“Truth” in politics has become anything that is said that cannot be immediately disproved.
Take Pierre Poilievre’s speech to the Conservative caucus on Sunday, ahead of Monday’s return of Parliament.
Poilievre said that the carbon tax now accounts for 17 cents per litre of gasoline and over the next five-and-a-half years is scheduled to increase to 61 cents per litre, as the tax increases from $80 a tonne to $170 a tonne.
So far, so good. But he then went on to attribute record levels of food-bank usage and large numbers of kids going to school hungry as a direct consequence of the carbon tax, which is at best questionable when one prominent economist’s estimate based on Statistics Canada calculated that 94 per cent of all households with income below $50,000 received rebates worth more than their carbon tax costs in 2023.
But it was Poilievre’s dystopian forecast for the coming years that made it clear election fever is in the air.
Poilievre said the projected increases in the carbon tax would result in “mass hunger and malnutrition,” while seniors would have to turn down their thermostats to 13 or 14 degrees Celsius “just to make it through the winter.”
“Inflation would run rampant and people wouldn’t be able to leave the house or drive anywhere,” he said. “This will shut down our entire economy — it would be a nuclear winter for our economy if we had the highest carbon tax in the world.”
None of those statements can be disproved — at least not until post 2030. But it would seem that a bigger existential threat is doing nothing to fight climate change, given our major trading partners in the U.S. and European Union have committed to reaching net-zero emissions and have promised to limit trade access for climate laggards.
But such wild statements are indicative of Poilievre’s political Darwinism, a ruthless pursuit of power that justifies any rhetorical excess.
The Conservative leader has his foot on the throat of his main opponent and he has made clear he is not going to take it off.
The carbon tax was in trouble with Canadians before Justin Trudeau’s decision last year to exempt heating oil — used to heat nearly half the homes in Atlantic Canada — from the tax for three years.
By reversing himself on a core principle for reasons of political expediency, he has brought down the whole carbon-pricing edifice. The political crassness of the U-turn was exposed by one of his ministers, Gudie Hutchings, who said it was a win for the Atlantic Canada Liberal caucus. “Perhaps they need to elect more Liberals on the Prairies,” she said, making it clear western families were being punished for not voting for the government.
Trudeau defended his government in the first question period of the new session on Monday, saying that Poilievre’s “do nothing” climate plan would cost more than the tax. “What doesn’t cost money is putting money in eight out of 10 of Canadians’ pockets with the Canada carbon rebate,” he said.
But after undermining his own plan, it’s not clear that anyone is listening to the prime minister anymore.
Trudeau’s reversal has given B.C.’s premier David Eby cover to withdraw his support, saying B.C. will end the consumer tax if he wins the election (and if Ottawa does not impose the federal backstop). He blamed the Liberals for politicizing the tax with large hikes and making exceptions that favoured certain parts of the country.
Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew has also expressed reservations about the consumer carbon tax and now Jagmeet Singh, the federal leader, is the latest New Democrat to suggest he no longer supports it.
In a press conference on Monday, he said his party will “do everything we can to fight the climate crisis,” except it seems, support the tax that he has backed more than 20 times in the House of Commons.
He said Trudeau has given big oil and gas companies “a free ride…while they make record profits and the planet burns.”
He said “Canadians are doing their part,” leaving the impression, without stating it explicitly, that the NDP backs stiffer industrial pricing but no longer supports the consumer tax.
In the House on Monday, the prime minister delivered his verdict on the NDP’s change of heart. “As soon as hard things got hard, they turned tail and ran,” he said.
Poilievre has been vague about his plans for industrial carbon pricing, which is projected to have three times the impact on greenhouse gas emissions as the consumer tax, even though big emitters only have to pay on 20 per cent of their emissions.
But he had fun with Singh’s latest flip-flop, which has made the NDP leader look like an unprincipled weathervane, at the mercy of the prevailing wind.
“Jagmeet Singh wants you to believe he’s a changed man, a totally new person who’s forgotten about everything he’s been doing,” said the Conservative leader.
Poilievre’s caucus address illustrated that his success in English Canada has heightened his ambitions in Quebec.
The first 12 minutes of his speech were delivered in French and the carbon tax was barely mentioned.
Rather, it was a sustained assault on the Bloc Québécois, for “abandoning Quebecers” to support the Liberals.
“The Bloc has voted 180 times to keep Justin Trudeau in power — a federal government that has pushed Quebec to breaking point with an irresponsible immigration policy.”
Under a Conservative government, “Quebecers will have sovereignty over their wallets. I don’t want to interfere in their affairs,” he said.
It is a message that is having some resonance, as Conservative support grows in Quebec, though at this stage more at the expense of the Liberals than the Bloc.
Poilievre used his first question of the new session to accuse the Bloc of supporting the biggest expansion of a federal government in Canadian history, “voting for inflationary spending, centralizing spending and bureaucracy.”
That is demonstrably true. But voters beware: We have entered that lunatic phase of the electoral cycle where relatively trivial issues are dramatized in black and white as “existential” or portending “nuclear winter,” in order to shake voters from their customary grey lethargy.
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