 Hello everybody, thank you so much for joining us for the first talk that's part of the North American colloquium series on climate change. I'm very pleased to be sort of the emcee for today. And we have a wonderful speaker Professor Douglas McDonald joining us. And, but before, and just to give you a preview of sort of what's to come. Our second event, which is coming up on December 9, we will will be led by myself and Barry rave, Professor Barry rave who will be talking about his brand new book, which is scheduled to come out this Tuesday from Brookings institution press the Trump the American the administrative presidency and federalism. So that should be a wonderful, a wonderful opportunity to hear about Barry's new book and then most of our events will be in the winter term at Michigan, for those of you who know the Michigan lingo. We have five or six webinars involving policymakers students and scholars from all three North American countries. You know, many of us are wondering whether we'll have a new US president and a new US administration at that point, and we have all kinds of great programming that specifically geared that will specifically allow people to reflect on perhaps a new institution and the prospects that that entails this point I'm going to turn it over to the director of the Ford schools International Policy Center, Professor john to Charlie. Thanks so much Joshua and delighted to have you all here and to kick off these two years North American colloquium. A few years ago with partners at the University of Toronto and the autonomous National University of Mexico, and the goal of the colloquium is to join these three universities, and also the larger communities that they represent in a conversation about pressing issues that are facing North America as a whole. Two years ago, we went to Toronto and discussed trade issues at the time when the North American Free Trade Agreement was being recrafted and rebranded. Last year went down to Mexico City for a dialogue on issues surrounding migration in both cases Ford school students played integral parts traveling to the colloquia participating in the dialogue, engage in with their peers at our institutional partners of the UT and and this year because of the obvious travel constraints we decided to shift to an online format in which we'll have a series of events that Joshua just described. We're very very excited and grateful of course to kick that off with Douglas McDonald whom you know from shortly, but I wanted to welcome you welcome you all more broadly to this year's colloquium and we hope that throughout the year, you'll find an engaging way to learn more about climate change issues, and importantly to consider it from the various perspectives of the three countries represented in the partnership. So thank you so much, Joshua. Thank you, Professor Trichari and at this point I'm going to introduce someone that many of you already know, because his he's been at the Ford School for quite some time he's the IRA J Ira Nikki Harris family professor of public policy, Barry rave. Thanks so much, Josh. And let me join in welcoming all of you to this launch event for our series of conversation that will take place throughout the academic year, looking at North American perspectives related to climate policy. To begin by thanking john you and your team at the International Policy Center. It's just been a delight working with all of you and helping reconceptualize this. This approach that we're taking to the series this year, dealing with issues of the pandemic and so our thanks to that. Josh, I want to officially and formally welcome you to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. For those of you who don't know, Josh has joined the Ford School as a post doctoral fellow for this academic year. Last year he finished his doctoral dissertation in sociology at Northwestern University. And that work and ongoing research reflects deep interest and insight into issues of American state climate and energy policy. Josh will have a chance when we have our conversation in December, but in other sessions that we're going to be having to talk a bit about his research and ongoing insights. And we're just delighted to have the sort of sociological lens, a deep focus on American states and all that he has brought to this and so Josh, I just want to welcome you and see how terrific it has been already to have you here at Ford. I also want to acknowledge and thank Dennis, meaning Dennis is a distinguished alum of the Ford School technically the forerunner of the Ford School, the Institute for public policy studies. Dennis has had a long and distinguished role in areas of energy policy, particularly renewable energy development in different sections of the United States has staggering depth of understanding and insights into the changing of American energy infrastructure, and has been an enormous supporter of energy and environmental activity at the Ford School in recent years that has included very generous funding that covers the colloquium series this part of the colloquium series, and other activities that we're pursuing and so a real acknowledgement to Dennis for his support. Finally, I'm just absolutely delighted to welcome Douglas McDonald. I've been wanting to get Doug McDonald to Ann Arbor for the longest time. We didn't quite pull this off Doug but the virtual is about as good as we're going to do for now. And Doug McDonald has been a leading figure in the study of environmental politics, policy, federalism questions, particularly with a focus on Canada for many, many years. Much of his teaching career he's now an emeritus status was in the school of the environment at the University of Toronto, which is john noted as UT is one of our core partners in this initiative so it's really terrific to involve a Toronto faculty member, the author of just a staggering number of high impact publications. One I would note that I think enduring impact is a 2007 book business and environmental politics in Canada, which is continues to be widely used and read in spite of Canada but also in Canada as well. That received in 2008, one of the highest honors that Canadian political scientists can receive the Donald smiley prize for the best book in governance and politics in Canada, and then it goes on. I was aware for a number of years that Doug was working on this other book and trying to come to terms with a great public policy political science question. How does a physically large diverse federal system like Canada with massive endowments of fossil fuels deal with an issue like climate change. It has not been easy that it's never easy in federal systems or any other political system, but has been a particular challenge to Canada. Doug was working on a major book that would look historically longitudinally, but also at more recent developments in the last few years and package it. And so I must tell you one of my summer reading highlights was indeed this book. The title kind of a nice cover carbon province hydro province, the challenge of Canadian energy and climate federalism. And he will be talking to us about that book as well as continuing reflection he has had as his studies have continued thereafter, but please join me in giving a welcome if you are an electronic welcome to Douglas McDonald. Thank you very much Barry for those kind words and Barry john and Josh. Thank you very much for inviting me to to this colloquium. All of you who are participating thank you for taking the time today. Barry is quite right I've been sweating over this thing for quite some time. I spent the last three years writing it, but it's based on research and other writings that I've done going back to 2008 and trying to think through this basic question of how Canada can deal with the basic problem that it has. As Barry says