Mimics: Canada's Conservatives Using The Same Climate Lies And Bullshit As Their US Counterparts
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Year after year, poll after poll has consistently shown a majority of Canadians believe in human-caused climate change. But across the country, Conservative politicians are fomenting weariness and skepticism about climate science to appeal to their bases and undermine their opponents — and it appears to be working. The BC Conservative party, which won 44 seats in the recent provincial election, narrowly losing to the embattled NDP, is led by John Rustad — a man who has called global warming due to carbon emissions “a lie” and said climate action was part of an agenda to reduce the world’s population.
During the election campaign, Rustad acknowledged climate change was “real” but stressed that in his view it was “not a crisis”. His party, which had not held a single seat since 1979, shot from 1.9 per cent of the popular vote in 2020 to 43.3 per cent in 2024, cannibalizing support from the imploded BC United party and winning over scores of voters furious with the status quo. Rustad’s strong showing came just over a year after a national poll conducted in July 2023, in the midst of Canada’s worst wildfire season on record. It found 58 per cent of British Columbians were convinced human activity was responsible for climate change — a lower share than residents of Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic region.
What’s more, the same poll found the number of Canadians who believed humans were responsible for climate change declined by nine percentage points from the previous year. There is a clear political split on views regarding climate change, with Conservative voters less likely to believe in climate change than NDP or Liberal voters. And as climate change falls out of favour, even progressive politicians appear willing to compromise on their values — as the federal NDP party did in September when they took up Pierre Poilievre’s refrain to axe the carbon tax. In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has repeated misinformation, attributing wildfires to arsonists rather than climate change — a theory her own fire service has refuted, saying “It’s not an emerging trend that we’re concerned about right now.”
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Rustad, speaking at a May 2023 conference held “in recognition of the 2022 Freedom Convoy,” stoked this underlying fear. Referring to a food manufacturing plant “built in Ontario, I think in the Ottawa area,” he suggested Canadians would be forced to eat bugs in the name of climate change. While the plant is real, there’s no evidence it’s part of a nefarious plot to insinuate insects into the Canadian diet, as its main customers are pets. That didn’t stop Rustad. “It will destroy our quality of life …” he said, attempting to draw a vague but alarming connection between bug diets and public transit and walkable neighbourhoods. “Limiting our ability to move around in the name of climate change just makes us vulnerable to more government control. It takes away our freedoms.”
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https://thenarwhal.ca/canada-policitians-climate-misinformation/
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