Canada’s carbon tax is popular, innovative and helps save the planet – but now it faces the axe | As prime minister Justin Trudeau trails in polls, opposition seek to persuade voters environmental policy is a burden
Canada’s carbon tax is popular, innovative and helps save the planet – but now it faces the axe | As prime minister Justin Trudeau trails in polls, opposition seek to persuade voters environmental policy is a burden
> Mass hunger and malnutrition. A looming nuclear winter. An existential threat to the Canadian way of life. For months, the country’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has issued dire and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about the future. The culprit? A federal carbon levy meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
> In the House of Commons this month, the Tory leader said there was only one way to avoid the devastating crisis: embattled prime minister Justin Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon tax’ election”.
> Hailed as a global model of progressive environmental policy, Canada’s carbon tax has reduced emissions and put money in the pockets of Canadians. The levy, endorsed by conservative and progressive economists, has survived multiple federal elections and a supreme court challenge. But this time, a persistent cost-of-living crisis and a pugnacious Conservative leader running on a populist message have thrust the country’s carbon tax once more into the spotlight, calling into question whether it will survive another national vote.
> Anyone willing and able to change their behaviour would end up in the black. Economists, political scientists – and the parliamentary budget officer – have found low-income households receive more from the rebate than they pay in additional costs. But the Conservatives, with a significant lead in the polls, are keen to capture mounting frustration with the incumbent government and transform a federal vote into a referendum on Trudeau’s marquee climate policy. Their campaign message, on billboards and T-shirts, has been simple: “axe the tax”. They argue that levy burdens Canadians at a time when rents, groceries and transportation costs have all surged.
> Kathryn Harrison, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, who has spent years studying the effects of carbon levies on behaviour and emissions, laments the “outright falsehoods” peddled for political benefit.
> “The current political discourse means a lot of Canadians misunderstand how the policy affects them. They don’t think it works. They think they’re paying more than they are. And that’s a very distressing thing for me, from not just a climate policy perspective, but a democratic perspective,” she said. “This isn’t a debate about how much emphasis to put on one issue or another. The unpopularity of the carbon tax is, to a large degree, driven by voters misunderstanding it and having the facts wrong.”
1 Comment
> Mass hunger and malnutrition. A looming nuclear winter. An existential threat to the Canadian way of life. For months, the country’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has issued dire and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about the future. The culprit? A federal carbon levy meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
> In the House of Commons this month, the Tory leader said there was only one way to avoid the devastating crisis: embattled prime minister Justin Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon tax’ election”.
> Hailed as a global model of progressive environmental policy, Canada’s carbon tax has reduced emissions and put money in the pockets of Canadians. The levy, endorsed by conservative and progressive economists, has survived multiple federal elections and a supreme court challenge. But this time, a persistent cost-of-living crisis and a pugnacious Conservative leader running on a populist message have thrust the country’s carbon tax once more into the spotlight, calling into question whether it will survive another national vote.
> Anyone willing and able to change their behaviour would end up in the black. Economists, political scientists – and the parliamentary budget officer – have found low-income households receive more from the rebate than they pay in additional costs. But the Conservatives, with a significant lead in the polls, are keen to capture mounting frustration with the incumbent government and transform a federal vote into a referendum on Trudeau’s marquee climate policy. Their campaign message, on billboards and T-shirts, has been simple: “axe the tax”. They argue that levy burdens Canadians at a time when rents, groceries and transportation costs have all surged.
> Kathryn Harrison, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, who has spent years studying the effects of carbon levies on behaviour and emissions, laments the “outright falsehoods” peddled for political benefit.
> “The current political discourse means a lot of Canadians misunderstand how the policy affects them. They don’t think it works. They think they’re paying more than they are. And that’s a very distressing thing for me, from not just a climate policy perspective, but a democratic perspective,” she said. “This isn’t a debate about how much emphasis to put on one issue or another. The unpopularity of the carbon tax is, to a large degree, driven by voters misunderstanding it and having the facts wrong.”
!ping CAN&ECO&TAX