Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Range Rover: All politics is local

RR Aug 25
As the climate deteriorates, the reality is there’s only one issue in this election: the environment.

Since no one can find Doug Ford or Jason Kenney, there must be a federal election on. These prominent provincial conservatives have gone into hiding so as not to detract—as handlers might cast it—from the Conservative Party of Canada’s (CPC) messaging on housing, mental health, small business, pensions, whatever. But no one is fooled. We all know the real reason is to keep low-functioning, grossly incompetent bozos from putting their foot in it for the CPC’s dear leader with every moronic comment or policy misstep. 

It’s clear, for instance, that both Alberta’s and Ontario’s current COVID-19 free-for-all and disinterest in vaccine mandates is problematic not just for their own jurisdictions, but for the nation; were lil’ Jason or big Doug to comment about it on the regular, it would put Erin O’Toole on a hotter seat than the one already scorching his apparently well-muscled behind (as per his ludicrous Mike Holmes cover to the CPC-issued Canada’s Recovery Plan). 

Not that any of this matters. In fact, anything any leader or candidate says in support of any of their business-as-usual payouts, er… promises… is all dust in the wind. The reality is there’s only one issue in this election: the environment. Peer into any other topic making the rounds with pundits and politicians and you’ll find it. Why? Because the environment is the economy and is life, its turbocharged deterioration cannot be papered over by increased growth and commerce; in fact, the opposite.

Look at the recently rising inflation rate, something the CPC is hammering the Liberals on. Like most CPC talking points, it’s the reddest of herrings. Not only is most current inflation tied to supply chain issues driven by the pandemic or climate-change disasters, but it isn’t unique to Canada. Similar inflation is occurring across the entire G7 and was predicted back in April. Recall that inflation in G7 countries fell precipitously from 1.7 to 0.6 per cent during the pandemic’s first year (January 2020 to January 2021). 

With an emerging recovery, economists stated it would likely climb back past three per cent and remain high for much of 2022 before falling sharply. The Conservatives, as usual, are being grossly disingenuous in mewling about cost-of-living increases without citing the underlying global environmental issues.

Indeed, most rising costs (like fuel prices—whether real or greed-driven) have a direct environmental piece, and these are far more important things to consider than the trivial price of peanut butter or coffee. How about condo insurance? The Crown corp that regulates B.C.’s private-sector insurance companies noted an average 40-per-cent year-over-year increase in condo insurance premiums from 2019 to 2020, and another 27 per cent by July 2021. This mostly resulted from losses and risks around earthquakes, wildfires and flooding. Canadian insurers paid out an average $1.9 billion annually over the past decade for severe weather costs; more than four times the yearly average from 1983 to 2008. In 2017 and 2018, for instance, record global, Canadian, and sector-specific catastrophic losses resulted in insurers reducing their capacity, increasing rates and deductibles, or exiting the sector altogether. 

As the climate deteriorates, we’re rapidly entering an Uninsurable Age that will have serious knock-on effects for capital investment and private citizens alike. These are real and lasting cost-of-living questions to which the only answer is to seriously address the environmental crises driving this trend. Which brings us to this most somnolent of elections.

The Conservatives are not to be trusted on any front. Empirical evidence shows them to not be the wise fiscal managers they’d have people believe; only business benefits—inordinately at that—under their rule, and to the decided detriment of the environment. Remember that O’Toole and the current Con running in this riding, John Weston, were both members of the odious, science-denying Harper Government™® and can never be forgiven for—among other acts that ushered this country into a modern Dark Ages—inviting the oil industry to rewrite Canada’s environmental laws. 

O’Toole’s kinder, gentler rhetoric is still just that, his current attempts to convince Canadians that he’s pro-choice, gay-positive, addiction-compassionate, immigration-friendly, universal-healthcare-loving and climate-savvy while simultaneously trying to convince most of his party that he is none of the above is a cynical mug’s game that should have any Canadian aware of who and what constitutes the conservative base scratching their heads. As ably demonstrated by its proxies in the U.S. and Alberta, conservatism in Canada is a disease no one can survive.

Despite a leader continually tripping over his own missteps, the Liberals remain light-years ahead of the Conservatives in talking points, promises and, to their credit, even a few accomplishments on the environment (price on carbon mandates, increasing land protections, Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, signatory to emerging international agreements on biodiversity, climate and human development), yet have disappointingly offered neither vision nor formula for the needed systemic change to actually build back better.

With the federal Greens in disarray, the NDP is the only party promising anything close to what needs to be done—including the complete severing of society’s malignant umbilicus to the fossil fuel industry through the ending of all subsidies and redirection of these considerable funds to renewables. Unfortunately, its eternally politicking leader continues to purposely blur the jurisdictional lines of federal and provincial responsibility in order to score outrage points and will never be PM. So where does this leave us? 

With no chance for a federal government that will actually do all that needs to be done, probably back at the old “all politics is local” corral, fighting for what’s right. 

Govern yourselves accordingly.