The carbon tax’s last stand – and what comes after

How a clever idea lost its shine

For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.

It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.

Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.

And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.

The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.

The betrayal is worse in B.C.

This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.

Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.

What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.

What about the rich?

Yup, you guessed it: richer.

Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.

“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.

That pact broke somewhere along the way.

Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.

Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.

Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.

Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.

But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works

With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?

A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.

That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.

The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.

To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)

I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.

The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.

Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.

Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.

Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! – is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.

Related Topics:#CarbonTax #ResourceWorks CarneyCarbonTax PremierEbyCarbonTax StewartMuir

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Canadians have surrendered complete control to Mark Carney

Published on July 18, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

Bill C-5 can be accurately and fairly described as Mark Carney’s grab for power in Canada. Here’s why.

Mark Carney operates as a banker and corporate leader, not as prime minister. We saw this in blazing technicolor when he brought forward Bill C-5, passed in the House of Commons on the 20^th of June and rubber stamped without any amendments by the Trudeau-appointed Senate on June 26, 2025.

Ignoring Parliament

The manner with which this bill was passed indicates that Carney does not waste his precious time on such trivialities and nonessentials as Parliamentary procedures. Parliamentary debate, and parliamentary committee scrutiny were eliminated in the hurry to pass Bill C-5. Only one-and-a-half days were allotted for the committee’s review. Usually, a committee takes several months to review a bill. In the brief time the bill was before the committee, there was scarcely enough time to set up the committee, let alone examine the bill.

There was no public input allowed. Indigenous groups were especially alarmed that they were ignored since the bill could impact significantly on their interests. Carney whipped aside such inconsequential procedures because he knows best and expects only applause from his complacent personally selected cabinet who would not dare make even a suggestion about Carney’s extravagant plan.

Rule by cabinet

This bill can be accurately and fairly described as Carney’s grab for power in Canada. This is because the Act provides Carney and his cabinet with the power to fast-track major national projects to come into effect within a two-year period rather than a customary five-year period. The Act provides that Carney can do so by way of Orders-in-Council (defined as a law made by a person or body who has been granted (delegated) law-making authority) by removing any laws that may impede the project which Carney has designated as being in the national interest. In fact Bill C-5 makes the supposed national interest into Carney’s self-interest, since he will be the only one deciding which projects will be chosen.

The use of Orders-in-Council, which in effect, makes laws by regulation, only requires cabinet approval and bypasses Parliament. That is, the use of regulations provided by Orders-in-Council (which regulations have not yet been written), constitutes a huge shift of power away from Parliament to Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s office. The Orders-in-Council strike at the very foundation of Parliament, which is the ability to make laws. Also, it avoids Parliamentary scrutiny, fundamental to democracy. In a Parliamentary democracy, the legitimacy of laws is derived from the consent of the governed, through Parliament, whose members are elected by the public. Delegating legislation by regulation seriously weakens this fundamental principle.

Further, under Bill C-5, Carney has the power to suspend by Orders-in-Council any federal laws that may apply to his projects. This would include dispensing with conflict-of-interest laws, the Access to Information Act, any review by the Auditor General, even preventing police action by eliminating the provisions of the Criminal Code.

Labour mobility is a provincial matter

Bill C-5 consists of two Acts together. The first is the “Free Trade and Labour Mobility Canada Act”. This Act is useless and meaningless since labour mobility falls solely under provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government has no authority to deal with this issue. In addition, the regulations governing professions and unions such as legal, medical, accounting, social services, and trades, etc. fall strictly under provincial jurisdiction. Also, they exist to protect a particular profession or trade’s turf or rights, supposedly in the public interest.

The reality, however, is that the provincial labour mobility barriers on professions and trades exist as much to keep out people in a particular field, in order to protect that profession or trade in that province. If this were not the case, many individuals might choose not to remain in a high tax jurisdiction such as Quebec or Ontario, but would, instead, move to provinces with lower tax rates such as Alberta or Saskatchewan. The provincial trade barriers also protect provincial industries such as breweries and wineries, which the provinces want to protect from competition outside the province.

The real power in Bill C-5

Essentially, the cabinet, which means Carney, is free to decide which projects will be “in the national interest”. Some grand and glorious projects have already been floated. This includes constructing an economic corridor connecting BC’s north-west coast, through the Prairies to Hudson Bay, and eventually linking it by road to an Arctic port in Grays Bay, Nunavut. Other ideas include port-to-port infrastructures including roads, rail, power generation, transmission and pipelines, to deliver energy, critical minerals, agriculture and manufactured goods, to tide water for export.

These grandiose projects will, of course, require investment from outside sources. Such sources will likely be Carney’s colleagues and friends from his former employer at Brookfield Assets Management, since the conflict-of-interest restrictions will be easily put aside by Orders-in-Council. These investment sources will also likely include Carney’s associates in Communist China who would be delighted to get their tentacles into Canadian industry and its natural resources.

If Carney wanted to move the economy

If Carney really wanted to move the economy, he would have repealed legislation put in place by Trudeau, supposedly to protect the environment. In effect, they were designed to curtail the oil and gas industry as well as other projects. This legislation includes the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (known as Bill C-48), which bans oil tankers from operating off the coast of BC; The Impact Assessment Act (IA); and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act.

