B.C. opposition parties heat up climate debate with attacks on NDP's plans

Climate change has become a hot-button political issue in British Columbia with opposition parties launching election-style attacks on the New Democrat government's clean climate policies.

B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad told a news conference at the Legislature that the NDP's climate policies are taxing people into poverty and they don't do anything "to change the weather.''

He says the Conservatives, if elected next year, will eliminate the province's carbon tax, roll back climate-friendly building codes and consider nuclear power as an energy option.

Rustad's comments come a day after Opposition B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon called the NDP's CleanBC climate plan destructive and promised to replace it with measures that fight climate change without hurting taxpayers.

Falcon says B.C. United will ramp up liquefied natural gas export plant production in B.C. in an effort to replace reliance on coal abroad and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

CleanBC is the NDP government's plan to lower harmful emissions by 40 per cent by 2030.

B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman pushed back at opposition parties.

"I don't know what's worse, John Rustad's continuous denial that human activity causes climate change or Kevin Falcon's desperate attempt to rip up B.C.'s climate plan to attract voters back from the B.C. Conservatives," said Heyman.

Rustad, a former cabinet minister, was ousted from the caucus of the B.C. Liberals, now B.C. United, in August 2022 after he boosted a social media post casting doubt on climate change science and urging people to "celebrate CO2."

In posts on both Facebook and Twitter, Rustad shared a graphic and post arguing that people had been "hoodwinked" by climate change science and they should be glad CO2 is being emitted into the atmosphere.

A statement issued Wednesday by the B.C. Conservatives did not deny climate change.

"Our changing climate is real, and man is impacting our climate" said Rustad in a statement about the party's climate policy.

The statement then said British Columbians are not facing an existential threat from the changing climate and climate change is not a crisis.

Joseph Shea, associate professor with the department of geography at the University of Northern British Columbia,  said Rustad and his party's stance on climate change felt like "populist rhetoric."

"To say it's not a crisis really ignores the long-term cost of climate change," Shea said. 

"I think that they are adopting a lot of language that we see in other places, like the U.S., and it's unfortunate because it's very well-established science."