if the environment movement is openly hostile?

Having an argument with David Suzuki about the carbon tax during the BC election campaign was a gift to both Liberals and Greens.  It may have cost Carol James the election.  Jack Gibbons (Clean Air Alliance) has attacked the ONDP demand to exempt electricity from the HST.

How would labour react if the NDP suggested improving economic competitiveness with right-to-work legislation and corporate tax cuts instead of lower energy prices?  How would women react to abandoning pay equity and opposing abortion?

Advocating lower energy prices has the same impact on environmentalists.  You may argue that this is not reasonable or fair if the discussion interests you.  The facts on the ground will remain.

For those of us that see environment as the ballot question, the NDP has become the fourth choice (fifth in Quebec).

Entrepreneurs can do a lot of good for the environment using business approaches and proper price signals to improve the economic productivity of energy (and create a lot of jobs in the process).  For an ideologically obsessed NDP, the very idea that investors can efficiently perform a socially useful function is heresy.  For the Liberals it could be a cornerstone of their recovery.

If Harper offers CAFE (which costs Alberta nothing) and carbon tax (supported by the CD Howe Institute), both market friendly mechanisms, he would own the environment vote.  If the Conservatives ever figure that out, the environment vote could be the key to the urban ridings in Ontario and BC necessary to keep or expand their majority.

The environment vote is up for grabs

A lot of environmentalists (including me) abandoned the NDP for the Green Party.

In 2008 the Liberals agreed not to run a candidate against Elizabeth May, and adopted the “Green Shift” based on a carbon tax.  The Greens had forced carbon tax into the realm of credible public debate.  It’s the most important and useful thing the Greens have ever achieved.

Elizabeth May didn’t win a seat but the Green Party got 6.9% of the vote.  If one is primarily concerned about the environment as a political issue, the massive success of the 2008 campaign was undiminished because no Green members were elected.

For some Greens this substantial achievement was not enough.  The most talented organizers in the Party concluded that the best thing to be done for the environment is to elect ME.

Green politics shifted from talking about an issue to electing individuals.  The Greens now downplay the issue that made them relevant in the first place because they don’t want to be a single issue party.  The Greens don’t want to be an environment group.  They want to be the NDP without the unions.   The second half of “Vision Green” (available on the Greens national website) reads like a collection of resolution books from NDP youth conferences.

Green Party leadership became so pre-occupied with trying to be a grown-up political party addressing a broad range of issues that they took the environment vote for granted.  

And it left. 

In two elections in 2011, the Green Party was savagely beaten about the head, neck, and shoulders with a blunt instrument.

Vote share

Ontario Provincial 2007 – 8%

Federal 2008 – 6.9%

Federal 2011 – 3.9%

Ontario Provincial 2011 – 2.9 %

In percentage terms the national Green Party vote in the Federal election of 2011 declined (6.9 to 3.9), more than the Liberal vote (26.3 to 18.9) or the Bloc vote (10.0 to 6.1) compared to 2008.

The environment vote needs a home.

You can welcome it to the NDP or force it to the Liberals or even the Tories.