of being large diverse differences in economic bases for different parts of the country. So the things finally came out. I'm so pleased and I'm very pleased to have a chance to present the argument and then to engage in discussion to get your thoughts and questions and we go from there. So what I'm going to do then, without further ado is launch right in. And I'm doing that by putting up the slides that I'm going to be using. Okay, are we good Josh. Yeah, that looks great. Okay, so I'm going to launch right in as I say this talk is going I'm trying to keep it down to certainly less than 45 minutes and hopefully closer to 35 to give us plenty of time for discussion. So, I'd ask you to hold questions until afterwards, and then Josh will be facilitating that discussion you can let him know if you've got a question you want to you want to raise. The other point I should make is I won't be using the chat function I just, my brain doesn't have enough capacity to both the verbally and to be reading things so if you want to contact me. verbally here, but also if you have other questions after this is all over tomorrow something certainly occurs to you. I'm going to be giving you my email address and by all means, give me a shout. So this is the book. The first thing I want to do is just lay out the subject and the purpose. So the subject is Canadian federal provincial energy and climate policymaking and I want to define that for you just to be sure we're clear here. I'm referring to a federal provincial national program as one in which the government the federal government in Ottawa and the provincial governments and the territories are all acting more or less independently using their own policy instruments, but they're acting on the same policy problem in order to achieve a common objective. There had been five of these federal provincial national programs in the areas of either energy or climate or nowadays the two overlap so much. And so what I do in the book is to look at those five to see what lessons we can learn for what works and what doesn't work. So we'll be starting off and it's just a minute or two giving you my argument as to why federal provincial coordinated program is the only way that Canada can put in place effective policy, even though it is a very weak governance instrument. I've been five. I'm looking at those five. I'm looking at four subjects with respect to those five. First, I suggest that there are three major challenges that federal provincial policymaking faces in the area of climate change and I'll be going through those. And then the fourth one is the key role played by the government of Canada, which has to be the lead actor, trying to bring the provinces together to act in a coordinated way. And that's the subject matter. The research questions are, why has Canada failed to date to meet all of its, its international commitments, and how might we do things differently. I'll start because this is an American audience. I need to just take 30 seconds to be sure that you understand federalism in Canada is very different from federalism in other federal systems such as Germany or Australia or the United States. And Belgium, Canada is one of the most decentralized federal systems. That is, it has a weaker federal government relative to the political power used by provinces than is usually the case. So originally, Canada came into being in 1867, the people writing the Canadian Constitution. We're looking to the American example of the Civil War. They said, we don't want to go there. We want to have an absolutely strong federal government and provinces which were closer to being akin to municipalities than anything else. But then as things have unfolded since that whole system has been turned on its head. There have been a series of court decisions through the 19th and 20th centuries, which have tended to support provincial jurisdiction over federal. But the major fact is that starting in the 1960s, people in Quebec were actively considering leaving confederation. And this led to two referenda one in 1995, which just missed by a fraction of a percent. And so there is an inherent tendency for any federal government. The preservation of the state is the number one priority of all governments. And to do that, they tend to give power down to give Quebec what it wants. And that means you have to give other people other provinces what they want. So the thing to bear in mind here is that the federal government cannot simply tell a province that has to take a particular policy action. It can try and convince the province to do that and it can offer money, but it can't simply tell it to do something. So if you're thinking about Canadian federalism, think more about relations among sovereign states at the international level, than about the example of your own country. So Canadian failure to meet targets, the 2020 target is the third. There was one that was supposed to be met in the year 2000, then one in the year 2012. Then by 2020, the commitment given at the Copenhagen summit was that Canada would have emissions no more than 620 megatons by 2020. For the last year we have data, they're well above that. But then the Canadian emissions have increased since 1990 increased by 21%, unlike jurisdictions like the United States or the European Union, which are seen in overall decline. But when you look at the sources in Canada from these figures at the bottom, you see that in some cases we actually have had decreases, but those are being overwhelmed by increases in other sources. And so the two sources, emissions from oil and gas extraction and emissions from transportation make up about half of the total. And I just want to draw your attention to a difference between those two. Transportation emissions are distributed roughly evenly throughout the country in accordance with the distribution of population. Oil and gas emissions are concentrated in some parts of the country, only those parts of the country, which have oil and gas resources. So if the country as a whole says, boy, we're really going to put a big push on getting reducing transportation emissions and their costs associated with that, those costs are going to be fairly evenly distributed. If instead we say we're going to have a big huge push on reducing oil and gas emissions, only those parts of the country which have oil and gas physically located in the borders are going to be feeling that that cost. So you have this regional difference. And as soon as you're talking about regionalism, you're talking about federalism and the ability because that's what federalism is all about is the ability to broker differing regional interests. So the result of this there can, the Canadian failure to meet its targets is due to a whole bunch of reasons I'm not suggesting this is the only one, but one pretty important one is the fact that we have different parts of the country going down to different policy tracks that are laid out here. The oil and gas regions are increasing others are decreasing. And it's not simply two tracks of differences in emissions. It's two tracks in the policy objective and I want to underline that that Ontario Quebec, Nova Scotia, a number of other jurisdictions adopted a policy objective of decreasing emissions just as the country as a whole has had a series of targets to decrease emissions. Alberta and Saskatchewan have not adopted that policy objective. The Alberta government in 2015 to the credit of the NDP government brought in a series of programs which are having an effect of reducing emissions, but it's simply reducing the rate of increase. Alberta is responsible for a large portion of oil and gas in Canada. Alberta is home to the oil sands and the policy of every Alberta government for the last 20 years has been to attract more investment into the oil sands to have more production and generate more wealth. And along with that comes increasing emissions. Alberta has been pushing heavily to have increased pipeline capacity. And that tells you that their objective is to increase their emissions. I'm going down to different policy tracks in terms of actual emissions, but also just the basic objective. And my argument throughout here is that Canada, using Canadian federalism has to find a way of reconciling these of finding a way of keeping all parts of the country, moving down the same one track of a decrease in emissions. And it's a major challenge. So I start by arguing the only way that can be done is through the kind of federal provincial program I was talking about coordinated action agreed by governments. So the picture here is the Prime Minister and the then premiers of provinces in Vancouver in March of 2016 on the way to negotiating the pan Canadian framework program that came in place in December. Why is it the only option, because the provinces by themselves have shown they can't do it. I think the Stephen Harper administration from 2016 the federal government of Canada run by the Conservative Party headed by Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2015, the federal government had no interest in climate change and no interest in leading any kind of federal government effort, but provinces were acting British Columbia was bringing in its carbon tax. Quebec was starting to move to what's now it's cap and trade program Nova Scotia was starting to reduce, but they didn't come anywhere close to the, the target. So the provinces can't do it by themselves, if the with the federal government just staying out, but nor yet will the provinces ever simply turn it over to the federal government and say okay we're vacating the policy field. Ottawa, it's all yours, because it matters far too much to them they will never do that. Right now for the last two days we've had hearings before the Canadian Supreme Court with a series of provinces trying to get a court ruling that the federal carbon tax is unconstitutional far from just leaving it to Ottawa, they're trying to cripple Ottawa's ability to act in this field. So it can't be the provinces alone. It can't be Ottawa alone. The only thing we have left is federal provincial. But that means the only thing we have left is about the weakest governance system that humans could devise if you gave them the task and say well, let's see just how really weak a system we can come up with. I would argue that the policy making at the international level among sovereign states is in many ways more amenable to effective policy than the Canadian and the basic problem here is none of this is written into the Constitution it's all simply based on tradition and a powerful part of that tradition and this in fact to Canada and its decentralized federalism is that no government can be required to participate in one of these programs they can opt out at any time and Quebec in particular has opted out of many many particularly when it's been led by a party the government has said no we're not participating with a Canadian program. So that means that you only have consensual decision making there's never a majority vote. So you only have lowest common denominator solutions and the veto states which are working to weaken the policy outcome are much stronger in a consensual decision making process than a majority vote decision making process. But my argument is it's the only one we've got so we have to figure out how we can make it work better than it has to date. So to do that I lay out in the book the basic concept of federal provincial coordination what does it mean to have coordinated policy. And for that I define coordination as being behavior change that actors are doing things differently because they're coordinating with others than if they were doing it by themselves. So why do they do that there are two reasons they have external pressure being applied and so they change their behavior. And this is how you achieve coordination in formal organizations within the army or a business corporation or a government less so within a university universities are pretty decentralized as well. But within those other more hierarchical formal organizations you have power being asserted from the top the subunits want to I'm sorry have no choice but to change their behavior but I'll get in just a second the fact that they also they want to change their behavior. So I've borrowed a model from theoretical approaches to understanding international environmental policy in which you have a lead state which is pushing for action. And the example that's often given at the international level is Sweden in the late 1960s the science was showing that it was suffering from acid rain coming up from Europe. Sweden took the lead in trying to negotiate an international agreement to get a reduction in emissions and then other actors can either play a support role or a swing role where they'll support if they're given something or the veto role. And basically I'm saying that to have coordination the lead actor has to have more political power within that system than the veto actor. But then also I had said actors change behavior because they have to but also because they want to within a business corporation the marketing department is being told it has to do certain things. But also it wants to do things which will allow the organization as a whole to achieve its its objectives because that helps the marketing department. Within Canada we largely don't have that provinces are very much self interested. They're concerned about what's going on within their own borders and they tend to leave national things to the federal government. So I'm going to come back to this when I get to the recommendations, but I'm saying one key point here. Can we find a way that in the climate policy area provinces will actually want to cooperate in order to achieve an overall Canadian goal. So then as I said I argue in the book there are three basic challenges that the Canadian governments face when they try to develop coordinated policy. The first the West East divide is the simple fact that because fossil fuels are located in Alberta and Saskatchewan and not in Alberta and Quebec. I'm sorry in Ontario and Quebec. You have very different economic interests and you have different economic interests respecting climate policy climate policy is a threat to Alberta and Saskatchewan in a way it is not a threat to other parts of the country. And then the other problem is that this is overlaid on the divide between the West and the rest of the country. And this has historic roots which go back to the 19th century. To my mind, it is completely understandable if I was an Albertan. I think I would be an Albertan nationalist because the country has largely been ruled since it came into being by the Ontario Quebec axis. This is the essence of Canada is that upper and lower Canada prior to 1867 were in deadlock. They couldn't find ways to govern. So it went to Britain and said we need to create this larger entity they brought in other provinces, but the industrialized heartland of Quebec and Ontario has always been the center putting in place national policy because that's where population has been they've got the seats in the House of Commons, which benefits the center at the expense of the hinterland in the Atlantic, or the West. So Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905, but unlike all the provinces before them they were told, well that's fine you're now a province but you don't have ownership of your resources. And the federal government had bought that Western land immediately after 1867, and it didn't turn it over to those provinces until 1930 after they had fought an incredibly bitter struggle to get that. And then in 1980s will be