Ryan: There’s some new polling out that is suggesting the climate change issue is starting to become a bit of an issue for the federal government. And the people who are starting to get turned away from the Mark Carney government because of that issue are turning towards the federal NDP, who might be getting a boost in popularity over this. This is some latest data from an Angus Reid poll. Here to talk about it, Avi Lewis is the leader of the federal NDP. It’s a pleasure to get him on the radio this morning. How are you doing, sir?
Avi Lewis: Good morning, Ryan. It’s been great to be with you today. I’m in the Eastern time zone, so my eyes aren’t bleeding from the 6 a.m. call. This is the nice thing. I’ll be home in a couple days.
Ryan: I actually really enjoy talking to federal politicians because half the time you guys are in Ottawa and it’s an easy time change for you guys.
Avi Lewis: There you go. But no, I’m a British Columbian, so it’s good to be home at least on the radio.
Ryan: Well, great to have you here. Now, I thought this was interesting because there’s a couple of things going on. One, we’ve had kind of this Mark Carney Liberal honeymoon that lasted maybe longer than some federal governments get when they first come in. And we were kind of wondering when would things start to sour a little bit. And maybe we’re seeing a bit of that. But it’s interesting, the issue that it’s on. It’s the climate change issue. People who are concerned about that seem to be getting a little disillusioned, at least according to this poll.
The data found that the top issue for about 21 per cent of Canadians is now climate change. The last time they did this, it was 14 per cent of Canadians found that one of their big issues. So more and more people are starting to identify that as an issue that’s of concern. And I guess if you are concerned about it, the federal Liberals are leaving people wanting. What do you make of this?
Avi Lewis: I mean, look, first of all, I hate those polls when you’ve got to choose what’s your top issue. My top issue is they’re all combined. That’s my top issue. I think people are still concerned about the ridiculous cost of food and groceries and rent and mortgages, and the cost of living is still the top concern. But these things are all related. People are worried about Donald Trump stomping around the world starting wars that he can’t figure out how to end, and what that does to the price at the pump and the price of food.
And in the middle of this, we’re back in smoke season, which we used to call summer. And people all over the world — I mean, the heatwaves and fires in Europe have killed thousands of people already this year. And we’re having one of the worst smoke seasons ever in Canada again. And every summer now, we have to brace for that.
So climate change doesn’t rank super high as a concern when you force people to choose between issues. But it’s in our lungs every summer. And we know that it’s happening. And it’s destabilizing the world along with the wars for the oil that is the fundamental source of it. We have to go back to basics sometimes and be like, yes, things are getting hotter and drier. We’re in a prolonged drought in a lot of British Columbia. I live on the Sunshine Coast where a few years ago the hospital was seven days from running out of water completely, in stage five water restrictions. These are the conditions that we now live in. It’s getting worse, not better. And it’s linked to all these other things.
So, yeah, it’s a scary world out there. But what we’re actually seeing around the world, Ryan, is that this war, particularly the war on Iran and the spiking price of oil, has got countries moving away from fossil fuels fast. For example, in Europe, EV sales are up 50 per cent from a year ago. Last year on planet Earth, 99 per cent of all new electricity generation was renewable energy. In three years, California has installed as much battery storage as a dozen nuclear power plants. And they’re using 60 per cent less gas — less petrol, gas — this year in California than three years ago.
So the world is moving on. And Canada, under Mark Carney, is doubling down on gas, on pipelines from Alberta to our province — and giving an industry that’s going to make $90 billion in wartime profits this year, the oil and gas industry in Canada, a gift of another $50 billion plus pipeline from the oil sands to our coast. And we’re going to pay for at least 90 per cent of it.
So Canadians are starting to go, like, I know we were scared of Trump last year during the elections, and I know Carney is a smart guy and he seems like a good kind of person to deal with all that Trump stuff. But did we vote for this? Did we vote for doubling down on oil and gas in a time when the climate is coming apart? Did we vote for giving the billionaire class and the wealthiest industry in our country tens of billions of dollars of our taxpayer money? I don’t think we did.
