Erin O’Toole takes one for the team with his carbon-pricing plan

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2021 (1349 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s about-face on carbon pricing may not improve the odds that he will become prime minister. The opposite is just as likely. But come what may in the next election and beyond, he will be leaving his party a legacy most Conservatives should eventually come to appreciate.

Far from making the party politically bulletproof on an issue that is increasingly stunting his party’s growth outside of the Prairies, O’Toole’s climate plan — at least in the short term — puts the Conservatives right in the middle of the climate change crossfire.

With an election possibly only months away, it is not a comfortable place to be.

To wit: On Thursday, the very first hits on O’Toole’s decision came from within his party’s coalition. There will be more fire coming his way over the next weeks and months.

It is easy to see why many diehard Conservative supporters would feel betrayed by their leader’s embrace of carbon pricing.

For the past decade, they have been fed a steady dose of rhetoric about the alleged evils of the very measure O’Toole now asserts is an essential part of any effective climate change policy.

Based on the refusal of a majority of delegates at the recent Conservative convention to even acknowledge that climate change is a serious problem their party must address, years of overhyped language on carbon pricing has baked in the notion that the entire issue is a hoax.

Until this week, the Conservative party — under O’Toole’s two predecessors and over the latter’s leadership campaign — went out of its way to label any attempt to put a price on carbon, be it by the implementation of a cap-and-trade system or via a provincial or federal levy on fossil fuels, as a “job-killing” tax.

Good luck with now trying to make a case on the hustings that the party’s carbon pricing proposal does not fall in the same broad category.

At the same time, the Conservatives’ latest policy offers lots of holes for climate-concerned critics to poke at.

On that score, its carbon pricing segment distracts from what is otherwise a valiant effort to raise the party’s game. But that distraction is nevertheless significant.

Like the Liberals, a Conservative federal government would impose a fossil fuel levy on consumers.

But it would be significantly lower. Instead of rising from $40 a tonne to $170 in 2030, it would decrease by half to $20 and not rise above $50 a tonne.

O’Toole is exposing his party to a lot of political flak for what in the long run could become an inefficient carbon pricing approach.

From a provincial perspective, it could even be construed as an invitation to stand down.

Take Quebec and British Columbia: both provinces have policies in place that currently meet Justin Trudeau’s higher carbon pricing criteria. If they signed on to O’Toole’s plan instead of staying the course to an even stricter emissions target, they would be downsizing their climate change ambitions.

The other difference is that a Conservative government would set in place a system — along the lines of a loyalty program — that would see each dollar spent on the fossil fuel levy accumulate in individual climate change savings accounts, to be spend on so-called green purchases.

The more one would consume fossil fuels, the more one would accumulate in one’s account.

A government-mandated agency would presumably be tasked with ascertaining that the money is spent on a bicycle rather than a motorcycle.

On that score, the scheme amounts to a somewhat intrusive substitute to the rebates currently on offer from the federal government in the provinces where Ottawa’s carbon levy applies.

O’Toole’s decision to bite the bullet on carbon pricing could be a lose-lose move for his leadership and his prime ministerial aspirations.

Backing out of the climate change dead end his party has driven itself into is fast becoming a political necessity. The alternative is to again crash in the same wall in the next campaign.

But he has yet to bring many of his own constituencies on board.

His announcement comes at a time when his relationship with the social conservative forces he courted to win the leadership is deteriorating.

And he will have to continue to twist himself in a pretzel to make the case that his planned levy is not really a tax. The initial reviews of his announcement suggest he will not be fooling many in the process.

But he is also bringing the country closer to an overdue consensus on carbon pricing and charting a (twisted) path for his party to rejoin the climate change mainstream.

It probably does not feel that way for many Conservatives this week but with his about face on carbon pricing, Erin O’Toole is at the very least taking one for the team.

Chantal Hébert is an Ottawa-based freelance contributing columnist covering politics for the Star. Reach her via email: chantalh28@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert