Well, the election is over, and it turns out that I was right to be sceptical of the polls. Polling which showed collapsing support for the Conservative Party, which I said over and over didn’t track with what I was seeing on the ground, was clearly wrong. In fact, the Conservative Party increased their share of the vote by more than 7 points, breaking 40% for the first time since 1988, while picking up 23 seats in parliament.
That kept the Liberals to a minority government — something the pollsters were definitely not predicting — and they only did as well as they did because the Bloc Québécois lost ground and the NDP were absolutely decimated.
For this we have Donald Trump to thank, and his unprecedented intervention in our election. Not to mention Canadian boomers, who as a group ranked Trump as the most important issue in this election, and “Making Canada a better place to live” as their least important issue, just behind “Growing the Economy” and making life more affordable.
They’ve made their money, after all. They’ve built up tremendous equity in their homes. And it just made them feel good to vote in a way that they thought would make Donald Trump mad. (Not that it did.)
We are now seeing a rising generation of younger adults who will be the first to lose ground as compared to their parents since the Great Depression. And why is that? Because the Baby Boomers decided to vote to reward those politicians whose policies have been, and will continue to be, a direct assault on the Canadian cost of living.
Carney’s government will double down on the worst policies of the Trudeau era. He is, after all, the Apostle of Net-Zero.
That means doubling down on carbon taxation, especially in the form of the Industrial Carbon Tax, which will hurt existing businesses and discourage others from getting off the ground. And if he sees an opportunity to go back to charging the Consumer Carbon Tax — remember that it remains on the books — he will do that as well.
It also means continued electric vehicle mandates. Many Canadians remain ignorant of the fact that the Trudeau Liberals banned the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, beginning in 2035, just ten years from now. It took some prodding, but the Conservatives vowed to scrap that mandate.
Now it will remain in effect, and that means higher priced gas-and-diesel driven cars in the near term, as Canadians start to process the fact that they won’t be able to buy them soon. It will mean eventually being forced to buy even more expensive EVs and, if nothing changes, without government support, as the federal EV subsidy program ran out of money months ago.
Meanwhile, prepare for every story about an auto company bailing on commitments to build electric vehicles in Canada to feel like a crisis. Those agreements were negotiated at a time when decision makers assumed that Donald Trump would lose his second bid for the White House, and Americans would have EVs forced on them as well.
In that climate, it seemed like a great idea to accept the mountains of taxpayer dollars being offered to automakers by Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford. But without the American market, doing so makes much less business sense. Even with Doug Ford bellowing that he’s going to “hold them accountable” and force them to “continue manufacturing automobiles here in Ontario!”
And it further means that the Trudeau government’s war on pipelines will now become the Carney government’s war on pipelines.
Remember, while campaigning just a few weeks ago, how Carney went to Edmonton and proclaimed his intention to:
Make Canada “the world’s leading energy superpower,”
Invest in our “natural strengths and ensure our economic sovereignty,” and
fast-track “projects of national interest,”
while acknowledging that,
“any major energy project that comes from this great province is going to pass the boundaries of other provinces?”
His clear implication was that he intended to change course from his predecessor, to facilitate the building of pipelines, perhaps to revive Energy East, and to do so even over the objections of Quebec.
Suffice it to say, we didn’t believe a word of it. And now we see we were right not to do so, as we’ve just seen two of Carney’s ministers — Steven Guilbeault and Dominic LeBlanc — throw cold water on the idea that the Carney government would support new pipeline projects.
That’s because the activists who continue to run our country would prefer the pat on the head they get from the Davos brigade than to support the backbone of our economy, the natural resource sector, upon which Canadian jobs, energy affordability, and our overall cost of living rests.
All this means, of course, is that our work is not done. Our fight to protect the Canada we all know and love, where regular people can do honest work, buy a house, raise a family and live comfortably, goes on.
As disappointing as the outcome of this election was, it is just a setback. More and more people are hearing our message. We’re already seeing signs of buyer’s remorse among Carney voters. And, to put it bluntly, if something can’t continue on one way forever, it won’t. Which is to say, we’re going to have to change course sometime. The sooner, the better.
So, to borrow a phrase, Elbows Up.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions.
Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.
“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.
