The federal New Democrats backed Conservative demands Wednesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau take part in a televised “emergency meeting” on carbon pricing with Canada’s premiers.
The federal carbon price is not the “be-all, end-all” of climate policy, and New Democrats are open to alternative plans presented by premiers, NDP environment critic Laurel Collins said Wednesday.
That’s a massive blunder. There is about 0 chance the Cons are serious about finding “alternative plans” for climate policy. If they were, they wouldn’t be asking the likes of Danielle “blanket ban on renewables” Smith and Doug “let’s just develop the greenbelt” Ford for their ideas. Furthermore, if they think this tax is too much of an imposition on Canadians, then that rules out essentially all other forms of climate action, because the tax is one of the most conservative policies possible.
I’m not saying the carbon tax is perfect by any means, but up to the present, nobody opposed to it has been able to come up with a better idea, or even much of a coherent argument against it. I don’t know what the NDP are gaining from this deal, but I can’t see it being worth all the trust and credibility they had to concede.
Their ploy could be to let the Conservatives show that they have zero alternative ideas, and then present their own alternatives that just aren’t called a Carbon tax.