Veteran Conservative Party figure Jean Charest launches his bid for the party leadership at an event in Calgary on March 10.TODD KOROL/Reuters
With a wall of carefully placed beer cans as a backdrop, Jean Charest laid out the broad strokes of his energy policy if he becomes the next federal Conservative leader. It’s a plan he clearly views as being palatable to both the Alberta audience he was speaking to this week and a broader group of Canadian voters.
Mr. Charest gave only a 14-minute speech at an ultracasual leadership launch with a party-in-the-garage vibe at Calgary’s Wild Rose Brewery late Thursday evening. But half of that speaking time was dedicated to subjects Alberta audiences have to know all about: pipeline development, the role of Canadian oil and gas in a world where energy security has taken on new consequence, and policies on reducing and pricing greenhouse gas emissions.
“I’m not coming into this leadership race all of a sudden discovering the oil and gas industry. I’m not coming into this race all of a sudden discovering Alberta,” he said.
“I’m very committed to designing a policy that’s going to be good and will deal with transition.”
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Mr. Charest’s focus on these sometimes duelling topics shows the fine balance he must walk. His ability to win people over on both energy and climate is key to any political success he hopes to find in the September leadership vote – especially as he challenges Pierre Poilievre, the early entrant to the race whose unadorned social-media messaging is easy to remember: cancel the carbon tax and scrap Justin Trudeau’s “anti-energy laws.”
In a message to The Globe and Mail late Friday, Mr. Poilievre said: “I’m for more Canadian energy projects, more pipelines and more Canadian oil and gas. We need to produce more Canadian energy to end the world’s dependence on dictators like [Vladimir] Putin. And unlike Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Charest and [Patrick] Brown, I’d scrap the carbon tax and fight the inflation that’s sending Canadian gas prices through the roof.”
Mr. Charest is trying to project a more nuanced take.
As Quebec’s premier, he introduced a cap-and-trade system and makes no bones about the fact he still believes in a “smart” national carbon-pricing system that’s not a “wealth transfer tax,” with more details to come. But he asked the brewery crowd (presumably with the current high demand/high prices for gasoline and other fuels in mind), whether the scheduled increase in the national carbon price on April 1 makes sense. “Obviously not,” was his own answer.
“This terrible, terrible war,” he added, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, means governments have to pay attention to “security of supply of energy.”
He also said he would scrap two Trudeau-era laws: One bans tanker traffic off the northern coast of British Columbia, and the other sets a higher bar for environmental reviews on major projects, including pipelines, that critics say makes it nearly impossible to build new infrastructure.
Mr. Charest also suggested he would push for pipeline development in provinces (his own being the prime example) with little appetite for new oil and gas pipelines.
“I can come to Alberta and tell you that I’m in favour of pipelines, and you will agree, I’m sure,” he told the audience.
“But would it not have been good to have had a prime minister of Canada say, as I did, that he’s in favour of pipelines where it counts and where it makes a difference, in parts of the country that need to know why pipelines are important?”
He also suggested he would use an all-of-the-above outlook to energy development. “We need a very, very comprehensive approach that includes policies that are going to promote economic growth and make sense by themselves – carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, small modular reactors. Hydro, of course, is a part of that. And biofuels,” Mr. Charest told reporters.
Mr. Charest has waded straight into the Conservative Party’s most difficult policy discussion – the future of Canadian oil and gas production and its domestic climate policies. The party’s strong base in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where commodities are king and concerns about global competitors are high, means the debate about carbon pricing or climate policies is far from settled.
At the same time, Mr. Charest and others believe strong environmental policies that appeal to the whole country are absolutely necessary to form government. It’s a minefield in Canada, which is often split into regions of people who identify as oil and natural gas producers and those who don’t.
Mr. Charest’s campaign launch was a notable contrast to that of Erin O’Toole, the ousted Conservative leader. Mr. O’Toole also began in Calgary, in January, 2020 – but at the private Ranchmen’s Club. And despite speaking directly to the city’s energy elite there, and telling them about his opposition to the carbon tax, Mr. O’Toole eventually lost his footing on that issue. Some Conservatives saw his plan in April, 2021, to move to a system of mandatory carbon levies to be deposited into savings accounts for individual Canadians’ own use as an abandonment of his original stand.
Mr. Charest, at least in these very early days, comes across as more certain in his beliefs around energy and climate and carbon pricing.
Underlying any resentments from Alberta is the widely held belief that the federal Liberal government has few of the prairie region’s economic issues at heart. It’s often glossed over that Alberta and Saskatchewan would bear the brunt of the economic fallout and job losses as the country transitions to a lower-carbon economy. Mr. Charest spoke directly to this anxiety, saying his goal is to form a national government where Alberta would not be “on the outside.”
He said he would do this by uniting the “fractured” Conservative Party and follow that by spending two years preparing for an election. And then, at the brewery, Mr. Charest said something else that is music to Alberta Conservative ears.
“And I guarantee, if there’s one thing I know – that I have learned in politics – I know how to win.”
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