O’Toole Embraces UNFCCC Paris Agreement

O’Toole continues to try and obscure his position on this issue by saying that he will be achieving the targets by “partnering with the provinces, not an ‘Ottawa knows best approach’ as we’ve seen with the carbon tax,” but that doesn’t change the fact he wants to push to reduce Canada’s emissions by 30% which would do irreparable harm to the oil and gas industry. 

There is a major difference between O’Toole’s “ho hum” attitude towards meeting the Paris Agreement targets during the campaign and now. He has not been consistent, and was clearly trying to seem like he was a secret anti-Paris Agreement candidate but in reality was the complete reverse. 

O’Toole really doesn’t seem to understand the Conservative Party base when he said the following during the CBC interview.

“We weren’t solid enough on this issue in the last few years, and when we said to people we were against the carbon tax because it was unfair, it was uncompetitive – we had to say what we were for, and that’s what I will do.”

Either O’Toole genuinely does not know the CPC membership wants out of the Paris Agreement, or he just doesn’t care what they want and would rather court the mythical gold mine of centre-left voters who want the Liberal Party but with blander policies. 

The Sloan leadership campaign proved there was a large portion of CPC members staunchly against not just the Paris Agreement, but all forms of strict environmental regulation and organization funding, as they managed to rack up 16% of the leadership vote, despite mainstream media’s negligence in covering Sloan’s candidacy. 

Especially with the growing momentum of a Western separatist movement this is not the time to fool around with embracing left wing climate change ideology when that very same thing is in large part why so many in provinces like Alberta want out of Canada.

O’Toole’s isn’t making the CPC a bigger tent by reaching out to urban voters and convincing them the merits of conservatism, he is kicking out the stalwart anti-climate alarmist base and hoping they still cast ballots for him anyways.

This policy statement on the Paris Agreement by O’Toole is an indicator that he is shifting away from the founding principles of the Conservative Party.