A conservative approach to climate change: Hand-coding the climate impact of the Conservative Party of Canada's platforms from 2004 to 2021

Abstract

Political party platforms are often used to examine party preferences, including on specific topics like climate change. The growing literature in this field shows that mainstream parties, particularly right-wing parties. are hesitant to strongly embrace climate policies. Canada's Conservative Party is rarely discussed in detail despite being an example of an electorally successful conservative party that has vocal reservations about climate change policies. This paper is a systematic study of the Conservative Party of Canada's electoral platforms since the party's creation in 2003. It applies a 2018 hand-coding method developed by Carter, Ladrech, Little, and Tsagkroni specifically to determine party preferences on climate change. The results show that the Conservative Party of Canada has reacted to climate change is a manner consistent with most other mainstream conservative parties. It included some pro-climate content in each of its seven platforms, but the salience varied greatly by platform. Anti-climate content was more consistent. The party appears willing to change the importance of climate policy content depending on the electoral context. These policies are not part of the party's core values and are only emphasized as needed. Meanwhile, the anti-climate content included policies that are consistently part of Canadian conservative values, including protection for the fossil fuel industries and economic growth. The two most recent platforms contained some the highest levels of pro-climate content, providing some hope that the party is becoming increasingly comfortable with decarbonization policies. KEYWORDS: Climate change, electoral platforms, conservative parties, content analysis