talking about Pierre Trudeau came in with the national energy program and took a bunch of Alberta oil money and moved it over into Ottawa. So the West East divide is in part economic but it's also very much identity psychology. As an American audience you're very familiar with divides within a country. This is within Canada, second only to the divide based on language, the French versus English languages in Canada. The second challenge, if you're going to reduce by a certain amount, say to get to the 620 figure that I was showing you it's 129 megatons you've got to reduce that is inherently going to be allocated. Even if you the policymakers never think about this, the word never comes out of your mouth, it's going to end up being distributed amongst transportation buildings oil and gas industry and so on. And then, in the case of regionally concentrated sources like oil and gas, that means it's being distributed regionally. It's a zero sum distribution, and therefore you have huge potential for conflict which is going to stall progress. And essentially the way Canada has dealt with that conflict so far has been to turn away from it to not admit that it exists and to settle for weak policy, which doesn't meet targets, but means that we don't have to deal with these contentious difficult national unity issues. And then the third challenge, as we've talked about the weakness of the federal provincial process. The fourth subject I look at federal strategy. I'm suggesting that within this decentralized system, the federal government has to play a lead role. It has to work to bring about behavior change on the part of provinces, and it has three means of doing that threat promise and persuasion. And a threat is essentially one of saying, if you don't act, we will act within your borders and that's exactly what the Trudeau federal carbon tax is it doesn't tell a promise you got to bring in a carbon tax, because the federal government can't do that. But it does say, if you don't bring it in, we will bring it in inside your borders, even though you as a government don't want to have your citizens and your your industries taxed. And this is what's being litigated. So the federal government does have these powers of threat. But going through the cases, and particularly Piotrido's national energy program. The lesson is that that federal power, if used in a clumsy way, or if too much power can actually be counterproductive it can just provinces just dig dig in and resist. And then the other means of federal influencing behavior behavior of promises promise to give money which is the made the Canadian staple that's the way it usually is done and persuasion and this is skillful diplomacy, listening, taking into account trying to work with provinces to achieve a common name. So those are the four subjects that I'm looking at for the five cases and I don't have time to go into detail on the cases. I'm just going to give you a very, very quick overview, and then I'm going to give you the findings from the four subjects. So the first case was only having to do with fossil fuel energy, and it focused on the price of oil essentially In 1960, the system had been put in place in Canada so that Alberta was supplying oil for the western part of the country up to the Quebec border, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces were importing oil from outside. In 1973 with the OPEC oil embargo, the international price went way up. So, Quebec and the province and the Atlantic provinces are paying that much more. So Alberta right away. Oh, and the price was controlled at that time by by Ottawa, unlike now. Alberta immediately said boy really we really want the Canadian price to go up to the international price. Ontario, which was buying Alberta oil did not want that. So you had huge conflicts straight out economic conflict. And there was a whole series of multilateral federal provincial efforts to find a way around this, and they reached some agreements but they can never find the resolve it. And then Pierre Trudeau came in in 1980, and he more or less said implicitly I'm through with negotiating he brought in a bunch of federal laws, which had the effect of transferring oil revenue from Alberta to Ottawa. Alberta, not surprisingly, felt that they had constitutional ownership of the resource and that that was being stolen from them by Ottawa and the East. Peter Lockheed went on television to an Alberta audience and he said, our home has been invaded and they're sitting in our living room. However, the Trudeau government then immediately started to negotiate again with Alberta from this changed power situation these laws were in place. Alberta had no choice but to negotiate, and they reached an agreement in 1981. Lockheed went back on television and he said, well, they're not in our living room anymore they're out on the front porch at least, and we're serving them coffee. Well, it's an example of substantial coordination they did reach agreement, they have a coordinated program, but the message that comes from it is that Pierre Trudeau's actions were far too draconian. Today, to this, this very day you'll hear Alberta politicians continually talk about the National Energy Program, as the thing that you do not want to have happen again. The next two programs were climate change, with energy more or less forgotten about in these early days of climate change. Alberta, for our very understandable reasons was fully engaged, motivated, playing a veto role to weaken the national program. Ottawa was not all that motivated. And so Alberta essentially was able to ensure that no really effective policy came out and you had only minimal coordination. The next two programs, the Canadian energy strategy, this was developed by the provinces alone without the federal government this time. Alberta went from being a veto actor to a lead actor, because it wanted the other provinces to agree that they would accept pipelines going through their territory. And eventually an agreement was reached, but it didn't really commit any province to doing anything it simply listed things that provinces could do working together. So an example of minimal coordination, and the lesson I draw from this is that a province can't lead it doesn't have those kinds of powers of threat, promise and persuasion it only has the power of persuasion. And then the current program. Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015 he said I'm going to work with the provinces we're going to bring in a new program and this is after nine years of the Harper government, not taking any action. This is so relieved. Alberta kind of deal with Trudeau saying, if you give us a pipeline will participate in your program. So Alberta was not the veto actor that it had been in the 1990s. Saskatchewan was the veto actor, and the program was signed in December of 2016 without including Saskatchewan. So it's only about less than 10% of total emissions so that could be done. But then, because of elections in Ontario and Alberta, we had conservative governments that were changing the position taken by their two governments, moving from support roles to veto or the swing role in case of Alberta to veto roles. And that leads us now to this litigation that's going on at the Supreme Court. So this are the five programs which today have failed to achieve any Canadian targets. These are the major lessons that I take from that. Number one, as I said, province can't lead has to be Ottawa. Number two, the West East divide if you look at all these cases, even the Canadian energy strategy which was fairly benign nobody's really threatened, but you had differences between Ontario and Quebec on the one hand, who are more interested in climate policy, and Alberta and Saskatchewan. And so the lesson is that going forward for any future federal provincial