Slapping an export tax on oil and natural gas is a favourite Trudeau family thing to do.
This would be the third time a prime minister named Trudeau has imposed the dangerous, regionally inflammatory tax.
Son Justin might have missed a point from father Pierre, though. Both earlier times the tax was a failure that only served to enrage Alberta and much of the West.
There’s nothing new about the current sneakiness, either.
The plan was hidden from premiers who twice met with Trudeau to talk about response to president-elect Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs.
Meanwhile, the export tax scheme was leaked to Bloomberg and the Globe and Mail, to make sure the Americans know we’ll be really tough in a trade war.
Only the Liberals could respond to the threat of American tariffs, which mean higher costs for Canadians, with a brand new tax on Canadians.
Only they would even consider imposing it on natural resources, which are mainly western, but not on manufactured goods centred in Ontario and Quebec.
Trump knows he faces a weak and divided Canada. A Canadian government that fractures the nation further is beyond redemption.
The Liberals are desperately hunting for issues that might win them the next election, even if it means a flat-out campaign against western interests.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith isn’t joking when she says such a tax would provoke a genuine national unity crisis.
Oil and gas already face an emissions cap on the production end. Suddenly, there would be an export tax on sales.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault must be delighted at the thought of squeezing as much cash as possible out of an industry already under attack.
The tax is also said to cover uranium and potash, crucial exports for Saskatchewan.
Premier Scott Moe told Bloomberg that if the taxes are being considered, “that would be a complete betrayal by the Trudeau government of the team approach they have been advocating, and a complete betrayal of Canadians.”
Smith opposes any tariffs on American goods, whatever Trump decides to do. She figures that American consumers will rebel against higher prices at home.
She says the export tax “is a terrible idea — if you think I would be supportive of that, that would not be on.”
Federal planning is based on suspicions that Trump might exempt energy and other resources from tariffs, but impose levies on manufacturers, particularly in Ontario’s auto sector.
Ottawa would use the take from export tax to support central Canadian sectors.
That was exactly the idea in 1973, when Pierre Trudeau’s government slapped an export tax on oil and gas.
It was prompted by the oil price crisis of that year, after Arab members of OPEC embargoed shipments to western countries that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
(Oil prices spiked from $2.90 per barrel to more than $11. Horrors.)
Pierre Trudeau’s tax was used to subsidize purchase of foreign oil for the central and eastern provinces.
The tax was lifted in 1976. But Trudeau senior, following his reincarnation after the defeat of Progressive Conservative Joe Clark, did it again in 1980.
The National Energy Program (NEP) was a major effort to move much of the industry out of Alberta, control prices and impose export taxes.
Albertans were furious. The provincial economy went into a nosedive. Thousands of people lost their homes when mortgage interest topped 20 per cent.
Brian Mulroney’s PCs defeated the Liberals in 1984. The tax was abolished on June 1, 1985.
This idea has a dark and bitter history in much of the West. Today, it would seriously hurt not just Alberta and Saskatchewan, but also B.C., which has big plans to export liquid natural gas.
Ironically, it would happen if Smith succeeds in convincing the Americans not to impose tariffs on oil and gas. Ottawa will simply seize the money the U.S. might have collected from a tariff, and spend it where the Liberal votes are.
The real fight has barely begun. It isn’t necessarily with Donald Trump.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
X: @DonBraid