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Carbon taxers keep saying it’s a ‘conservative idea.’ Everything else says otherwise

Opinion: Canada does not have a carbon tax policy anywhere that meets a proper market-oriented standard

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By Peter Shawn Taylor

Repeat something often enough and people will believe it’s true. This well-known axiom of propaganda is apparently the means by which conservatives are to be sold on a carbon tax. It’s not working.

Canadians have been repeatedly and insistently informed that putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions is the best, most efficient and most conservative approach to addressing climate change. Head cheerleader in this ideological campaign is the self-appointed EcoFiscal Commission, producer of an endless stream of reports arguing carbon taxation is a “smart policy” full of economic (and therefore evidently conservative) wisdom. A recent Globe and Mail editorial tried to bolster this argument by claiming “the carbon tax started life as a conservative idea.”

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Despite all the conviction and dubious claims of conservative ancestry, however, evidence continues to pile up that conservatives do not love carbon taxes nearly as much as everyone else thinks they should.

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This lack of ardour can be seen most easily in the fact that the five provinces — New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — currently fighting the federal government over its carbon tax are all led by Conservative governments. This is no coincidence, but concrete proof that conservative voters — not to mention a large swath of swing or middle voters — habitually reject carbon taxes. The same holds true for Australia’s recent federal election, in which the right-leaning Liberal/National coalition won another majority victory in May with a platform that explicitly opposed carbon taxes.

As carbon taxation fails in the political world, the internal office politics of the EcoFiscal Commission further hints at the dissatisfaction some high-profile carbon tax supporters are feeling over how this file is being implemented in Canada.

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A look at EcoFiscal’s inaugural advisory board from 2014 reveals several significant voices of conventional, market-friendly economic wisdom, including Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, and tax expert Jack Mintz of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. Neither is on the advisory board today.

Mintz parted ways with EcoFiscal in 2017 after it published a controversial report promoting a wide range of policies in sharp conflict with the market notion that price signals alone are the best way to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The report instead contemplated all manner of messy government interventions including complicating regulations, boondoggle-style subsidies and ex cathedra government pronouncements. Mintz now expounds frequently and cogently about the wrongheadedness of Canada’s current carbon tax policies (all of which seem to be following in the footsteps of EcoFiscal’s 2017 interventionist policy detour).

… the five provinces — New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta — currently fighting the federal government over its carbon tax are all led by Conservative governments.

Preston Manning’s departure from EcoFiscal is the most recent one. It happened quietly, a few months ago. To be fair, the former Reform party leader says he’s in the process of retiring from a number of positions as his wife’s 75th birthday approaches. (“What she wants as a birthday present is a stack of resignation letters from me to the numerous boards, committees, and project teams that I am currently on,” he explains in an email.) Still, he admits that he, too, wasn’t keen about the way the carbon-tax policy goalposts were moved. “I don’t agree with everything the EcoFiscal Commission says or does,” he said. His vision was one of a revenue-neutral, subsidy-free tax, accompanied by an overall reduction in regulation and met with similar policies by our main trading partners. It’s a position EcoFiscal, along with so many other champions of this allegedly “conservative” policy, has largely abandoned.

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“None of the carbon pricing regimes instituted by the Wynne Government, Notley Government or the Trudeau Government come anywhere close to meeting these requirements,” Manning writes, adding the entire concept has been “badly bungled” across the country. Despite what you may have been told, Canada does not have a carbon tax policy anywhere that meets a proper market-oriented standard.

Here’s another example of what happens when pro-carbon-tax “conservatives” are confronted with political reality. Mark Cameron was once a senior policy adviser to the Harper government and, until recently, the public face of the carbon-tax advocacy group Canadians for Clean Prosperity. Last month, however, he was announced as Alberta’s new deputy minister for policy co-ordination. Cameron is thus now in charge of implementing cabinet directives under Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. And what was the first piece of government legislation to land on his desk? Bill 1: The Carbon Tax Repeal Act. Tax-supporting conservatives committed to following the direction of voters can expect to find themselves in similarly embarrassing situations with increasing frequency.

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The conservative case for anything must always built on a solid foundation of evidence. So, if carbon taxation is indeed a conservative policy — as we are repeatedly told it is — then such a claim must be supported by proof. And yet the evidence from voters and conservative politicians across Canada and around the world shows the opposite to be true. Similarly, many conservative thinkers who once supported carbon taxation on its theoretical merits are now in retreat as their original idealism conflicts fatally with the messy business of voter attitudes and political reality.

Is carbon taxation a conservative idea? Not if facts are your criteria.

• Peter Shawn Taylor is a journalist, policy analyst and contributing writer to Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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