The dialectic had been relentless and unchanging for eight years. Carbon pricing is the best tool to curb greenhouse gas emissions and force citizens to finally adapt their polluting behavior, Justin Trudeau tirelessly repeated. Then, with a single gesture, the Prime Minister undermined this argument. And support that of the conservatives and Pierre Poilievre.
The carbon tax is therefore no longer at zero cost for citizens, as the Trudeau government retorted each time it was denounced by its rivals, recalling that taxpayers receive an equivalent reimbursement in return. In the Atlantic provinces, at least, it is indeed too expensive, the Prime Minister conceded last Thursday. To the Conservatives who persist in opposing carbon pricing as a tool to combat climate change by insisting that it imposes too many additional costs in the midst of a cost of living crisis, the Liberals have just given reason. Pierre Poilievre’s troops are jubilant. Environmentalists are sorry.
The government announced last week that the carbon tax would be suspended for three years (and beyond the next federal election) for citizens who heat their homes or business buildings with oil. Since the Atlantic provinces still rely heavily on this expensive fuel, they will be the main beneficiaries of this measure. Because across Canada, barely 3% of households consume heating oil.
This very first breach of the carbon tax only leaves people dissatisfied. The Atlantic provinces are now calling for its abolition, and for everyone. Those of the Prairies and Ontario (also subject to the federal rate) are protesting that natural gas heating, less polluting, has not also been exempted — the main source of heating for their residents, as well as 44% of Canadians.
All these provinces now have the legitimacy to cry foul, courtesy of the Trudeau government. This, by weakening its flagship program in this way, has also threatened its survival. “This impression of a system shaped like Gruyere cheese then facilitates its abolition by another government,” summarizes Marc-André Viau, of Équiterre.
By claiming to “refine” his program, Justin Trudeau himself came to cast doubt on it in the minds of voters. His government could have stuck to improving, as it also announced Thursday, the carbon tax reimbursement supplement for rural regions or its subsidy for the purchase of a replacement electric heat pump. And this, without undermining the very foundations of the carbon tax.
The future will tell us whether the exemption granted will erode the legacy of the Trudeau government or prolong its political survival for a few years. Because it is impossible to see this liberal about-face other than as electoral deceit.
The entry into force of the carbon tax in the Atlantic provinces last summer went more than poorly. Liberal elected officials in the region strongly denounced it, and publicly. Above all, the polls confirmed that the Liberal collapse was now spreading there, and threatened to send almost all the seats held by the Liberal Party of Canada (24 of the 32 ridings in these provinces) to the conservative camp.
Regional anger was such that this flagship environmental measure suddenly became negotiable. And liberal principles, malleable to the electoral context. The relaxations that the government had always refused elsewhere suddenly became acceptable for the Atlantic.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, appears increasingly isolated within his caucus and the Council of Ministers, with his colleagues judging him to be too “activist” and not “pragmatic” enough. His predecessor Catherine McKenna was sad about X that “politics will break your heart.” It is a safe bet that Mr. Guilbeault shares his dismay more than the joy displayed by his colleagues from the East.
Politics is the arena of compromise. But certain convictions should nevertheless remain unshakeable.