Premier cautions Trudeau on levy

Ford says Liberals will face wrath of voters in 2025 election if Ottawa keeps tax increase

It’s an undo or die situation.

That’s Premier Doug Ford’s plea to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the federal carbon price that rose Monday from $65 a tonne to $80.

“The federal government raised the carbon tax yet again — this time by a whopping 23 per cent. Today, the carbon tax now cost 17.6 cents per litre of gas,” the Progressive Conservative premier said Tuesday in at an East Gwillimbury farm.

Ford warned Trudeau’s federal Liberals they would face the wrath of voters in an election widely expected in October 2025 if they don’t rethink carbon pricing.

“Folks, let’s cut to the chase, this carbon tax has to go or in a yearand-a-half, the prime minister is going,” he said.

“It’s as simple as that — he will be going, I’ll guarantee you. He will not be there. The ideology they have is just beyond me.”

While Ford has long opposed the federal levy, including a costly but unsuccessful fight in the Supreme Court of Canada, his Tories have worked closely with Trudeau’s Liberals on a slew of joint initiatives over the past four years.

That includes coming together on measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and billions in shared subsidies in luring electric vehicle manufacturing factories, among other things.

Ford’s party is also mindful that Ontario political history suggests if Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives form government in 2025, Queen’s Park could see a swing back to the Liberals or the New Democrats the following year.

That’s because when Ontario vot- ers elect Tories federally, they tend to elect Liberals or New Democrats provincially. Conversely, when they elect federal Liberal governments, the PCs almost always win provin- cially. The phenomenon, known as the “Underhill balance theory,” has held true for 70 of the past 81 years.

Despite his rhetoric about the fed- eral consumer carbon price, Ford has no plans to pause the looming increase in his provincial industrial carbon levy he quietly introduced in 2022.

The Tories’ Emissions Perfor- mance Standards program charges big polluters $65 per tonne of car- bon they emit, which will rise to $80 a tonne next Jan. 1.

Ford’s carbon levy brought in $146 million in 2022, which will be used to wean industrial greenhouse gas emitters off of carbon pollution.

All companies with emissions of more than 50,000 tonnes of carbon annually since 2014 must register with Queen’s Park. Those with low- er rates of emission have the option of enrolling with registered partici- pants exempted from federal fuel charges.