Climatetiveness

Table of Contents

In addition to being the year-and-a-half when a pandemic shook the world, 2020-21 will be remembered for a renewed determination to address long-neglected areas of policy. The COVID-19 crisis not only threw brand new challenges on the public agenda, but also reminded us of the need to get moving on pre-existing and evolving ones.

As the Public Policy Forum rolled up its sleeves in the Spring of 2020 on a project we called ReBuild Canada, we kept encountering vulnerabilities in long-standing trade policies — from export infrastructure to our heavy reliance on a less dependable United States and an increasingly bellicose China. Moreover, the juxtaposition of trade and climate change was producing an entirely new set of challenges. Carbon was emerging as a new factor of competitiveness, with serious ramifications for a nation like Canada that is both highly reliant on exports and serves as a resource storehouse for our trading partners.

Over the summer of 2020, the Business Council of British Columbia published a detailed paper about how the province’s exports generally contain lower carbon intensities than products they are competing against or displacing. We and the council felt more work was needed on a pan-Canadian basis to understand how Canada could take advantage of its low carbon exports (for our own good and the global good) and transition industries to become low carbon producers. If Canada was going to continue to be among the great exporting nations in a world in which carbon had joined cost in the competitiveness equation, a new approach to policy was required. Some of this had obviously been contemplated within Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. But Article 6 remained an orphaned section. We felt Canada should adopt it or something akin, into our family of policy interests.

And so, in the way of the Public Policy Forum, we gathered a variety of interested parties together to examine the issues at play. The timing seemed right to ensure that Article 6 would be on the agenda for Paris Agreement signatories at the so-called COP26 meeting scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, along with other multilateral and bilateral measures to ensure that the national accounting systems for carbon did not inadvertently sideswipe trade of benefit to all. This report is the manifestation of that concern. It calls for Canada to be more purposeful in asserting our national interest and ensuring that interest is aligned with the greater global good.

I want to thank all the participants in this process, with a special shoutout for the authors of the report, PPF Fellow and former British Columbia cabinet secretary Kim Henderson, PPF Scotiabank Fellow in Strategic Competitiveness Sean Speer and PPF Senior Policy Lead Katie Feenan. They have organized and attended sessions with our partners and others in coming to the ahead-of-the-curve conclusions you will discover in this paper.

Edward Greenspon
President & CEO
Public Policy Forum

CLIMATETIVENESS: What it Takes For Canada to Thrive in a Net Zero Exporting World

Synchronizing Canadian Competitiveness and Climate Policy in a Low Carbon Export Strategy

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WITH THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS

About the Authors

SEAn Speer

Sean Speer is the PPF Scotiabank Fellow in Strategic Competitiveness at the Public Policy Forum. He is also a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and editor at large at The Hub (http://www.thehub.ca). He previously served as a senior economic adviser to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Kim Henderson

Kim Henderson is a principal at Sproat Advising, an independent consultancy offering advisory services to businesses on their strategies with governments in the areas of climate and economic policy and government procurement. She is also a fellow with the Public Policy Forum.

Kim has extensive experience in senior public sector management in a career spanning 20 years. She most recently served as Deputy Minister to the Premier, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the British Columbia Public Service. Kim was also previously BC’s Deputy Minister of Finance and Secretary to the Treasury Board.

Katherine Feenan

Katherine Feenan is a Senior Policy Lead with the Public Policy Forum. She has held a variety of positions in the public and private sectors, including roles in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, with the member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre and with polling firm Angus Reid Public Opinion. Katherine’s interest in politics and elections led her to work overseas with the National Democratic Institute and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, serving as an election analyst, observer and trainer.