Tories on attack over carbon tax
Poilievre urges Liberals to take lid off ‘carbon tax coverup’
OTTAWA — If the federal Liberal government truly believed in carbon taxing, it would come clean on the potential cost to Canadians, Conservative critic Pierre Poilievre charged Tuesday in a sneak preview of the protracted partisan barrage Finance Minister Bill Morneau was likely to face later in the day.
Poilievre was set to face off against Morneau in a four-hour, marathon Commons session later Tuesday evening, keen to crack the minister’s message-track veneer and expose what the government’s carbon pricing plan will cost an average Canadian family.
Poilievre got the ball rolling earlier in the day during question period, accusing the government of an ongoing “carbon tax coverup,” refusing to say how much more families can expect to pay for everything from gasoline to home heating to groceries as a result of the measure.
“If this is anything more than a tax grab, why will the government not end the carbon tax coverup and tell us what this tax will cost the average Canadian household?” Poilievre asked.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna fielded that one, accusing the Conservatives of denying both the existence of climate change, the cost it is having from the impacts of major weather events and the economic opportunity it poses in fostering growth in clean technology.
“Canadians know that polluting is not free; it is having an impact right now,” McKenna said.
“Canadians are paying billions of dollars in insurance costs, but there is also a huge economic opportunity. Since members of the party opposite like talking about jobs, then maybe they should get on the bandwagon, because there is a $23-trillion opportunity in clean growth.”
She did not, however, ever produce any specifics on the government’s understanding of what it will cost the average Canadian family.
Neither did she later when she answered questions from senators at a Senate committee reviewing the government’s legislation to make the national carbon price a reality. The legislation, contained in the government’s spring budget implementation bill, would create a federal carbon price system that will be imposed in any province that doesn’t create its own system that meets federal requirements by the end of this year.
Conservative Sen. Michael MacDonald said it is frustrating that the government continues to dodge the question about what that federal system will cost. McKenna said only that the carbon prices in place now are from individual provinces, each of which did different things with the revenues so the cost to people was different depending on where they lived.
That answer did not make MacDonald happy.
“You never came close to answering the question,” he said.
When the government unveiled its federal plan last year, it did include the expected cost it will add to things like gasoline (11.6 cents a litre) and natural gas (9.79 cents per cubic metre). However a government analysis of what those costs could mean overall for an average family has been withheld from documents released to date under access-to-information legislation.
It is an argument sure to persist into next year’s election campaign. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has promised to scrap the Liberal scheme, saying he will have a plan of his own to meet Canada’s international emissions targets without putting a tax on carbon.
Canada’s 2030 target is to cut emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels. Carbon pricing is the most cost-effective, efficient way to get there, says McKenna; any other plan would require regulations and policies that would likely cost industry and families far more than a carbon price.