program, which I'm arguing we have to do, Alberta and Saskatchewan will be equally motivated they will be fully engaged, and they will be playing a veto role working to weaken the program. However, they won't bump up against countervailing power from other provinces because unlike the situation of Alberta and Ottawa in the 1970s having to do with price for climate change, there's no real reason if, if Canada has weak climate policy, and Alberta and Saskatchewan has succeeded in their veto role. Another province isn't really hurt by that. So you can't depend upon a province exerting countervailing power. It has to come from Ottawa. And that depends upon motivation, which in turn depends upon the ideology of the party in power, a conservative party in power federally is much less likely to act just as in the United States or Republican Party in power less likely to act. And it also has to do with the personal motivation of the Prime Minister, which we clearly have now with with Justin Trudeau. And then the other lesson, this is repeating what I had said a few minutes ago that Ottawa has to be motivated, it has to use some of the power it has, but not too much of it, not all of it, and it has to be careful has to engage in skillful diplomacy. And then the final finding has to do with the process has been used for setting targets to date. So far, all the Canadian targets, the national targets have been set by the federal government off in an international forum, paying attention to what other countries are doing, not going back home and negotiating with the provinces. The one time they did that in 1997, they reached an agreement just before the Kyoto summit with the provinces, and then the federal government repudiated that at Kyoto and agreed to something different. So we have unilateral targets being set by the federal government, but also all the provinces by now have adopted quite a few different targets at different times, and they have all been unilateral, even while they're engaged in a multilateral process. So at the very heart of the policy process, setting the objective, you have a lack of coordination built in. And this too is going to come out in my recommendations. And so we're going to wrap up now in just a couple of minutes, given this sketch of the problem and what has worked and does not work so far. My major recommendations are that we need a new federal provincial process in order to set a new national target, this time negotiating it with the provinces. And so going into that with everybody agreeing that they will be committed to whatever comes out the other end of that. And this has never been done in Canada. The Trudeau Liberals in their 2015 election platform said they would do it, but then they didn't do it. The second recommendation is that Ottawa doesn't simply convene a meeting of all the provinces, ask them what they're all willing to do, and then that's it. And that Ottawa use all the powers it has to push that target as high as it possibly can. Well, still recognizing that province can simply opt out of this process. So you got to keep them in, but try and move it up. And this is a challenge, certainly. And I'm suggesting that this be done through negotiation of a burden sharing agreement, something the European Union has done a couple of times, which is basically an agreement that for a given total of reduction say 100 megatons. We agree that the federal government with its policy instruments is going to supply 25 megatons of that. And then we agree that different provinces are going to supply different parts of that of that remaining portion to be allocated. We need to find a way that all agree that yes, this is a fair allocation. And we might get into this in the question and answer there are many, many criteria for what's fair. And people tend to have a self interested view they tend to think that what's fair for everybody is what actually benefits them. So this is a challenge, but it has been done successfully in the European Union, and it is what Canada needs. So while we're doing this, we want to as always for all policymaking you want to maximize efficiency, but then at the same time, we need to maximize equity and the perception of equity. And in some cases, if necessary, we trade off we have a little bit less efficiency, if we have perceived equity because it's that perception of equity that will get you the buy in from all the the participating governments. And secondly, I have to admit that given everything I've said about the nature of the federal provincial process leading to lowest common denominator, it's very possible that no matter how skillfully Ottawa is trying to push the target up, we will end up with a new national target, which is less ambitious than the current target. The question is more than a suggestion my argument which I make as forcefully as I can is, we would be further ahead in that position for two reasons I lay out here in the slide first that the current targets are completely meaningless everybody ignores them the government at least was honest, they said, we're, we're not going to try and achieve any of these targets. The Trudeau government was elected in 2015 the Justin Trudeau government. The 2020 target was still five years away. They never spent a drop of time and energy on the 2020 target they focused completely on the 2030 target. They're focusing on a 2050 target. Canadian targets are meaningless, but they also I argue are counterproductive because they let everybody feel good about themselves. Oh, we've now got a target we're going to be net zero by 2050. So we don't have to actually do anything. Because look how virtuous we are, we've got this target. And then the other part of the argument is that Alberta and Saskatchewan would have given a commitment would feel bound by this target. I was doing interviews for research out in Alberta, about 10 years ago and I was talking to an Alberta official about Canada's Kyoto target and I used the term, our target. And he stopped me right away. He said, that's not our target. That's not an Alberta target. We never signed on to that target. That's a Ottawa's target. He stayed with me that that's what we need to change that even if the weaker target, we need one in which Alberta and Saskatchewan have said for the first time, okay, we're going to change our policy so that we are aiming at actually having a decrease rather than an increase. Okay, that's the analysis of the problem and the recommendations. As I say, I would be very happy to discuss with anybody at any time that you'd like to contact me and I'm now going to cancel the slides and turn things back over to Josh. Well, thank you so much Doug. That was really fascinating, especially for folks like myself who are less familiar with the Canadian case and I just think for people who want to go even more in depth on Doug's brilliant arguments and analyses. I'd recommend the book. In a moment I'm going to turn things over to Barry Rabe who's going to kick off the question and answer session. But first I just wanted to make everyone aware of sort of the ground rules for the Q&A. I have since enabled the chat feature as Doug was talking so at the beginning the chat feature was disabled it is now enabled. And if you have a question from here on out. Just send me a private message in the chat just with the word question. That's all you need to say because I already have your name, then I'll call on you and I'll keep a queue and we'll try to get as many as we can in. So without further ado, Barry. Josh, you know when you're on zoom. Doug I don't know if that means you're in the living room or the porch of the Ford school. But it's very very nice to have you with us and thank you for sharing those thoughtful comments it really kind of brings to life many of the issues you address in the book. One of