Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unpopular Liberal government, living on borrowed time, is forging ahead with its plan to cap Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector that critics say will cost our economy up to 150,000 jobs by 2030 and leave the average family with up to $419 less in spending money per month.
The Liberals argue that oil and gas companies can afford to make the transition because they’ve seen a huge increase in their profits post-pandemic — from $6.6 billion in 2019 to $66.6 billion in 2022— and must prepare for a low-carbon energy future to remain competitive internationally.
Meanwhile, an election could come at any time in the current minority Parliament, the Trudeau government is already two years behind in implementing its emissions cap and it’s possible it will have been defeated on a confidence motion — forcing an election — before the cap’s latest expected start up date in the late spring of 2025.
Even if the emissions cap is implemented at the 11th hour before the Liberal government falls, a majority Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre — as current national polling suggests will happen — would scrap the cap.
On Monday, the Conservatives said Trudeau’s emissions cap “will kill Canadian jobs, raise the cost of energy and send billions of dollars to dictators overseas,” adding that “Trudeau’s ideological crusade against Canadian energy must end.”
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Trudeau counters that the Conservatives have no plan to address climate change and Poilievre is “willing to watch the planet burn” rather than seriously address the problem.
Our view is that this issue should be decided by the Canadian people and, through fortuitous timing, that will happen with regard to Trudeau’s emissions cap, along with the fate of more than 100 government programs the Liberal government has established to date costing taxpayers more than $200 billion — plus the federal carbon tax — to fight climate change.
By the time of the next election, Canadians will know what plans, if any, the Conservatives have to address climate change and can decide who they believe will best represent their interests in light of everything that’s at stake, given that Canada is the world’s fourth-largest producer of oil and fifth-largest producer of natural gas, meaning we have lots of skin in the game.