Erin O’Toole is well aware he’s pushing for a carbon tax

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This article was published 16/04/2021 (1351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA—Despite his public denials, Erin O’Toole knows he’s proposing a carbon tax.

The senior staff around him know he’s proposing a carbon tax. The MPs in his caucus know he’s proposing a carbon tax. And the Conservative base knows he’s proposing a carbon tax.

They say this openly, albeit in conversations where they insist they cannot be named.

“It was a matter of when, not if,” the Conservatives would embrace carbon pricing, said one senior O’Toole source.

“We have to have a serious climate change plan, there’s just no way around it.”

But to appease the party’s base, they have to pretend what O’Toole pitched Thursday is not a tax. They have to try to drag the party, kicking and screaming, to the position that carbon pricing is the most conservative way to address the climate crisis — despite O’Toole vehemently opposing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax.

And O’Toole has to look members in the eye and convince them he did not mislead them when he pledged not to introduce a carbon tax.

Dan Albas, the party’s environment critic, said despite the similarities between the Liberal government plan and O’Toole’s plan, Canadians will have a clear choice in the next election.

“Canadians have convinced us that maintaining these targets (to reduce GHG emissions) is important to them,” Albas said in an interview Saturday.

“They also recognize that this can cost jobs and investment loss if we don’t do it with care.”

All of this is might seem rather silly and inconsequential, especially in the COVID crisis Canadians currently find themselves in.

But the real issue is that all major parties in Canada view carbon pricing as the best way to address the climate crisis. And nobody who puts the environment as their first electoral concern is going to vote for the Conservatives, and O’Toole’s people know that.

The response to O’Toole’s carbon tax reversal highlights a bigger issue — one that has haunted O’Toole since the leadership campaign. He ran as “true blue,” a dogmatic Conservative, and has tacked much more to the political centre since taking the party’s top job.

Conservative insiders viewed his leadership gamble as a shtick, an act to appeal to the party membership. Now that O’Toole has changed strategies to try and appeal to the general voting public, many of those same voices wonder what he actually stands for.

It was easier to convince Conservative members that O’Toole was better than Peter MacKay.

It’s not clear at this point, however, whether O’Toole’s team will have an easy job convincing voters the Conservative leader is better than Justin Trudeau.

Alex Boutilier is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @alexboutilier