How Canada's Cons Are Losing The Carbon Tax Battle

You might think that Andrew Scheer would tone down his anti-carbon tax rhetoric, now that Trudeau's new plan to fight climate change has been well received by most in the media.

But it seems that Scheer just can't help himself.

He has no plan of his own, but is still wallowing in his own planet burning excrement.



Even though as Campbell Clark points out, the Liberal plan is both good policy and good politics. 

Everything about climate-change policy in Canada right now is about electoral politics. There’s still a big, basic political decision to be made: Will Canadians take broad steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

And the Con arguments against it only amount to a desire to do nothing.

The Conservatives – both Andrew Scheer’s federal party and its provincial cousins, notably Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives – are dead set against a carbon tax and out to discredit it. That’s electoral politics, too. 

But the political arguments against, so far, haven’t really been about flaws in Mr. Trudeau’s emissions-reduction policy. Taken together, they amount to arguments against broad-based, emissions-reduction policies in general. They are arguments to do nothing.

Which in the times we live in can only be described as yet another example of Con climate change denial...



Or criminal negligence...



And for more evidence that the Cons are losing the carbon tax battle, there is also this endorsement from their usually very good friends at  the Business Council of Canada.

The Business Council of Canada welcomes the federal government’s announcement regarding its plan to implement carbon pricing in Canada. For many years we have advocated for carbon pricing as the most efficient means to contribute to achieving Canada’s climate change goals. 

Which couldn't be more embarrassing.

Of course, as David Roberts from Vox points out, Trudeau is gambling with his own future. 

It’s a risky gamble, to say the least. If it fails, liberals could lose control of the Canadian government. If it succeeds, Canada could vault into global leadership on climate change, with a national carbon reduction system that has few equals in scope or stringency. 

But Roberts believes it's a gamble worth taking, for the future of the planet.

On its own, Canada doesn’t account for much of the world’s carbon pollution, but as an example to other wealthy developed nations, its fate in coming years will carry enormous symbolic importance. It is fighting its own version of a battle — climate progressivism versus nationalist reactionaries — that is, on a larger scale, going to determine the fate of humanity.

And I believe it's also a brilliant political move.

For while Andrew Scheer deserves to be criticized as Elizabeth May does here.

Green Party Leader @elizabethmay does not mince her words when talking about @AndrewScheer's position on the carbon tax. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/ZPNMmBRpoT

— Michel Boyer (@BoyerMichel) October 24, 2018

Justin Trudeau is taking on the climate change deniers, and will be able to offer voters a real choice in the next election.

One that will appeal to the younger generation who will form the largest voting bloc in that election.

Do you want change, or do you want extinction?

Do you want a real prime minister, or a Con clown?



And it's not hard to imagine what the answer will be. 

The Cons have been caught in a trap of their own making.

And it will destroy them...