the things that continues to surprise me about the Canadian case is given the long history of policy failure. Is this to me anyway remarkable ability to at least maintain thus far the pan Canadian framework, especially when if you look at North American partners. And as indeed another federal system has moved toward a carbon tax and cap and trade system but it is a tiny fraction of what Canada is trying to do. And the US has essentially not engaged this playing field except for the actions of about 10 or 10 or 12 states. That gave Canada an amazing opportunity to shirk and walk away and simply saying, because of the cross border issues, we're going to find ways to scuttle this policy. It really did not happen. This has been a policy that has stuck and has been durable. And I wonder if you can tell us any more about what you think allowed this to take place, as well as the impact of the US and the American reluctance to engage on climate, especially during this most recent period. And that does for the, for the conversation in Canada where the American economy is so much larger in the population basis so much larger, the disincentives that that creates. Final piece of this if I just might throw out there I've often wondered if in Canadian climate policy discussions. There is serious discussion of using the pan Canadian framework as a weapon, and possibly look at adjustments of imported exported goods. And then we could even begin to think about this relationship, not just in terms of comparison but the interactive sides of it. Any thoughts about those issues at all. Yes, thank you very those are excellent points for discussion here particularly for an American audience. I'm going to start with your first one of the influence on Canadian climate policy of the fact of living next door to the United States. And then I'll come back to this question of the pan Canadian framework and it's still in existence. And then the final point of border adjustment taxes. So, the Canadian political reality ever since climate change came on the agenda in about 1990 was that everybody in the country was very focused on the fact that some 80% of Canadian exports go into the American market. So, there was a strong desire, particularly on the part of Canadian business, but also other sectors to not get too far out of line with American policy. This has generally been true, as many of you may know for environmental policy across the board, since the 1970s, so or if you even go back 100 years, establishment of the International Joint Commission ways of dealing with trans boundary water issues. Canada has a long tradition of looking to the US science for one thing for from the EPA science, but then also being very aware of the fact that our economic well being depends on having some degree of harmonization with American approaches. And so what that meant was that Canadian governments generally were reluctant to get too far away from what Washington was doing. And this I had said in the years, I'm sorry the months immediately prior to the Kyoto summit, the federal and provincial governments all negotiating agreement on what the Canadian position would be at Kyoto, but then the Kretchen government was absolutely on what the American position was at Kyoto. So to the best of my knowledge, there has never really been any overt attempt by American governments to influence Canadian climate policy. In part, I would assume is because why should they what what do they care it's not that significant for them. But American policy has had a huge influence because of actors within country within the country, pointing to the need to maintain that harmonization. The point where that didn't happen was when the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto regime shortly after it was elected, and the Kretchen government did not. It stayed in so you did have some discrepancy. And then of course, the Justin Trudeau government has brought in the pan Canadian framework and held to it, even while the Trump administration has been making it very clear that it's, it's never going to bring comparable action in terms of the longevity longevity of the pan Canadian framework. I'm not sure I would agree very completely that it is still there in robust form. It has a fundamental problem in that there is the number of provinces who have said explicitly that they are opposed to it. It's Alberta Saskatchewan the original veto actor Manitoba is always sort of in and out but more out than in now Ontario under a conservative government and New Brunswick. Those add up to more than half of the Canadian population and more than two thirds of Canadian emissions, and they are working against the program to the extent of taking the program but taking a major element of the program to court. So my argument is, I mean I have many arguments about the pan Canadian framework which we could get into but but my, my major argument here is that it's been badly broken, and that what Ottawa needs to do now is to either renegotiate keep the general framework or but renegotiate or to start a new program. And then as I say, I, my recommendation is that they start it by means of trying to negotiate a burden sharing agreement. In terms of using carbon policy climate policy as a trade instrument to influence the behavior of others. I have never heard of that in Canada, I've heard of it from France. I know you all would know better than I about the Americans, but I have not heard of it generally speaking Canadian economic and trade policy as it starts with this dependence upon the American market. And then the next thing Canadians always say is, we need to diversify to find a way around that. And then the other major element for Canadian policy always is support and multilateralism. The government's going back for 100 years have realized that if they're in the same room with the United States, and there's only the two of them, they're going to be crushed. They have to get themselves into rooms with a whole bunch of other people. So Canada, because of the importance of the US supports multilateralism, but Canada doesn't I don't think it has the cloud it doesn't go in for that talk of those kinds of Thanks Doug, the next questions from Melanie and it'll be followed by john. Hi there I'm Melanie cladney I'm actually from Canada I grew up in Fort McMurray Alberta, the heart of the oil industry. Just a question for you about how you would recommend achieving perceived equity or cooperation when so many of these provinces depend on on these industries that's kind of their one of their primary economic drivers. Yes, it's an excellent question because it goes to the heart of everything I'm saying, and it goes to the heart of the Canadian dilemma that the fossil fuel industries are so important to Alberta and Saskatchewan, but they also are so important to the Canadian economy as a whole. It's one of the major industrial sectors in Canada. And so every federal government has been pursuing climate change policy, but also has been pursuing continued export of oil and gas. And we see that the symbolic expression of that is the Justin should know government buying a pipeline to ensure that it gets built for Alberta oil. So it absolutely is central. So how do we deal with that. I had said that what we need is to find a way that each province feels that the share that is providing of the total reduction is fair. And there are all kinds of different ways of doing that at the international level and Kyoto in 1997 the countries agreed on the notion of common but differentiated responsibilities, and that meant that there was a common responsibility all countries needed to be acting on this issue, but differentiated recognizing that it was the industrialized north, which largely had created the problem. And so they should be doing more. So that's one example