Poilievre knows policies are irrelevant and that his lead in the polls can be attributed to channelling anger against the prime minister
The recognition by party insiders that question period has become a “content studio” designed to yield clips that can be pushed on social media is a damning indictment of the state of Canadian politics in 2024.
Welcome to the world of shallow populism, where every party offers charade policies that promise to fix complicated problems in a flash.
All that is required to prosper is supreme confidence, ambiguity and snappy slogans. Critical thinking and candour are a hindrance to success.
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The opening exchange of the year between Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre was a classic example.
The Conservative leader asked whether the prime minister had paid the carbon tax on the flights he took for his free holiday in Jamaica over Christmas.
Trudeau tried to deflect, saying that the Conservatives have “simply no plan to address climate change.”
“We will achieve our emission reductions, all the while sending Canadians cheques to help them with the cost of rising prices,” Trudeau said.
“That is high-tax, high-flying, high-carbon hypocrisy,” Poilievre responded. He must spend hours contriving his impromptu zingers.
He continued: while the prime minister was burning emissions into the atmosphere en route to the Caribbean, people in Edmonton were suffering minus-50-degree temperatures, paying carbon tax to heat their homes.
“Will he at least allow people to heat their homes without his tax?” he asked.
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Clearly, none of this was said to add to the greater accumulation of human knowledge.
The Liberals have seen polling that says the public thinks the consumer carbon tax is bad policy, and they think it is because they have failed to properly explain the rebate program. The Parliamentary Budget Office has said it returns more to eight out of 10 Canadians than they pay in tax (although the PBO also said the broader economic impact of carbon pricing on employment and investment means there is net cost).
For a Liberal government obsessed with branding, all will be well if they can communicate the rebate more effectively and put that messy business of the carve-out on home heating oil for politically favoured voters in Atlantic Canada behind them.
For the Conservatives, Poilievre’s prowess is in the exaggerated simplicity of his solutions. His “axe the tax” message is resonating and will gather even more momentum when the carbon price rises to $80 a tonne from $65 on April 1. (On the subject of politically favoured groups, the government has turned a blind eye to the fact that Quebec pays a significantly lower carbon price — the November settlement price was $53.16 a tonne).
When he addressed his caucus last Sunday, Poilievre made clear that hammering the government over the carbon tax is his number 1 priority.
The legislation to exempt natural gas and propane used to heat farm barns from the tax is back in the House, having been amended in the Senate. It offers the Conservative leader an ideal opportunity to embarrass Trudeau and his environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, both of whom have pledged there will be no more carbon tax carve-outs after the home heating oil debacle.
Poilievre has successfully managed to convince a significant number of voters that the “tax on everything” is in large measure responsible for rising prices. This, even though Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem has said that the tax added about 0.15 percentage points towards an inflation rate that last September was sitting at 3.8 per cent. Eliminating it would lower inflation by 0.6 percentage points, Macklem said.
Even if the economic impact would be muted, it looks like the consumer carbon tax is toast under a Conservative government.
Would that vindicate Trudeau’s charge that the Conservatives have no climate plan?
No, because the Conservatives will have a plan — i.e., much of the existing Liberal plan.
Poilievre has been characteristically vague about what he would do on climate if elected, saying the Conservative platform will deal with the issue “when the carbon tax election happens.”
But, as with most charade politics, the narcissism of small differences kicks in. It seems entirely possible that even if he kills the consumer tax that applies to the minority of Canada’s emissions, he will keep in place the output-based pricing system that covers large emitters.
The Conservative leader can probably convince enough people that, even if he axes the tax, household and transportation emissions will fall anyway, as more people buy heat pumps and electric vehicles (EV registrations doubled to 14.7 per cent in two years to 2022). But there is no substitute for output-based pricing, a partial exemption from the polluter-pays principle that taxes big companies on around 20 per cent of their emissions.
Poilievre will likely put other Liberal policies to the sword: the oil and gas emissions cap and the clean fuel regulations, for example.
But it seems a good bet he will maintain the tax credit for investments like carbon capture and keep regulations on large companies, many of whom have now embedded carbon reduction into their business models around the world.
Another Liberal policy unveiled in the fall fiscal update — carbon contracts for difference — also looks like it’s here to stay. This program acts as an insurance policy against the future value of carbon credits. The government backstop allows companies to plan low-carbon projects that bank on selling carbon-offset credits for revenue, without having to worry about the price of credits crashing. It is viewed as being a major incentive for large emitters to invest in emissions reduction.
The consumer price was a market incentive to reduce individual carbon footprints. Results have been mixed where they have been tried, generally because under-pressure politicians have granted exemptions to favoured groups, as the Liberals did in Atlantic Canada. People are rational and usually respond to price signals when they are consistent.
But there are already signs that emissions and economic growth are no longer moving in lockstep. Killing the consumer carbon tax, on its own, will not send Canada’s climate change efforts into reverse.
But there are good reasons for Poilievre’s vagueness on all this. He knows that policies are irrelevant and that his 15-point lead in the polls can be attributed to his success at channelling the anger he has fomented against the prime minister.
The carbon tax is the perfect vehicle for Poilievre’s Potemkin politics. He can imply that it will erase inflation at a stroke and at the same time provide his supporters with an opportunity to taunt the climate progressives they hate.
National Post
jivison@criffel.ca
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