One of the authors of this op-ed resides in a municipality, which recently launched an online survey to gauge the preferences of residents with respect to its upcoming budget, which is laudable, but the questions illustrate a problem within government: a bias for more government.
The City of Coquitlam in British Columbia asked respondents whether it should increase, decrease or simply maintain the same level of spending in 2025 for policing, recreation, water and sewage, infrastructure and others items. The problem: there wasn’t a single question on whether residents prefer tax reductions.
Moreover, there was no discussion or context about how increased spending for these activities must come from taxpayers in the form of either having more taxpayers (city population increases) and/or higher tax rates for those residing in the city. What’s clear from the survey is that the municipal government prefers to spend more.
And this bias towards more government within government is not restricted to this local municipality. Other municipalities, provincial governments and certainly the Trudeau federal government have favoured more spending.
Under Prime Minister Trudeau federal spending has reached never-before-seen levels, even after adjusting for inflation. Consider, for instance, that per-person federal spending (excluding interest costs) will reach $11,901 this fiscal year (inflation-adjusted), well above previous levels of per-person spending including during the 2008-09 financial crisis and both world wars. The rationale is that Ottawa is delivering services demanded by Canadians.
But is that true? Are Canadians demanding national pharmacare, national dental benefits and a national daycare program? The answer depends on whether the costs of those programs are included in the discussion.
A 2022 poll asked Canadians about their support for all three programs. Support ranged from 69 per cent for national daycare, to 72 per cent for dental care, to 79 per cent for pharmacare. Here’s the problem, though. The questions were asked without respondents considering any costs. In other words, the respondents were asked whether they support these programs assuming they don’t affect their taxes.
But of course, taxpayers must pay for government spending, and when those costs are included, Canadians are much less supportive. In the same poll, when increased spending is linked with an increase in the GST, support plummets to 36 per cent for daycare, 40 per cent for pharmacare and 42 per cent for dental care.
And these results are not unique. A 2020 poll by the Angus Reid Institute found 86 per cent support for a national prescription drug program—but that support drops by almost half (47 per cent) if a one-percentage point increase in the middle-class personal income tax rate is included.
One explanation for the dramatic change in support rests in another poll, which found that 74 per cent of respondents felt the average Canadian family was overtaxed.
So it’s convenient for governments to avoid connecting more spending with higher taxes.
This internal government support for more government also shows up in our tax mix. Canadian governments rely on less visible taxes than our counterparts in the OECD, a group of high-income, developed countries. For instance, Canadian governments collect 6.8 per cent of the economy (GDP) in consumption taxes such as the GST, which are quite visible and transparent because the cost shows up directly on your bill. That ranks Canada 31st of 38 OECD countries and well below the OECD average of 10.0 per cent.
Alternatively, we rely on personal income tax revenues to a much greater degree and, because these taxes are automatically deducted from the paycheques of Canadians, they are much less apparent to workers. Canada collects 12.3 per cent of the economy in personal income taxes, ranking us 6th highest for our reliance on personal income taxes and above the OECD average of 8.3 per cent.
And a complying media aids the push for more government spending. According to a recent study, when reporting on the announcement of three new federal programs (pharmacare, dental care and national daycare) the CBC and CTV only included the cost of these programs in 4 per cent of their television news coverage. Most of the coverage related to the nature of the new programs, their potential impact on Canadians, and the responses from the Conservative, NDP and Bloc Quebecois. Simply put, the main television coverage didn’t query the government on the cost of these new programs and how taxpayers would pay the bill, leaving many viewers with the mistaken impression that the programs are costless.
Indeed, it’s interesting to note that the same study found that 99.4 per cent of press releases issued by the federal government related to these three programs excluded any information on their costs or impact on the budget.
The inherent bias within government for more government is increasingly clear, and supported by a lack of skepticism in the media. Canadians need clearer information from government on the potential benefits and costs of new or expanded spending, and the media must do a better job of critically covering government initiatives. Only then can we realistically understand what Canadians actually demand from government.
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“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
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.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