of an attempt to find an equitable sharing. What I suggest in the book is that we might be able to find this on the basis of equality of per capita reduction costs that generally speaking in distributed justice. When we're trying to divide up the pie and anything. We often start saying, let's everybody have the same share equal shares, and there's generally agreement on this that likes are treated alike that everybody goes into the legal system and they have the same right to be treated in a certain way. There's generally agreement and then distributed justice gets more complex because there are a lot of other things that have to be taken into account. The burdens of schedule on have much higher reduction costs per capita reduction costs, because they're more carbon intensive economies. So, instead of the rest of the country turning around and saying to them, boy, boy, you have to reduce by the same amount at the same per capita amount as everybody else. What the country could say is we're only asking you to bear the same per capita cost that everybody else is is bearing. And that would mean that we wouldn't have the same per capita reductions from those carbon intensive economies. We would have the same per capita reductions elsewhere but we would have a similarity of cost equality of cost. And so my suggestion is that this might be one way of getting at this problem. And this larger problem of, as we said oil and gas is 26% of the total. Eventually, we either have to change oil and gas in a big big way through carbon capture and storage or something else, or we have to start phasing it out. And that's what brings in the whole concept of a just transition that we find a way to to bring about these changes in the Alberta and Saskatchewan economies, while minimizing the damage that is caused or by sharing amongst all Canadians, the cost of that. And there's a huge literature on notions of just transition. But where we have been so far is locked into Alberta and Saskatchewan feeling threatened, and therefore putting their hand up saying no, we're going to stop. We're going to play a veto role. We somehow have to get out of that and start working together. What I suggest in the book I didn't include in the recommendations here but it is in the book is that first that basically to two things I'm suggesting that first, the rest of the book has to accept the fact that it can't tell Alberta what it has to do at the end of the day, this decision Alberta owns those resources. They have a moral right above and beyond the constitutional right. At the end of the day, it has to be Alberta that is making this decision. At the same time, conversely, I'm saying people in Alberta have to admit to themselves that they're free riding, that their policy is that they're going to keep they're the richest per capita province now, and their policy is that they're going to keep on getting richer right by 2030 by expanding oil and gas emissions and somebody else is going to have to pay the price for that. People in Alberta have to look themselves in the mirror and say, yes, this is what I'm doing to the rest of the country. But this dialogue isn't happening in Canada, nobody's paying attention to this. So that's why I'm very pleased to have a forum like this where I can put forth is these proposals. John. Yes. Thank you for all of your insights. And as you know, in the United States, the debate around climate policy is often couched in economic terms as you've been discussing with regard to Canada, but also has strong ideological elements to it with regard to the national sovereignty free markets, even a kind of frontier ethic, as well as a debate about the veracity or reliability of research done on climate change. I wonder if you could comment on the nature of the debate particularly in places like Alberta or Saskatchewan were opposition to more stringent controls as strongest. Yes. So basically what I'm going to comment on it is I understand it John what you're looking for some discussion of above and beyond the economic interests which are at play. What are the ideological interests. So I've got a couple of comments I was thinking about this in the last few days getting ready for this. The first one for an American audience is to understand that Canada does not have the kind of polarized ideological debate that you find in the United States. The Canadian federalism may be somewhat unique in terms of this degree of decentralization, but American society if you allow me to say this as a Canadian is somewhat unique in terms of the degree of polarization and the bitterness of the debate in the United States that we all tend to marry people who are either Republicans or Democrats that that's one of the most important decisions for how you get married. Canada, fortunately, has avoided that at least to some extent. Within Canada is largely a center right versus center left within Canada. We have conservative parties, federally across the country and then within each province, and they tend to represent about 33% of the third of the Canadian vote. And then the remainder of the vote is divided up amongst a number of political parties. And in our first pass the post system if you want to win, you only need to get about 40% of the vote, and you're you're good to go. So sometimes the conservatives by moving over toward the center can bump things up from 33 to 40. One of the other people is that the vote is split, but as we've seen with Justin Trudeau government, they can get in there. So, by and large, the conservative ideological position on climate change has been one of, we don't really see the same urgency to act, we're much less willing to act. But the way it's been played out over the last few years with the Stephen Harper government. Harper never quite said these words, but he more or less was giving a clear message, I'm not going to act on this issue is almost like Trump is now. Since then the way it plays out now, the conservative ideological position is in opposition to a carbon tax. So it's interesting that simply the choice of policy instrument has become the central ideological divide. So the conservative position now in Canada is, yes, the problem is real. Yes, humans are causing it. Yes, we need to do something about it. But no, we're not going to use a carbon tax. And so what that leads you to is, well, we're going to use government spending, or we're going to rely on voluntary action. But that's the way it plays out. But there's much less of a divide is much more feasible or conceivable that Canadian parties might well or that a conservative government might well bring in more effective policy. But then just as a code to that, the other ideological element within Canada is the geographic element. And of course you have that in the United States to red and blue states are divided geographically. And everything that I was saying about Western alienation is very, very real in Canada. So you have ideological conflict working out on these two different levels. Thank you. Katie, you're up next. Yeah, my name is Katie and I'm a graduate student. You actually just pretty much perfectly addressed my question. My question was going to be a lot of my research centers on public opinion in the United States on climate change and specifically climate change, denial. In the United States and kind of my question, like I said, you just addressed was whether or not that denial has been exported to Canada at all or if that's the framing that's being used at all and Alberta and Saskatchewan or by the oil companies operating out of there. I get the sense from what you just said that the answer is no, but if you have any more to say on that, I'd be curious. It's a very good question Katie and I can expand on it. Little Barry might have these knows more than I do about Canadian and public opinion