Repeal All Of The Carbon Tax
Newly sworn-in Prime Minister Mark Carney made quite the announcement.
The consumer carbon tax is gone.
Kind of.
Carney signed a directive instructing that the carbon tax be "eliminated" effective April 1st.
For years, the carbon tax has been a major source of frustration for Canadians, driving up costs on everything from groceries to home heating.
Provinces fought it in court.
Families struggled under the financial burden.
Businesses saw their operating costs skyrocket.
And public opposition to the tax became one of the defining political issues of the past decade.
With this announcement, it might seem like the fight is finally over.
But can we actually trust that the carbon tax is truly gone?
There are three big reasons for concern:
*****
First, the Liberals have a long history of saying one thing while doing another.
Justin Trudeau insisted for years that the carbon tax was "revenue-neutral," only for Canadians to find out that it was actually making life more expensive for them.
Trudeau also claimed it would reduce emissions, yet emissions continued to rise.
Now, Carney is telling Canadians that he’s getting rid of the tax.
But will that last if the Liberals win another election?
*****
Second, we put "eliminated" in quotation marks above because the carbon tax is actually still very much in place.
What the Liberals actually did was temporarily set the price of the tax to zero.
Carney has chosen not to recall Parliament to formally repeal the tax.
This is likely because the NDP wouldn’t support repealing it, which would send us into an election with the tax still in place.
But this leaves a problem.
With the law still on the books, a hypothetical re-elected Liberal government could restore the full carbon tax with a flick of a pen - just as easily as they "paused" it.
Even if you believe the complete 180-degree turn from the Liberals and trust that a future Liberal majority government won't reinstate the tax, what if they don't win a majority?
Maybe the Liberals have suddenly abandoned their commitment to carbon pricing, but the NDP certainly haven't.
Their support for the tax remains unwavering, meaning the NDP could force the Liberals to restore the law as part of future coalition or minority-government negotiations.
*****
Third, the Liberals are actually only removing part of the carbon tax.
While the consumer portion of the carbon tax is being removed, the industrial carbon tax remains in place.
This means that while individual Canadians may no longer see the tax directly on their fuel bills, businesses and industries will still be hit with carbon levies, and those costs will inevitably be passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services.
Pierre Poilievre has called this a “shadow carbon tax” and a “trick.”
He has promised to eliminate the tax in its entirety, including the federal backstop that forces provinces to impose industrial levies.
If Carney was serious about scrapping carbon pricing, he wouldn’t just stop at the consumer tax - he would eliminate the industrial tax as well.
The fact that he hasn’t done so should be a major red flag.
The Liberals will undoubtedly fight to keep this tax in place while looking for new ways to reintroduce consumer carbon pricing in the future.
*****
The bottom line? The carbon tax isn’t truly dead, and Carney can’t be trusted to keep it gone.
The Liberals may have backed down temporarily, but they haven’t changed their ideology.
And with the industrial tax still in place, Canadians will continue to feel the impact of higher costs across the economy.
If you want to make sure this tax is eliminated once and for all, we need your help.
We must keep the pressure on.
It’s time to do what should have been done years ago.
It’s time to Repeal All Of The Carbon Tax.
So please sign the petition and then pass it on to every Canadian you know!
Showing 4814 comments