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.

In 2018, Trudeau announced plans for the “pan-Canadian climate framework”, modelled after British Columbia’s pioneering carbon tax.

Notably, the levy is revenue neutral: the government doesn’t keep any money. Instead, it remits all of it back to taxpayers in the form a quarterly rebate. Any increase in costs from a tax on fuel is offset by a rebate of roughly equal value.

According to the federal government, a family of four in Ontario will receive C$1,120 (£630) this year in rebates. Those living in a rural community receive C$1,344. A rural family of four in the province of Alberta receives C$2,160.

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”.

Kathryn Harrison, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, 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,” 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.”

But the tenor of the debate also suggests something deeper is at stake.

Still, the perceived benefits of abandoning the tax have lured in other party leaders. Last month, the New Democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh suggested his support was waning because he doesn’t want a policy that puts the “burden on the backs of working people” – a claim dismissed by experts.

Courtesy: Guardian News & Media Ltd

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