Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has made it official: a future Conservative government would eliminate Canada’s carbon pricing system entirely, including for large industrial emitters.
The question now is what, if anything, a Conservative government would do to address the existential threat of climate change in Canada. Poilievre’s approach would be to let provinces and territories decide their own policies, rather than the federal government leading.
Poilievre told reporters Monday that the carbon price was a “bad idea” even before U.S. President Donald Trump launched his trade war against Canada and suggested Prime Minister Mark Carney would re-impose the consumer price should the Liberals win re-election. “(We) will repeal the entire carbon tax, including the federal backstop that requires provinces impose industrial taxes. There will be no taxes on consumers, no taxes on Canadian industries,” Poilievre said.
“Instead, provinces will continue to have the freedom to address this issue (climate change) how they like, but there will be no federal obligation to impose the tax.”
The Conservative leader has spent months trying to frame the upcoming federal election as a referendum on the carbon price, vowing to “axe the tax” at a time when cost of living is top of mind for Canadians. Poilievre and his party have spent considerable time and money attempting to label the prime minister as “Carbon Tax Carney” despite the Liberal pledge to do away with consumer carbon pricing.
Until Monday, he was silent on whether that would include eliminating the federal backstop for large industrial emitters. Most provinces and territories have their own system for making industrial polluters pay — the federal backstop only applies in Manitoba, Nunavut, Yukon and Price Edward Island.
With Carney having vowed to eliminate the consumer carbon price in those provinces who don’t meet the federal benchmark, that particular line of Conservative attack seemed neutralized. Poilievre’s announcement on Monday could be seen as an attempt to recapture the political narrative.
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Michael Bernstein, the president of Clean Prosperity, told Global News that the industrial carbon price is the single largest policy contributing to reducing Canada’s overall emissions.
“We know industrial pricing is the lowest cost way to do this. It’s the one that we’ve seen many industry associations and others be most in favour of. So it takes a key tool in the tool kit, for sure,” Bernstein said.
“Your other options are regulation or more spending … (The industrial pricing) should be the core of driving the reductions across heavy industry, which is half of all the emissions in Canada.”
The Conservatives have struggled with presenting a coherent plan to address climate change over successive federal elections. The party’s perceived weakness on the file was cited as a factor in their 2015 defeat that saw Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party ascend to power.
In 2019, then-leader Andrew Scheer introduced a climate plan with no emissions reduction targets, instead focusing on tax credits and investment in lieu of a carbon price. But unlike Poilievre’s pledge, industrial emitters would’ve still been required to pay.
Erin O’Toole pitched an alternative to the carbon price in 2021 aimed at incentivizing consumers to make more environmentally-friendly decisions, which was pilloried both within his party and by opponents.
The previous Conservative government under prime minister Stephen Harper preferred sector-by-sector regulations, which economists and climate advocates argue is more expensive than a blanket carbon price.
Poilievre dodged a question about what emissions reductions would look like under his administration, instead talking about the need to invest in technology to address the climate crisis.
“I treat this as a global problem. By bringing home production from more polluting foreign jurisdictions, we reduce global emissions while growing our own paycheques,” Poilievre said.
“I don’t think it is an achievement to shut down a Canadian steel mill and then see one open up in China that produces 10 or 20 times more emissions for each unit of steel.”
Climate change — while presenting an immediate and pressing challenge for Canada and the rest of the world — has fallen down the list of priorities for Canadian voters, according to a recent poll by Abacus Data.
The poll, which surveyed 1,700 voting-aged Canadians between March 10 and March 12, found that just 15 per cent of voters identified climate change as a top issue facing Canada. The rising cost of living (61 per cent), U.S. President Donald Trump (50 per cent), the economy (36 per cent) and health care (34 per cent) were more pressing concerns.
The Abacus poll is considered accurate within 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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