My testimony to House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research on “Moonshot Programs”

[On November 21, 2002, I was invited to be a witness before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, as part of their study of “International Moonshot Programs.” My appearance, along with two other witnesses – former Governor General David Johnson and former president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Alan Bernstein – can be viewed here. The text of my testimony follows below.]

Thank you very much, Chair Duncan, for this invitation.

I am joining you from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver.

It’s an honour to be in such distinguished company today. In truth, I’m not entirely certain why you invited me. I am not a scientist or engineer, although I am indeed interested in the speedy mass deployment of research and technology.

I am a public policy researcher and writer. I was, for 22 years, the founding BC director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

More recently, I am the author of a 2020 book I believe some of you are familiar with entitled A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. And I believe it is the ideas in that book which have prompted this invitation to appear before you today.    

Because, when it comes to the climate crisis, well, to borrow an apt phrase, “Houston, we have a problem.”

I am not the first person to equate the urgent need for dramatic action on the climate emergency with the moonshot. David Suzuki has frequently done so. And just last week, a Guardian editorial directed towards world leaders gathered at the COP meetings in Egypt, which ran in 30 media organizations across 20 countries, stated the following:

Time is running out. Rather than getting out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, many wealthy nations are reinvesting in oil and gas, failing to cut emissions fast enough and haggling over the aid they are prepared to send to poor countries. All this while the planet hurtles towards the point of no return — where climate chaos becomes irreversible…

Solving the crisis is the moonshot of our times. Getting to the moon succeeded within a decade because huge resources were devoted to it. A similar commitment is needed now.

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Let me speak specifically to the Canadian context: as a country, for the last 20 years, despite all our climate pledges and commitments, the best we have managed to do is plateau our emissions at a historic high. We have failed to actually “bend the curve.” (The last year for which we have GHG data is 2020, and we did see a notable decline that year, but recall that this was the year of lockdown, with so much travel and economic activity suspended. So, most analysts predict we will see an increase again when the 2021 data comes available.)

The federal government is now taking climate action, but that action is nowhere close to the speed and scale the crisis demands. I think we will, in the coming years, see a slow bending of the curve on our carbon pollution, but not nearly at the pitch and pace the science demands. The federal government’s climate policies will be modestly successful, but not moonshot successful.

There is no comfort in that. As the great climate writer and warrior Bill McKibben has said, “To win slowly on climate, is to lose.”

So, why have we made so little progress on this task?

Among the key reasons, I contend, is that, if you survey our federal and provincial climate policies to date, what they almost all have in common is that they are voluntary. We remain stuck trying to incentivize our way to victory. We encourage change, we offer price signals, rebates, tax cuts and credits. But we do not require change, and we are not driving change through direct government investments.

The government’s flagship climate policy remains the escalating carbon price, which it hopes will cajole private investment in the right direction. To be clear, I support carbon pricing. But as a focal point, it is a strategy that will see us condemn our children and grandchildren to lives of profound disruption and catastrophe. This is no way to prosecute a battle for our lives.

My book seeks to excavate an historic story from another time we faced a civilizational threat – the transformation of Canadian society and the wholescale retooling of our economy in order to prosecute the Second World War. And I want to share some of the lessons of that precursor moonshot with you.

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I am invariably asked in interviews and talks, “How do you know when a government gets the emergency?”

Reflecting on our wartime experience, and now also our pandemic experience, I have distilled my answer into what I call the six markers of emergency. These markers indicate when you know that a government has shifted into genuine emergency mode. They are:

1)    It spends what it takes to win;

2)    It creates new economic institutions to get the job done;

3)    It shifts from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures;

4)    It tells the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it;

5)    It commits to leave no one behind; and

6)    It centres Indigenous leadership, rights and title, as this too, in our context, is vital to success.

During the Second World War, the Canadian government hit the first five markers, big time. Likewise, during the first year of pandemic emergency response, I would say our government, for the most part, passed the first four markers.

But with respect to the climate emergency – so far at least – our governments are failing on all six counts.

What did we do in WWII?

Consider this: At the outset of the Second World War, Canada had virtually no military production to speak of. Yet during the war, the Canadian economy and its labour force pumped out a volume of military equipment that is simply mind-blowing. During those six years, Canada – with a population less than 1/3 what it is today – produced:

• 800,000 military vehicles, more than German, Italy and Japan combined;

• 16,000 military aircraft, ultimately building the 4th largest air force in the world at the time;

• Here in my province, where we struggle to build a single BC Ferry anymore, we produced about 350 ships, again, from a base of virtually basically nothing. Naval architects had to be imported from the US and UK. An entire workforce needed to be recruited and trained up. 

From a population of about 11 million Canadians, over one million enlisted, and over one million were directly employed in military production.

Much of this transformation occurred under the leadership of C.D. Howe, the most powerful minister in Mackenzie King’s wartime government.

Howe was an engineer turned politician, and he’d made a lot of money in the private sector prior to running for office. Howe became seized with this task. I describe him as an engineer in a hurry.

Remarkably, under Howe’s leadership, the Canadian government established 28 crown corporations to meet the supply and munitions requirements of the war effort.

Howe’s department also undertook detailed economic planning, and carefully coordinated supply chains to prioritize wartime production needs.

But in response to the climate emergency, we have seen nothing of this sort.

If our government really saw the climate emergency as an emergency, it would, like C.D. Howe did, quickly conduct an inventory of our conversion needs to determine how many heat pumps, solar arrays, wind farms, electric buses, etc. we will need to electrify virtually everything and end our reliance on fossil fuels. Then, it would establish a new generation of public corporations to ensure those items are manufactured and deployed at the requisite scale.

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I welcome any questions. Happy to elaborate on any of these emergency markers with you. Thank you.