Trudeau’s Atlantic carbon tax exemption may be a fatal miscalculation

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The federal Liberals have undermined their highest environmental priority, the carbon tax, because they simply cannot afford to lose their Atlantic base.

For three decades, voters in the Maritimes and in Newfoundland and Labrador have mostly stood by the Liberal Party. One important exception came in 1996, when prime minister Jean Chrétien’s government tightened eligibility requirements for unemployment insurance – a vital social program for the region’s seasonal economy. Atlantic voters hammered the Liberals in the following election, costing them 20 seats.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears determined to prevent something similar from happening to him. But it might be a fatal miscalculation.

There are only 32 seats in Atlantic Canada. Even so, the region is disproportionately represented in the House of Commons, since it accounts for less than 7 per cent of Canada’s population, but has just under 10 per cent of the seats in the legislature.

In the three elections won by prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the Liberals fared relatively well in Atlantic Canada. In every election on Mr. Trudeau’s watch, they have won a large majority of the seats in the region. (In 2015, they won them all.)

But after the Liberals brought Atlantic Canada fully into the carbon pricing system in July, because provincial plans no longer met federal standards, polls showed support for the party in the region cratering. The 338Canada.com compendium of polls projects that the Conservatives would likely win more seats than the Liberals in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick if an election were held today.

The Liberal Atlantic caucus pushed Mr. Trudeau hard for relief from carbon pricing. They succeeded. On Thursday, the government announced measures that included exempting home heating oil, which is pretty much used only in Atlantic Canada, from the carbon tax.

Although Mr. Trudeau vowed Tuesday that no more relief would be coming, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe believes the carbon tax has been fatally weakened.

“Pressure to exempt other fuels will only increase,” he predicts in an op-ed for The Hub. “The entire future path of Canada’s carbon tax is now no longer credible.”

The Liberals in Ottawa are already at war with the Alberta government, which is threatening to pull the province out of the Canada Pension Plan and is fighting federal caps on oil and gas sector emissions. Now Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe warns he will stop collecting carbon fees on natural gas, unless all home heating fuels in his province are exempted from the carbon tax.

No doubt you’ve heard the rejoinder from federal Rural Economic Development Minister Gudie Hutchings to Western complaints about the cave-in for Atlantic Canada: “Perhaps they need to elect more Liberals in the Prairies.” Liberal indifference to Western concerns hasn’t been this blatant since 1982, when prime minister Pierre Trudeau gave a middle-fingered salute to protesters in Salmon Arm, B.C.

But worse is likely in store for national unity. People using natural gas to heat their homes in the suburbs of Toronto would like a break just as much as those using heating oil in Nova Scotia.

If Mr. Moe is prepared to fight Ottawa to win the same entitlements for his citizens that Atlantic Canadians suddenly enjoy, then why wouldn’t Ontario Premier Doug Ford do the same?

Liberal MPs in suburban ridings in Ontario and British Columbia are every bit as vulnerable as MPs in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Why aren’t they pounding the table to have the carbon tax be lifted on heating fuel in their ridings?

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has long vowed to axe the carbon tax if he becomes prime minister. He won’t tell us his plans to fight global warming. Maybe, politically, that doesn’t matter anymore.

Mr. Trudeau made putting a price on carbon the centrepiece of his government’s environmental agenda. Now, as voters start to feel the pain from that commitment, he has made his first major concession. It might not be his last. And it might not save him.