It’s been nearly two years since the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canada’s major oilsands companies, was created with the express purpose of achieving “net zero by 2050.” At least, that’s what it keeps saying its purpose is. With each passing day, it gets harder to avoid the conclusion that the real objective is to buy time with advertising campaigns and other public expressions of its good intentions until the next federal election. If that yields a new Conservative government that can relieve the industry of its responsibilities to the environment, the millions fossil fuel firms have spent on advertising and government relations consultants will yield billions in savings on the emissions they won’t have to reduce — or pay for.

That’s the cynical take, anyway. The less cynical one is that the companies want to proceed with these projects but are unwilling to call out the real impediment standing in their way: Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party of Canada. For all of the industry’s talk about “uncertainty” in federal policies around climate change and carbon pricing, the biggest source of uncertainty right now is coming from Poilievre and his promise to “axe the tax.” The threat of a future Poilievre government eliminating the federal carbon tax means oilsands companies can’t bake a rising price on carbon into their economic modelling, which makes emissions reduction efforts........

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