Good morning. The environment has taken a back seat to trade in the federal election campaign. More on what was missed below, along with technology touched by tariffs and pork production hardships.

• More than 200 people have been held in “secret” at Detroit facilities near the Canadian border, a U.S. congresswoman alleges
• Poilievre’s Nova Scotia campaign stop highlights the growing rift between federal Conservatives and provincial PCs
• A Quebec Court says a university tuition hike for out-of-province students meant to reduce the number of English speakers is unreasonable

Good morning. I’m Justine Hunter, a political reporter based out of Victoria.

At the start of this election campaign, I visited the seaside community of Sidney, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, to get a taste of what voters are thinking in Canada’s most eco-minded riding, Saanich-Gulf Islands.

It is the Green Party’s stronghold, where Elizabeth May has won her seat in the past four federal elections. But in this campaign, environment and climate change are barely mentioned, and her party has put up lawn signs urging voters to vote Green for better health care.

When I spoke to voters in Sidney about their election issues, they were focused on the Canada-U.S. trade war – not climate action.

Earlier this week, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party delivered its election platform. The 30-page document does mention climate action, but there wasn’t a lot of detail. The Conservative climate-action plan is to change investment tax credits to reward clean Canadian manufacturing and production to help lower emissions. It’s all carrot, no stick.

And the party lists as “climate action” a plan to build more liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, which it says will replace more carbon-intensive fossil fuels in other countries. But turning natural gas to liquid is a greenhouse gas-intensive process.

A single plant in B.C., LNG Canada, will account for almost 9 per cent of B.C.’s total allowable emissions in the year 2030, according to government calculations.

The Conservatives made no attempt to calculate the impact of their proposed policies on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, but it’s a fair bet that their climate-action plan would be swamped by higher emissions if they implement the rest of their platform.

That calls for fast-tracking construction of pipelines and other major energy infrastructure, scrapping the emissions cap on oil and gas production, and doubling oil production in Newfoundland. The Conservatives would also repeal the entire carbon-pricing system, approve oil exports from Canada’s Arctic ports, and green-light new LNG projects in British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland.

Caroline Brouillette, executive director of the Climate Action Network, told me the Conservatives included pretty much everything the oil and gas lobby has been asking for in this campaign.

But she wasn’t excited about the alternative offered by the other party that is in contention to form the next government: The Liberal plan under Mark Carney does have some elements of a climate-action plan, she said, but the Liberals also want to expand Canada’s oil and gas sector.

Just ahead of the election campaign, Carney reduced the consumer carbon price to zero and pledged to eliminate it entirely in the next Parliament. But in their platform, the Liberals say they will reduce GHG emissions by building a net-zero electricity grid by 2035, and by cutting emissions from oil and gas to meet a target of net-zero by 2050.

Like the Conservatives, the Liberals have provided no costing of their climate measures to meet Canada’s GHG reduction targets. In recent years, I’ve written extensively about the financial cost of climate change.

Canada has experienced billions of dollars in damages in recent years because of climate disasters – floods and wildfires, droughts and deadly heat waves − and the costs are rising.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats haven’t altered the reality of climate change.

Platforms from the NDP, the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois have offered more on climate issues than the two main parties.

The NDP would eliminate public subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas companies, using the savings to pay for retrofitting homes with energy-saving upgrades.

The Greens would stop all new fossil-fuel projects and build a “modern” power grid across Canada, tapping into water, solar and wind power to transition Canada to using 100-per-cent clean energy.

The Bloc is advocating for investment in green energy as a key part of its platform and a green-equalization program to reward those provinces that fight climate change.

The pollsters at the Angus Reid Institute have an explanation for why the main leaders are not spending much campaign time on this issue: Few voters are paying attention. In December of 2019, 42 per cent of Canadians identified the environment as a top issue facing the country.

That concern has steadily waned since the fall of 2021. As of this month, Angus Reid found that just 15 per cent of Canadian voters identify the environment as a top issue.

At a recent media briefing with emergency management officials in Victoria, we learned that B.C. is bracing once again for a potentially devastating year ahead with floods and wildfires. The climate may not be on the next prime minister’s radar right now, but the challenges remain, smoldering like B.C.’s “zombie fires” that have been burning all winter.

More from the election campaign: