Conservative politicians across Canada spent the final weeks of 2023 escalating their war on the environment. They focused most of their artillery on climate—a striking denouement to the worst year of extreme weather in human history.
On November 22, with his province still recovering from a summer of record drought and wildfire, British Columbia Conservative leader John Rustad held a press conference to announce that “British Columbians are not facing an existential threat from the changing climate. It isn’t a crisis.” In the following weeks, the Conservative premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan flew to COP28 in Dubai so they could obstruct international climate negotiations in person. Then, on December 6, national Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre thrust his “Axe the tax” campaign into overdrive, declaring that his party would shut down the government’s legislative agenda for the rest of the year unless prime minister Justin Trudeau repealed the carbon levy. (The attempt fizzled after one all-night filibuster session.)
