Conservatives hone attacks on Trudeau and taxes

Nothing sure but attacks on Trudeau, taxes

While watching the daily question period in the House of Commons Tuesday, thoughts strayed to Dante’s eighth circle of Hell — where horned demons whipped panderers for eternity for deliberately exploiting the passions of others, flatterers were thrown into pools of excrement for corrupting the language to play upon fears and desires, and politicians were immersed in a lake of boiling pitch as penance for their dark secrets.

I was shaken from this happy reverie by Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre rising to launch into a refrain that was repeated by a subsequent half-dozen official opposition MPs, and that will be echoed with metronomic regularity by every Tory candidate between now and Oct. 21.

The charge is that the Liberals secretly intend to raise taxes after the next election.

Specifically, the Conservatives wanted to know, when will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bring in a carbon tax 15 times higher than the $20-per-tonne rate that will come into force in April.

The Conservatives allege this sneaky move to increase the tax for the average family to $5,000 will be made if the Liberals win re-election. The other jab in this combination of punches is their regular mentions of Trudeau’s “family fortune” — a phrase the prime minister himself used inadvisedly in a press conference.

“That amount ($5,000) is peanuts for a prime minister who inherited a great family fortune,” said Conservative Rosemarie Falk, by way of example.

The one kernel of fact in all of this is that the $300-per-tonne figure was mentioned in an internal document — a briefing note Environment Canada prepared in 2015 for new minister Catherine McKenna. The note suggested that the price on carbon would have to go that high by 2050 to meet Canada’s emissions targets.

The Environment Canada modelling, which became public in 2017, suggested that a price of $100 per tonne would have to be in place by 2020 if Canada is to achieve 30-per-cent reductions from 2005 emission levels by 2030.

While it is possible — indeed, knowing the climate zealots in the Prime Minister’s Office, probable — that the carbon tax will rise above the planned $50-per-tonne rate after 2022 if this government is re-elected, there is zero evidence the Liberals intend to increase the rate to $300 after the election.

But there is good reason why the Conservatives are adopting such deceptive tactics: they are working.

The next election shouldn’t even be close. With the New Democrats in freefall and the People’s Party nipping at the Conservatives’ exposed right flank, Trudeau should already be engaged in succession planning, deciding when he will hand the family business over to the next generation.

But he could yet contrive to lose. The most recent Nanos poll has the Liberals and Conservatives neckand-neck, despite the NDP bumping along at historic lows.

Broken promises and unforced errors have persuaded many voters that this government is neither trustworthy nor competent.

As Poilievre ad-libbed, when Trudeau said his finances are held in a blind trust: “What the prime minister is asking taxpayers is to blindly trust him, so he can spend a great fortune, amass enormous debts, set on track permanent and growing deficits and trust that no one will ever have to pay for it.”

Government ministers stand in the House and lament Conservative “misinformation,” but as Jonathan Swift pointed out 300 years ago, falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it.

The Conservatives claim 81 per cent of middle-class Canadians are paying higher taxes than when the Liberals took office.

The Liberal counterpoint — that a couple on median income with two kids is now $2,000-a-year better off, thanks to the Canada Child Benefit — is just not punching through, because Trudeau has lost the benefit of the doubt.

Equally, the Conservative claim that the Liberals can’t be trusted with the carbon tax is drowning out the government’s exculpation that eight out of 10 families in provinces impacted by the federal carbon tax will be better off because of the plan to rebate any money raised.

The Liberals are going to have to sharpen their message, beyond pointing accusatory fingers at Stephen Harper and Doug Ford. They may be better known than Andrew Scheer and in some eyes embody less-than-compassionate conservatism, but they’re not on the ballot.

Nor are plaintive charges about “misinformation” likely to sway disgruntled voters. The hard truth is, if you’re complaining, you’re losing.

The new parliamentary session has revealed that all parties are in full-on campaign mode.

We are already in an election, and in the absence of facts, panderers and flatterers will corrupt the language to play on the fears and desires of voters.