Carney also should have moved the economy forward by helping individual Canadians, not rich investors, by establishing funds to assist developing small business operations, and by increasing Canadian ownership of Canadian assets to produce economic activity and wealth. Simply put, we need to make it easier for independent Canadian entrepreneurs to buy into businesses or start up new ones. We need a better funded network of community investment institutions to provide low-cost capital with federal loan guarantees to facilitate the acquisition of small and medium size businesses by employees, co-ops and communities.

A sovereign fund could invest and acquire Canadian businesses, keeping them in Canadian hands. Canada should be stricter about preventing foreign takeovers of Canadian industries by foreign investors which will occur under Carney’s Bill C-5. Further, it is significant that Canadians do not know what Carney’s investments consist of. He refuses to disclose them. He knows what they are, however. Will he be embellishing his own investments under Bill C-5? We will never know.

Why did the Conservative Party support Bill C-5?

The Conservative Party was asleep at the switch when it supported Bill C-5 allowing the powerful Carney train to rush past it on to victory and unfettered power. By supporting Bill C-5, the Conservatives have betrayed not only Western Canada, but also the 41% of Canadians who voted for them. The federal Conservative Party by supporting Bill C-5 signaled its rapprochement with the elites of Central Canada and Club Laurentian. Such rapprochement does not bode well for Western interests, political diversity or Canadian unity. It appears that the Conservative Party has been taken over by the red Tories and the eastern Laurentian elites to exclude social Conservatives and other genuine Conservatives.

In effect, the Conservative party, by voting for Bill C-5, joined forces with the Liberals, conceding the direction of the economy to the sole control of Carney. The Globe and Mail, the mouthpiece for the Laurentian elites, which bends the knee to Carney, whom it has placed on a throne as our king and saviour, was ecstatic that the Conservatives voted for the bill. An editorial dated, July 4, 2025, although acknowledging that Carney had “tightly controlled debate” on the legislation, stated that “Canadians want and need to see more cooperation and mutual respect between the main political parties”. It went on to say that “this new willingness to play nice was done in the name of the country’s interest”.

More accurately, it was done in the Liberal Party’s interest, cutting out genuine Conservatives from the party in favor of bringing Canada solidly left of center with the Liberal party dominating the agenda. An absent Opposition is a disloyal Opposition—as the federal Conservatives are about to learn to their, and the country’s, peril.

Reprinted with permission from REAL Women of Canada.

Business

Carney should rethink ‘carbon capture’ climate cure

Published on July 18, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

In case you missed it amid the din of Trump’s trade war, Prime Minister Carney is a big believer in “carbon capture and storage.” And his energy minister, Tim Hodgson, who said it’s “critical to build carbon capture systems for the oilsands,” wants the Smith government and oilsands companies to get behind a proposed project (which hasn’t been unable to raise sufficient private investment) in Cold Lake, Alberta.

The term “carbon capture and storage” (or CCS) essentially refers to technology that separates carbon dioxide (CO2) from emissions and either stores it or uses it for other products. Proponents claim that CCS could replace other more ham-handed climate regulations such as carbon taxes, emission caps, etc. The problem is, like many (or most) proposed climate panaceas, CCS is oversold. While it’s a real technology currently in use around the world (primarily to produce more oil and gas from depleting reservoirs), jurisdictions will likely be unable to affordably scale up CCS enough to capture and store enough greenhouse gas to meaningfully reduce the risks of predicted climate change.

Why? Because while you get energy out of converting methane (natural gas) to CO2 by burning it in a power plant to generate electricity, you have to put quite a lot of energy into the process if you want to capture, compress, transport and store the attendant CO2 emissions. Again, carbon capture can be profitable (on net) for use in producing more oil and gas from depleting reservoirs, and it has a long and respected role in oil and gas production, but it’s unclear that the technology has utility outside of private for-profit use.

And in fact, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), most CCS happening in Canada is less about storing carbon to avert climate change and more about stimulating oil production from existing operations. While there are “seven CCS projects currently operating in Canada, mostly in the oil and gas sector, capturing about 0.5% of national emissions,” CCS in oil and gas production does not address emissions from “downstream uses of those fuels” and will, perversely, lead to more CO2 emissions on net. The IISD also notes that CCS is expensive, costing up to C$200 per tonne for current projects. (For reference, today’s government-set minimum carbon market price to emit a tonne of CO2 emissions is C$95.) IISD concludes CCS is “energy intensive, slow to implement, and unproven at scale, making it a poor strategy for decarbonizing oil and gas production.”

Another article in Scientific American observes that industrial carbon capture projects are “too small to matter” and that “today’s largest carbon capture projects only remove a few seconds’ worth of our yearly greenhouse gas emissions” and that this is “costing thousands of dollars for every ton of CO2 removed.” And as a way to capture massive volumes of CO2 (from industrial emission streams of out the air) and sequestering it to forestall atmospheric warming (climate change), the prospects are not good. Perhaps this is why the article’s author characterizes CCS as a “figleaf” for the fossil fuel industry (and now, apparently, the Carney government) to pretend they are reducing GHG emissions.

Prime Minister Carney should sharpen his thinking on CCS. While real and profitable when used in oil and gas production, it’s unlikely to be useful in combatting climate change. Best to avoid yet another costly climate change “solution” that is overpromised, overpriced and has historically underperformed.