Protesters outside of Stornoway, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition.
Protesters outside of Stornoway, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition. Credit: Greenpeace Credit: Greenpeace

In the early morning hours of November 21, 2024, a dozen Greenpeace activists staged a peaceful sit-in on the driveway of Stornoway – the official residence of opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre.

Keith Stewart, Senior Energy Strategist at Greenpeace Canada and Trevor Cluthé, Greenpeace lead Toronto Local Volunteer Group, chained themselves to a replica oil pumpjack that was surrounded by a symbolic burned forest created using charcoal from the 2021 wildfire that destroyed the town of Lytton, BC.

The oil pumpjack also had a sign attached to it that read, “Poilievre: Protecting polluters. BETRAYING people!” 

Because Stewart and Cluthé refused to unchain themselves, they were charged with mischief, intimidation and resisting arrest. Those charges were later downgraded to mischief and obstruction with a court date yet to be set for the new year.

In an interview with rabble.ca, Stewart stated, “We [Greenpeace] don’t normally target leaders of the opposition, usually you’re going after government. But in this case, we thought it was really important to call out Pierre Poilievre because he’s really, really been getting a bit of a free ride in the press.”

Stewart is referring to the fact that Poilievre is continuously attacking the Trudeau government without being held accountable. Poilievre disseminates simplistic slogans while avoiding the tough questions that would press him to explain how he would implement these vague and baseless decisions and inferred plans.

The Greenpeace activists participating in the peaceful sit-in wanted Poilievre to have to actually address climate change once and for all.

“He said a lot about what he would do about climate change, but not really a lot about climate change itself,” Stewart stated.

Stewart points out that the federal Conservatives have promised to dismantle every significant piece of our national climate action plan and no one has called him out on that. 

“Poilievre claims to be ‘for the people,’ but he’s actually for the polluters, big oil, the biggest polluters in the country,” said Stewart.

Poilievre has promised big oil that he will fulfill their wish lists and policy asks including letting them off the hook for the costs associated with remedying their pollution of the environment. That means Canadians will be on the hook for those pollution cleanup costs. 

Poilievre claims that his climate plan will focus on technology rather than taxes, yet he has not explained how that would be executed.

He wants to cancel the consumer carbon tax and associated rebates as well as new clean fuel regulations.

Poilievre has said that he would not implement the proposed oil and gas pollution cap and would approve new nuclear projects.

Perhaps most egregiously, Poilievre would approve liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to Asian countries despite knowing that methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2) at warming the climate over a 20-year period.

Poilievre has also said he won’t pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, but his climate action plan will completely miss Canada’s current 2030 climate target.

“His plan is ‘burn, baby, burn.’ It’s expanding fossil fuels. We’re seeing this a lot coming out of the fossil fuel industry where they say the solution to a problem caused by the burning of fossil fuels is in fact burn more fossil fuels,” maintains Stewart.

He’s referring to claims by various players that LNG will reduce coal emissions in other countries. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case because often LNG is actually displacing new renewables.

LNG, composed of mostly methane with small amounts of ethane, propane, butane, and nitrogen, is a fossil fuel and recent research shows that on a full lifecycle basis it is comparable to coal.

Stewart wants to direct attention to the fact that $20 billion has been invested in the LNG Canada project. Had those funds been invested in wind, solar or free heat pumps for all Canadians, then consumers would be benefitting from more affordable energy bills while helping to fight climate change.

Poilievre doesn’t want to talk about investing in renewables because he supports big oil. In fact, in October 2024, Greenpeace revealed that Poilievre organized a fundraiser where Big Oil’s top lobbyists paid $1,650-a-plate for a private meeting with him. This was after declaring in a National Post op-ed (May 2024) that corporate Canada should fire their lobbyists because he will only listen to the people.

Now that renewable energy is a cheaper choice for producing electricity than fossil fuels, conservative provincial governments are joining the attack on environmentally friendly renewables. 

Alberta’s United Conservative government placed a seven-month moratorium (2023) on all renewable development that will have lasting impacts. Meanwhile, Ontario’s Conservative government passed Bill 165: Keeping Energy Costs Down Act (2024), despite the fact that the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) said no to Enbridge’s plan to pass an annual cost of $250 million for installing gas piping to new homes and businesses onto existing customers.

While the OEB cited more homes being fitted and retrofitted with less expensive, cleaner heat pumps and induction stoves, the Ford government increased natural gas costs for consumers while accelerating the climate crisis and impeding Ontario’s transition to a green economy.

Conservative governments are making these authoritarian policies because increasingly, oil and gas companies are turning to them to protect their market share from renewables and to defend the industry from its critics, in this case, Greenpeace.

Stewart wants folks to remember that the oil under the ground belongs to Canadians – not the oil companies. Depending on the size of their taxable capital, oil companies pay between nine and 15 per cent in corporate taxes. That’s extremely low compared with the United States, 25 per cent, and Norway, 78 per cent.

In 2022, the oil and gas sector generated $269.9 billion in revenue. It paid $45 billion in taxes to the Canadian government and still made record profits of over $63 billion. 

Yet, federal and provincial governments use taxpayer dollars to provide financial supports or tax breaks to fossil fuel companies. These subsidies cost Canadian taxpayers at least $6.03 billion, or roughly $214 per taxpayer every year.

“We should be thinking about how much are we getting from that oil coming out of the ground? And, if we actually got a fair share of that resource, it could be used to fund these alternatives and it could be used to support workers in communities currently dependent on oil and gas to transition to be part of the clean energy economy while protecting us all from climate change,” Stewart said.

Greenpeace is pushing for oil companies to pay excess profit taxes that could be used to create a climate recovery fund similar to the one Vermont state established. 

Essentially, oil and gas companies pay into the climate recovery fund which is used to help communities experiencing climate catastrophes including wildfires, floods and heat waves.

As the Conservative Party of Canada seeks to trigger a federal election, Greenpeace activists want Canadians to recognize Poilievre’s anti-climate agenda places corporations and profits ahead of people and their collective future.

“Poilievre’s promises to give free passes to big oil and gas companies is a threat to our communities and climate, and a betrayal of regular Canadians. If Poilievre really cared about people and fairness, he would not abandon communities to deal with climate impacts on their own so that his friends in the oil industry can make a few more years of excess profits,” maintains Stewart.Greenpeace Canada is urging everyone who cares about the climate, nature, and the future of our communities to demand that Poilievre and all political parties protect people not polluters in the next election.

Doreen Nicoll

Doreen Nicoll is weary of the perpetual misinformation and skewed facts that continue to concentrate wealth, power and decision making in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. As a freelance...