Author Naomi Klein was at UBC this month to talk about climate change, sustainability and the Leap Manifesto, her latest project that has divided people across the country and especially within the NDP.
The Leap Manifesto outlines steps Canada should take to reach a carbon-free economy by 2050, including a ban on new pipelines and the retraining of workers in carbon-heavy industries like the oil sands.
“At this late hour, with so much to lose and so much to gain, now is not the time for small steps,” Klein told an audience at UBC on April 7. “Now is the time for boldness. Now is the time to leap.”
The document, first released during the 2015 federal election campaign, has attracted criticism for what some consider a hard-line approach to reducing Canada’s dependence on fossil fuels.
The manifesto was a controversial subject at the recent federal NDP convention in Edmonton, with Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley coming out swinging against it. In BC, the leader of the NDP argued it didn’t reflect the values of the province, where much of the economy was built on the extraction of natural resources. The party has now agreed to spend two years studying the document.
The Leap Manifesto’s stance against “new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction,” including oil and gas pipelines, has been a major point of contention.
But over the last several years, UBC has been a leader in research on the environmental implications of pipeline development. Last year, a report from UBC’s Fisheries Economics Research Unit found that a major oil spill in Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet could cost $1.2 billion.
And in 2012, researchers found that a major tanker spill off the coast of northern B.C. could wipe out any economic gains from the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
Supporters of the manifesto insist that if adopted, it would promote sustainability while creating jobs.
“We see this as a jobs strategy and we call for those big investments in what you would traditionally think of as a green job,” Klein told her audience at UBC. “If you invest in transit, efficiency and renewable energy, you create six to eight times more jobs than if you build yet another tar sands pipeline.”
Klein pointed to an Alberta company named Iron & Earth that recently called on the provincial government to help retrain 1,000 oil sands workers to install solar panels.
Aside from a move away from oil and gas, the Leap Manifesto also advocates for a universal program to build energy-efficient homes, an end to trade deals that promote resource extraction, and a high-speed rail network.
To help pay for these projects, the document recommends cancelling fossil-fuel subsidies, increasing resource royalties, and instituting a carbon tax.
The Manifesto is divisive, even within the NDP, and that reflects the level of dependence of the Canadian economy on natural resource exports.
NDP supporters in provinces like Alberta are often unionized workers from the oil and gas sector. Nationally, the country’s exchange rate with the US dollar is very strongly correlated with oil prices.
Few other advanced economies in the world have such high levels of resource dependence, so a managed transition in the structure of the economy is likely to be more palatable than a leap.
By Maura Forrest, 28 April 2016