In his first act as premier, Doug Ford axed the tax — the so-called “cap and trade carbon tax.”

The premier didn’t just save us money. He also saved the environment — with a new plan to meet Ontario’s obligations to fight climate change.

Double happiness. Promise made, promise kept.

Now, 18 months later, the premier’s prevaricating has caught up to him. A new report from the auditor general suggests that on environmental matters, the numbers don’t add up unless you double count them.

Double trouble. Problem made, problem persisting.

“The plan double counts some emissions reductions that are targeted by more than one program,” according to the annual audit released Wednesday. “This resulted in an overstatement of total emissions reductions.”

Give Ford’s Tories credit for ambition, innovation and adaptation: They had a stated goal, but when they couldn’t execute it in practice they just made it up on paper.

“Ministry staff internally noted that actions in the plan are not yet sufficient to achieve the 2030 target,” the report notes.

Doubling up closes the gap when you’re caught short. Until you’re caught out, in which case you contract out the numbers to an industry association that tells you what you want to hear.

“In fact, during the plan’s development, ministry staff estimated there would be ‘negligible’ emissions reductions,” it says in another section. “Instead of using the staff analysis, the emissions reductions in the plan are based on a submission to the ministry from … an industry association.”

The government didn’t just double count, miscount and misstate, it tried to misappropriate stateside: 40 per cent of our municipal solid waste is disposed of in the U.S., where it generates greenhouse gas emissions on the American ledger; future plans to divert that waste will indeed reduce emissions, just not in Ontario, yet the government wrongly claimed credit for it.

Perhaps the most brazen overreach is on electric vehicles, which could help reduce emissions from transportation, the biggest source of greenhouse gases. The government kept clinging to ambitious estimates of 1.3 million electric vehicles by 2030 — up from 41,000 today — that were based on generous incentive programs that the Tories cut upon taking office.

In fairness, the Tories previously made a compelling case for ending the subsidies. Fairness demands that they account for the consequences in drastically reduced sales, but they carried on as if the incentive estimates still applied.

This isn’t the first auditor’s report to expose government shell games. But there’s a difference between double counting and duplicity.

There is method to their madness: They had a target, and then reverse-engineered the inputs to make it add up, thus gaming the system.

“The plan states that future innovation will reduce emissions, but no emission-reduction programs have yet been identified,” the audit notes. “The ministry was unable to provide any evidence to support this emission-reduction estimate, indicating that the reduction estimate represents the remaining emissions needed to reach the 2030 target after all other reductions in the plan are counted.”

Conclusion: “Additional, unidentified policies would be needed to fill the gap.”

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Translation: When the Tories couldn’t meet their stated climate obligations, they just plugged the gap with made-up numbers and made-up words (“future innovation”).

This isn’t just smoke and mirrors, or carbon and mirrors. It’s a hall of mirrors built on bluster.

Upon taking power, Ford’s Tories demonized and dismantled Ontario’s cap-and-trade program, the most cost-effective market solution for deterring greenhouse gas emission, pioneered by California Republicans and Quebec conservatives. They conflated it with a carbon tax (similar but different), then wasted $30 million to fight a federal carbon pricing plan that took effect this year.

But they never mapped out what would replace it, which is why they made it up on the back of an envelope. They not only faked the numbers, they mounted a phoney war against the federal carbon levy, prompting a rebuke in the auditor’s report for misleading advertising.

But all of these antics are mere optics. The bigger challenge is that Ontario’s new environmental plan undercuts the pan-Canadian goal of meeting our international obligations, because it does as little as possible.

Under the previous Liberal government, Ontario was punching above its weight within Canada, generating a mere 11 tonnes per person in 2017, versus 64 in Alberta. The plan was to reduce our share of emissions even more, leaving more space for Alberta’s energy-intensive economy in extracting carbon resources.

That would be a form of reasonable accommodation by Ontario, without which Canada could never reach its international obligations. It would also be a gesture of nation-building.

Despite Ford’s latest proclamations about national unity, his government is actively reducing Ontario’s contribution to the climate-change challenge, putting yet more pressure on the Prairie provinces. If he is serious about helping his fellow premiers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the number one thing he could do is do more to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions.

Ontario could restore the ambitious targets it once had for energy conservation. And it could reinstate the creative programs it once had to make those plans a reality.

It’s not that Ford’s Tories don’t know how to count. They’re just better at double-counting — and double talk.

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