OTTAWA—Not even a global pandemic can dispel the discord over climate change and energy in this country.

It might actually make it more pronounced.

As the federal government considers extra relief amidst the COVID-19 crisis for Canada's beleaguered oil and gas sector, industry boosters and climate activists are offering divergent views for what should happen next. One wants a lifeline to survive the devastation. The other wants to build a path through it to a cleaner future, without dependence on oil and its heavy greenhouse gas emissions.

“The climate crisis is a larger public health threat than COVID-19,” said Elizabeth May, parliamentary leader of the Green Party of Canada.

“We can’t allow a slower-moving but more dangerous threat to be lost in the shuffle of an immediate threat,” she said.

“At its worst, COVID-19 could cause tens of millions of deaths around the world. At its worst, the climate emergency could end human civilization.”

But the immediate threat of the pandemic is wreaking havoc on the global economy, sinking demand for oil at a time when Russia and Saudi Arabia — two of the world’s three biggest oil producers — are slashing prices and cranking up exports. For Canada’s oil sector, already hit by a prolonged slump in recent years, the situation is “critical,” said Shannon Stubbs, a Conservative MP from Alberta who is the party’s energy critic in the House of Commons.

The price of a barrel of oil in Canada dropped to its lowest point since 2008 last week, making it more expensive to ship than to buy, Bloomberg reported. Large, Calgary-based companies like Cenovus Energy are slashing spending by more than 30 per cent in the face of the downturn.

Taken together, Stubbs said there is an urgent need for federal relief as her party calls for reforms to invigorate development in Canada’s oil and gas sector.

“We’re on the edge of it becoming overdue,” Stubbs said.

The Liberals, meanwhile, were elected to a minority government while promising stronger action to fight climate change. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to surpass Canada’s 2030 target for greenhouse gas emissions, and his government is developing plans to hit net-zero emissions within the next 30 years.

But in the short term, both Trudeau and Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau have confirmed their government is working on relief measures for Canada’s energy sector, extra help on top of the unprecedented expansion of government-backed loans and tens of billions in subsidies and tax deferrals for businesses struck hard by the pandemic’s economic impact.

“We recognize there are certain industries that have been extremely hard-hit by both the drop in oil prices and the COVID-19 challenge,” Trudeau told reporters outside Rideau Cottage on Monday, pointing to airlines, oil and gas and tourism.

“There are significant areas where we are going to have to do more, and as I’ve said from the very beginning, we will be doing more,” he said.

Morneau’s office directed the Star to the finance minister’s comments on March 27. When asked for details about relief for the energy sector, Morneau said at the time that Ottawa is looking at providing “credit that will be guaranteed by the federal government to a certain extent, to allow (energy companies) to bridge through a difficult time.”

This prospect of relief is just one aspect of the ongoing argument over climate change and energy in Canadian politics that is rumbling on through the pandemic. With hundreds of thousands of people claiming employment insurance and losing work because of health measures to prevent the spread of the virus, groups like the Business Council of Alberta and Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation are urging Ottawa to cancel the increase of the federal carbon price scheduled for April 1.

Others, including the Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC), argue the crisis hitting the oil and gas sector shows the need for Ottawa to scrap its tanker ban on the north coast of British Columbia and redo its recent overhaul of the way major projects are assessed for approval.

“The longer-term issues are real needs to make sure that, when things turn around, we have the right policy in place to make sure that energy will … be a very important factor in the recovery of the Canadian economy,” said PSAC president Gary Mar.

On the other side of the divide, environmental groups and climate activists decry the prospect that the economic slump will prompt further government support of a sector that is a massive source of emissions that cause climate change.

“What we don’t want to see is this moment of crisis being used to allow oil and gas companies to receive additional gifts to what’s already a very subsidized industry in Canada,” said Julia Levin, climate and energy program manager with the advocacy group Environmental Defence.

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“Now is not the time to roll back,” she said.

Along with the Greens and environmental groups, the NDP has called for any aid to the energy sector to be focused on helping workers. Richard Cannings, a New Democrat MP from British Columbia, said his party would support government-backed loans to the companies in the sector if it helped protect jobs during the crisis.

“We need to preserve jobs right now in the short term, and if that means backstopping loans to oil and gas companies, fine,” Cannings said.

May, the Greens’ parliamentary leader, said it is important to protect workers, but that federal money should be directed to initiatives that would employ energy sector labour to clean up oilsands projects and reclaim defunct wells across Alberta.

May said she is also concerned the government’s COVID-19 emergency legislation, which was enacted March 25 when Parliament was recalled last week, grants the Liberal minority the power to use Crown lending agencies to free up unlimited loans to the oil and gas sector.

“We’re very, very watchful to make sure that money spent in this time of COVID-19 emergency, doesn’t fall into that category of … using an emergency that’s unrelated to expand the grip of transnationals and fossil fuels,” she said.

The Conservatives argue expansion is precisely what needs to happen. Stubbs said the crisis shows the need for Canada to build more pipelines so it can rely exclusively on its own oil and gas. The government should also try to revive the massive Teck Frontier oilsands project, which was abandoned by the company in February, and expedite regulatory assessments of other proposed resource projects, she said.

She called on the Liberals to create tax credits for companies that clean up defunct oil wells and repeated the Conservatives’ long-standing call to scrap the federal carbon price.

“We absolutely should ensure the short term survival and long-term flourishing of Canada’s energy industry,” Stubbs said.

For Courtney Howard, an emergency room doctor in Yellowknife, climate change is an approaching crisis in itself that should also be seen as a danger to human health.

If COVID-19 and the economic crisis are like a critically ill patient who needs immediate attention, then Ottawa can’t forget about the less urgently sick patient that can be likened to climate change, she said.

“The health of a child born today will be impacted by climate change at every stage of their life,” said Howard.

“We never would have asked for this, but if we have all this public money and we’re going to spend it, let’s spend it on health.”

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