Drivers fil up their vehicle with gas in Newcastle, Ont. on April 1.Doug Ives/The Canadian Press
The carbon tax was the smartest, boldest idea to come out of Canadian governments in decades. Now it is dead, the victim of scaremongering, disinformation and political cowardice.
Good riddance, some will say. Taxing fuel at a time when Canadians are struggling with everyday costs was always a terrible idea. Couldn’t be helped, others will say. The tax was just too unpopular. Tactically astute, still others will insist. Left-leaning governments had to kill it to keep conservatives from marching into power on an axe-the-tax promise.
Excuses, excuses. It could have been helped. The tax was effective, sensible and equitable. This was good policy and trying to explain away its demise as inevitable won’t wash.
Just look at the pathetic attempt by British Columbia’s NDP Premier, David Eby.
Mr. Eby, remember, championed the tax for years, saying it was the best way for the province to fight the epic battle against climate change. As he told reporters this week: “I thought it was a good policy. I fought for the policy.” He was right to do so.
B.C. brought in the tax in 2008. Studies afterward showed that putting a price on carbon encouraged people and businesses to use less of it – without tanking the economy, as critics of the tax insisted it would. It was a pioneering effort, eventually emulated by the federal government under Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
But when election time came around last fall in B.C., and the NDP faced defeat at the hands of the surging Conservatives, Mr. Eby went soft and vowed to, so to speak, axe the tax. Confirming the decision this week, he blamed, in turn, the Conservatives (for making the tax “toxic”), the Liberals (for raising the rate of the tax at the wrong time) and Donald Trump (for bringing in tariffs and making tax relief for British Columbians vital).
The avowedly green Premier of a supposedly green province put a stake through the heart of a gold-plated, highly successful, made-in-British Columbia environmental initiative. Apart from damaging his reputation. Mr. Eby has left his province’s treasury with a $2-billion hole just when it needs the money to deal with the fallout from tariffs.
Mark Carney’s disavowal of the tax has been every bit as cynical. He was a firm supporter of carbon pricing until he became Leader of the Liberals, as you would expect from an economist who knows the merits of using price signals instead of heavy-handed regulation to influence economic behaviour. He was the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, for goodness sake.
Now he says it was a bust. On his first day in office he said he was doing away with it. Why? The devil made him do it. “Misinformation and lies” from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had rendered the tax too “divisive” to save, he said.
Mr. Carney even has the gall to boast that he is giving motorists an 18-cent break on every litre of gas. A break, that is, from the tax the government led by his own party had been charging them.
Those who are desperate to keep Mr. Poilievre out of the prime minister’s office will applaud Mr. Carney for his cleverness. He robbed the Conservative Leader of his best issue. He axed the tax himself. Brilliant! Or maybe it’s just another example of the kind of unprincipled gamesmanship that has made voters so distrustful of politicians.
Either way, the result is a severe reversal for Canada’s climate-change program. The government will have to control greenhouse-gas emissions somehow. Any alternative to the tax, such as Mr. Carney’s vow to penalize “big polluters,” is bound to affect economic growth and trickle down to ordinary people.
It was also a defeat in the fight against disinformation, the modern plague that is distorting politics around the world. Everything critics of the carbon tax said – that it would fuel inflation, undermine our competitiveness, leave hard-working people out of pocket – was nonsense. Its defenders told us so for years. Now they are throwing up their hands and saying: Sorry, we give up, the bad guys outplayed us. That’s no way to win a war.