If an election were held tomorrow, all signs point to a resounding Conservative victory. The latest projections from 338Canada show the Conservatives with a commanding lead and a projected 220 seats in the Commons, well past the 170 required to form a majority government.
One Tyee reader will receive four compelling works from McClelland & Stewart that collectively trace Indigenous legacies of the past, present and future.
If their party’s messaging is to be believed, the first order of business in a Pierre Poilievre government will be to “axe the tax” and end the Liberal government’s carbon pricing program.
However, their victory may be short-lived.
The debate over the carbon tax has focused so far on domestic politics. However, this misses the importance of the international context. Increasingly, our trading partners take the threat of climate change seriously and use carbon tariffs to punish other countries they see as free riders.
Any government that wants to protect Canada from these tariffs will need a credible plan to reduce emissions. The result is that a future Conservative government may have to bring back the carbon tax, whether it likes it or not.
I appreciate the Tyee squeezing every possible angle against this but…
The US and they would be happy to see the carbon tax go away, so they don’t have “communism” nearby, and we know that “trading partner” for Canada means mostly the US. The odds of Canada getting sanctioned for backtracking a 1 yr old tax is negligible.
This is addressed in the article (A greening American leviathan), but I won’t be holding my breath. Even if carbon tariffs has bipartisan appeal for now, let’s see what happens when the time comes.