EDITORIAL: Only Poilievre pledges to kill carbon taxes

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By promising Monday to kill the Liberal government’s industrial carbon tax, as well as the consumer carbon tax if his party wins the next election, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is committing to do what Prime Minister Mark Carney is pretending to do.

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That is to remove the financial burden of federal carbon pricing on Canadians who are paying it.

These two taxes, according to independent, non-partisan parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux, leave most Canadian families worse off, even with rebates, because of the damage they cause to our economy.

Carney announced Friday that he is ending the consumer carbon tax by folding it into the industrial carbon tax, where its true costs will be hidden from the public.

He will also create a second carbon tax — a tariff — raising prices on many foreign goods imported into Canada, paid for by Canadian consumers.

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Poilievre said he will lower Canada’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions through tax incentives to industry to produce low-carbon products and through the use of new low-carbon technology.

He said a Conservative government would also help to lower global emissions by approving natural gas pipelines and infrastructure to enable Canada to export liquefied natural gas to global markets. (Replacing coal-fired electricity with natural gas is one of the most effective ways to help reduce emissions because it burns at half the carbon dioxide intensity of coal.)

The truth is that any government policy to lower emissions will end up costing Canadians money because it’s a new cost that was imposed on Canadians for the first time starting in 2019, the first year of Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax.

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Trudeau was as disingenuous then as Carney is now because he claimed he imposed carbon taxes due to the fact they were less expensive and more efficient than government regulations and subsidies.

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The reality is that Trudeau imposed all three.

In fact, the Liberals have already earmarked more than $200 billion of federal taxpayers’ money under their existing climate policies to fund scores of government programs staffed by a massive federal bureaucracy.

They should all be subjected to a forensic audit, given Auditor General Karen Hogan’s findings of massive financial regularities in the billion-dollar Sustainable Development Technology Canada fiasco.

If Carney and the Liberals win the upcoming election, it will never happen.

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