In Canada's election campaign, a warming planet sits on the back burner

Nearly halfway through Canada's election campaign, national unity among the most popular parties means distrust of Donald Trump and distaste for a consumer carbon tax.

The economic disruption and sovereignty threats spawned by the U.S. president have transformed a left-for-dead Liberal Party into a dead-centre front-runner and forced the Conservatives to wave the maple leaf in an environment where patriotic gestures are no longer just for people who park heavy equipment in public places.

Mark Carney's Liberals and Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives are also united in their promise not to revive a carbon tax that environmental-minded economists such as Carney once touted as an effective policy tool. 

If you're looking for something more ambitious in the way of climate policy in this election, prepare to be underwhelmed.

Jagmeet Singh's New Democrats promise to keep the carbon tax dead and buried but would maintain the industrial carbon price and emissions cap. The Liberals are vowing to tweak the existing "output-based pricing system," which is the official euphemism for the carbon price. The Conservatives would repeal the federal pricing system but expand credits for clean technology.

The Greens would be much greener, which is what voters expect Greens to do, even if they don't elect many of them.

Given the intense economic uncertainty facing most Canadians right now, the lack of focus on climate policy in this election is understandable, even to environmental activists.

"The truth is that Canadians care about affordability. That's top of mind for sure, but they also care about climate action and they clearly care about protecting the places and the things that they want for their children," said Laura Cameron, the program and strategy director for Manitoba's Climate Action Team.

"Those concerns are still there, even though many households are struggling to pay the bills."

Cameron says Canada should be able to walk the carbon-emissions walk and chew affordability gum at the same time. 

"The government's role is to be looking at solutions that can address both of these issues," she said.

This is not just a federal political phenomenon. Not long after taking office, Manitoba's NDP government rolled out a couple of populist policies that could be described in charitable terms as climate-agnostic.

First, Wab Kinew's government announced a one-year gasoline tax holiday decried by policy nerds as working at cross-purposes with the now-dead federal carbon tax.

Then the Kinew government urged Manitoba Hydro, a nominally independent Crown corporation, to enact a one-year rate freeze that deprived the utility of revenue it needs to repair its crumbling infrastructure. Hydro's latest rate application notes some of that infrastructure has deteriorated so badly, two of its three main transmission lines — bipoles I and II — have permanently lost 20 per cent of their ability to carry electricity.