And so this is what you’re starting to see in the polls — that progressive wing of the Liberal Party starting to peel off and come back to us at the NDP, because we’re actually saying we need to tax wealth in this country. We need billionaires to pay their share. We need industries like oil and gas — actually, we need a government with the courage to go and get some of that $90 billion in wartime profit and plow it into things that would actually make people’s daily lives easier and better, like solutions to the housing crisis, solutions to the cost of food, and things like actually fixing our healthcare system rather than buying submarines and pipelines.
So I think there’s choices in politics. And I think that this might be the beginning of buyer’s remorse for people who voted for Carney out of fear of Trump and are now starting to see they’re maybe getting something a little different than what they thought.
Ryan: Avi, I understand what you’re saying about choosing apples and oranges when it comes to polls like this, because there’s so many things that are on our plate that we have to deal with all at once. But when it comes to finding power sources, what’s your solution? Because when you look at the building of AI and the amount of natural resources that could possibly suck — and we don’t want to get behind the eight ball with AI when other countries are building like crazy, including Scandinavian countries like Finland, for example. What’s your solution for something other than oil?
Avi Lewis: Well, first of all, this is another one where we tend to think of it in binary terms. And the truth is that what the world is going through is an energy transition. The fact that 99 per cent of new electricity generation on planet Earth last year was met with renewables, solar and wind, tells us that countries from China and elsewhere in Asia, to Europe in a big way, to basically everyone but Canada and the United States, is starting to make the transition.
Of course it will be a transition. I would like to see it a faster transition. Other people want to take it more slowly. But it’s not either oil or solar tomorrow. And this is what we always get as soon as we start talking about renewables, which the world is moving to in a big, big way. Everybody’s like, you’re shutting down the oil sands tomorrow. We never say that. Oil and gas workers have kept the lights on in our country for more than 100 years, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.
But the truth is that these are low-tech sources of energy where the inputs are free forever. And that is why we have an oil lobby in Canada that’s extremely powerful. You see the oil industry talking points in the MOU between Ottawa and Daniel Smith. You see the oil industry talking points — their fingerprints are all over our energy policy. And we’re buying them another — remember, we just finished building the TMX pipeline less than two years ago. And now we’re buying them another one. It’s like, this is bonkers, guys. Come on. This is the richest industry we’ve got. They could pay for their own infrastructure.
And I would like to see, if the government’s going to be subsidizing industries, to subsidize those industries of the future and not of the 19th century. And the reason that we don’t have a massive pressure on the government for solar and wind is because they’re never going to make as much money as oil, because the inputs are free forever. You don’t have to dig up a barrel of sunlight, burn it, and then go dig up another barrel of sunlight. Sun’s free forever. Wind’s free forever. We just don’t have the money-making potential in renewable energy. And that’s why we don’t hear about them every single day from a powerful lobby group and all of its different mouthpieces.
But that should be a clue to us that it is a much more affordable, safe — and obviously with the climate breaking down, as we see all around us in a coastal province like ours and in wildfire season, we’ve got to do something. And we’ve got to get started. And I think that the governments are captured by this very powerful and wealthy industry. And I think Canadians didn’t expect that they were going to get an oil industry dominance from Mark Carney, because he was supposed to be a climate guy.
Ryan: Yeah, that, again, may be a bit of a surprise for some voters. And one in six people who voted Liberal in the past federal election told pollsters in this latest poll that they would now support the NDP. Also, the number of people identifying climate change as their top issue has grown in the last few months as well, according to these polls. And that’s why we’re talking to the federal NDP leader, Avi Lewis. But we’re right out of time. Thank you so much for joining us and weighing in. I hope we can talk more about it later.
Avi Lewis: Love to talk to you guys. Thanks, and have a beautiful day.
Segment ends with station traffic chatter, not transcribed.