actually. But generally speaking, when they do opinion polling in Canada. I find that for questions such as support for government action on climate, they tend to be achieved the highest levels of support, particularly in Quebec, Quebec has always Quebec public has always supported action on environmental environmental more than pretty well anybody else in the country and Quebec. It's a very different it's a distinct society, very much more open to government action. It's a more progressive society, much more open to government action. And it works its way down, and you find the least support within Alberta and Saskatchewan. But you don't really find as I was saying the out and out denial we did have there was a debate at one point. But, and you could tell me more about the US but here in Canada, that has shifted that there's not really a powerful portion of public opinion, which is saying the problem doesn't exist flat out the end of conversation. That doesn't really happen. I was in discussion with Jeremy Rainer who is a prof at in Saskatchewan and little while ago and he was pointing out that one of the differences is that in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There's agreement that the problem is real and there's something needs to be done about it. There's much less sense of urgency than in Eastern Canada. He was saying that it is viewed there as yes it's a problem, but it's a long term problem, and we can be using long term solutions. Whereas in Eastern Canada there's more of a push for immediate action. Thanks, Doug. So that's all I have in the queue. Does anyone else have any we can have sort of an open floor now everyone has the ability to unmute themselves. Does anybody else have any other questions they'd like to ask. Barry, do you want to say anything I know you've done work on this on public opinion in the two countries. Yeah. So I've been part of I think three efforts to not only compare but to try to ask roughly the same questions in the United States and Canada at the same time on belief or perceptions of climate change but also policy. And the gaps have been consistently quite strong. I would say that Canadian overall take on these questions is much more like the European Union opinion in Asia. The US really is the outlier, including just questions like do you believe there's solid evidence that global global temperatures have increased over the last four years before you even get to human causation. The needle just moves when you ask those questions in the US and of course now there's an interesting issue, whether or not the US is beginning to really kind of close that gap with the rest of the world. And there's some evidence that that is is happening just the last point. We actually have hopes of through this colloquium process revisiting that and for the first time if we can do it. I would ask also the same questions in Mexico as well as Canada in the US, which to my knowledge has never been done but it squares with everything that you were just saying Doug and it's a it's a great question. Katie, thank you. And, oh, sorry, Doug, did you want to add anything. Well, I was just going to say we've got a bit of time left and let's use it for questions and discussion but also if you like I could give you a quick update on what has happened with since the pandemic in Canada. And what does COVID mean for climate politics. I think that would be great and I think we can you can do so and then we can close it out with it with the only one here that hasn't had lunch yet but I'm sure ending a couple minutes early would be okay so yeah why don't you tell us though about the COVID effects. Let me just first anybody else want to jump in with something. Okay, so the quick picture to update for Canada we go back to there was an election in October of last year. And the Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau was reelected but this time with a minority government that got fewer seats than in 2015. And Alberta and Saskatchewan were elected nothing but conservatives. So they had no representatives at the cabinet table they were shot out of government. And this is very dangerous, because as you know, what kicked off the American Civil War was when the Republican Party was elected and the south had no more voice in Washington, and they felt okay game over. So the, the dialogue coming out of Alberta Saskatchewan after the election was very strident. And it was doubling down on demands for more pipelines, getting rid of the tax, dialing back climate policy, the West East divide suddenly ratcheted up quite a bit. And that's where things sat until the early part of the year. And then we had Aboriginal protests for a gas pipeline in British Columbia, which triggered Indigenous peoples, taking activist protest actions, blocking trains and doing other things throughout the country. You had Western alienation and then you had Indigenous actors who now in Canada, similar to the United States, are now very powerful actors, because they are constitutionally empowered. There is a recognition that they have a constitutional right to be heard in resource development decisions. So that's where things sat and then COVID came in. My book was published, I got my, it was published on March the 10th, on March the 12th, I got a copy and I was looking at it and I was so happy. And that was the day that all the sports leagues announced, they were shutting down. And I started to think, oh boy, I've published my book just at a time when everybody's attention is focused elsewhere. So what has happened since is that the oil and gas industry represented by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has put forth demands for financial assistance and regulatory relief. And to a larger extent, the federal government has been meeting those demands. The federal government is walking these two lines of trying to have climate policy and trying to have support for the oil and gas industry. But at the same time, the Trudeau government has said, well, we're still committed to action on climate change. And we had the throne speech yesterday in which they committed particularly to using their spending power to support a transition to green industries, green energy sources. And then also, they are getting ready, it looks like, to bring in new federal law, which will be based on what's happening in the UK. So you'll have five year chunks, they'll set targets on the basis of five years. And the law will require the federal government to set an overall Canadian target to be met within five years. But also, interestingly from my point of view, to then set sub targets for the different provinces. And that is the allocation process that I'm talking about. And one of the lessons that I'm giving is that every country, and also we find this globally, you have to somehow deal with this allocation question. So it looks as though the federal government is moving in that direction, what the mechanics will be for reaching agreement on what those provincial shares will be, I don't know, and we'll be very interested to find out. That's so fascinating how those same sort of intergovernmental conflicts are playing out in the COVID situation. All right, well, thank you, especially to those who stayed until the bitter end. I know it's a tough time of day. But most of all, thanks to Professor McDonald for joining us. Thank you very much for having me with you. I've enjoyed spending this time very much. Thanks so much. And as Professor McDonald mentioned, he's happy to receive emails and I can attest to the fact that he's just as much of a delight one on one as in a group. If you need my email address, I put it up there. It's my name, Douglas dot McDonald at uteronto.ca, or just get in touch with Josh, and I'd be happy to talk to anybody. All right. Thank you very much. Take care.