Carbon tax in line with conservative ideals

Main argument against seems to be Liberals are for it, Jim Farney writes.

Conservative politicians have strongly opposed the Trudeau government’s promise to impose a carbon tax since the idea was floated in 2015. Beginning with former premier Brad Wall in Saskatchewan, opposition to the carbon tax is now a central commitment of conservative premiers Brian Palliser, Scott Moe and Doug Ford, as well as the leader of the federal opposition, Andrew Scheer.

It is easy to see how conservatives would oppose a new tax created by the federal government. After all, what’s more conservative than opposing a new federal tax? Dig deeper down into conservative principles, though, and it is hard to see where those conservative principles point except towards a carbon tax.

Conservatism in Canada is a rope wound out of four strands: traditionalist conservatives, religious conservatives, free market conservatives and conservative populists. The first two strands provide reasons to be concerned about climate change. The last two provide reasons why a carbon tax is the appropriate mechanism to reduce emissions.

Traditionalists are the type of conservative dictionaries define as “Tory.” They advocate for a strong government able to pursue the collective interest. But they limit the scope of what government does. They have long argued that the growth associated with unrestrained capitalism damages local communities.

with religious conservatives, all of the major religious traditions in Canadian society have well worked out traditions of social thought. Over the last generation, all of these traditions have increasingly stressed the importance of environmental stewardship.

This leaves us with free market conservatives and populists — the largest and most politically important strands of conservatism in Canada today. They part with the first two on the importance of environmental issues. But both types make powerful arguments about how government ought to pursue public goods.

Free market conservatives hold true to a central gospel: setting prices through the marketplace is an extraordinarily efficient way to allocate scarce resources. They don’t like taxes. However, they recognize the good that can come from a transparent tax, imposed fairly for a demonstrable social good.

A transparent tax, like the carbon tax, treats all emissions equally. In so doing, it preserves the market’s inherent ability to accurately set the most efficient price.

This leaves populists. Canada’s most notable conservative populist, Preston Manning, emphasized that to be populist was to create mechanisms that allow ordinary people to bring their wisdom to bear on the making of public policy.

Recognizing the carbon cost of consumption decisions is a direct and transparent way to involve ordinary people in collective decisions. We end up in the same place as free market arguments. Manning himself publicly supports a carbon tax.

So what we are left with are two arguments often made by conservatives but which, strictly speaking, are not conservative. One is jurisdictional: that this is a policy area in which the provinces ought to take the lead. The other is regional: that a carbon tax which hurts provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan more than Quebec is unfair.

Both of these are important sets of questions. Answering them may tell us which government should do something about Canada’s carbon emissions. But it is inescapable that the “what should be done,” if it were to be done by conservatives, would have to look remarkably like a carbon tax.

Jim Farney is an associate professor of politics at the University of Regina and a contributor with Evidencenetwork.ca based at the University of Winnipeg.