The Importance of Loyalty Programs in US Retail

Tony Mazzocchi, a well-known American labor and environmental activist, is largely credited for coining the term "just transition" in the early 1990s. He and his followers regarded the concept as a way to resolve tensions and form coalitions between the labor and environmental groups.The underlying idea was to create and implement large-scale public programs—what Mazzocchi famously referred to as a "Superfund for Workers"—to ameliorate the inequitable consequences on livelihoods induced by environmentally driven changes in energy systems and resource use. According to what he said then: "we need to provide workers with a guarantee that they will not have to pay for clean air and water with their jobs, their living standards or their future.The Trudeau government has since used this rhetoric to describe its own ambitious emission-reduction goals, including the upcoming implementation of an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. It is basic knowledge that such governmental acts will be costly, and their consequences will be concentrated in specific persons and regions.According to the government's briefing materials, "the transition to a low-carbon economy will have an uneven impact across sectors, occupations, and regions, and create significant labour market disruptions." There has been a lot of focus on some numbers in the study, including the potential job threat of "large-scale transformations" for approximately 13.5% of Canadian workers, including more than 200,000 in the energy sector.

Even if Ottawa's just transition plan to lessen 

relocation implications for a portion of these affected workers is ultimately successful, the ramifications might be considerable. Consider that Alberta's oil and gas sector employs nearly one-tenth of the province's workforce.These statistics significantly underestimate the oil sector's significance in the Canadian political economy over the last two decades. I've previously written for The Hub about "jobs polarization" in today's economy. The core notion is that the transition from a goods-producing to a service-based economy has resulted in a labor market bifurcation, with an increasing proportion of jobs concentrated in high- and low-skilled occupations. It has been known as the "hourglass economy."Although Canada is not immune to these tendencies, its labor market structure has remained more equitable than other peer countries. Labour economists David Green and Benjamin Sand attribute it in large part to the energy sector's continuous labour demand over the last two decades. According to their findings, throughout this period of job polarization in advanced countries, Canada's resource-based sectors have served as a "employment alternative to low-paying services jobs."This result is consistent with the work of economist Kevin Milligan, who has suggested that resource-based jobs have supported Canada's middle class in the 2000s. His words were as follows: "The resource sector has contributed substantially to the good jobs that underpin middle-class resilience."

Another way to put it is that, during a period 

of global job polarization, Canada's natural resources sectors, particularly its oil and gas sector, have counteracted this trend, fortified the country's middle class, including those without post-secondary credentials, and thus had a powerful anti-inequality effect on Canada's labour market.Throwing these workers into disarray would have far-reaching political and social effects, in addition to the economic ones of job and income loss. Remember that the tale of modern populism in the Western world is mostly the political expression of those who formerly aspired to a middle-class life but have instead slid down the skills ladder into lower-paying jobs or unemployment. If one considers the just transition argument through this lens, policy-based risks to resource-based jobs may speed the demise of middle-class jobs in Canada, increase inequality in our society, and eventually lead to a rise in political and social instability.This does not imply that Canadian governments should forsake their climate commitments. However, it serves as a warning that they must exercise caution while weighing the benefits and costs of various policy acts, if only because doing so will definitely jeopardize the electoral viability of their own programs. It's difficult to see how a rigorous climate policy that has resulted in significant job losses and increased inequality could be sustained.

With this in mind, the Trudeau administration 

would be well to reconsider how it thinks and communicates about the application of its climate targets to resource-based sectors, as outlined in a recent letter from Premier Smith to the Prime Minister. The letter proposes some sensible suggestions for encouraging investment in reducing the carbon intensity of oil and gas production, as well as new technologies including Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage, hydrogen, geothermal, and nuclear.However, its main point is more fundamental: the ultimate goal of federal policy should not be to manage the decline of oil and gas employment through regulations, taxes, and transfer payments, but rather to support long-term, high-paying job opportunities through a combination of emission-reducing technologies and low-emitting energy exports.To put it another way, instead of a just transition plan, we need a low-carbon export strategy that improves domestic conditions for the development and adoption of low-emission technologies while also shaping the global trading and reporting regime for emissions accounting between importing and exporting jurisdictions.Such an agenda may not satisfy the most ardent climate activists, but it would reflect a proper notion of justice in terms of ensuring that the costs and effects of climate policy do not disproportionately affect resource-based workers and communities. That is the foundation of a just and long-term climate change strategy for Canada.