Canada blasted a tax and made pollution cheap again.
Canada blasted a tax and made pollution cheap again.
Chopping $20 billion off the price of climate-polluting fuels means more pollution and fewer reasons to buy climate solutions. Here's a deep, chart-packed, dive into what just happened.
- One third of Canada’s emissions lose CO2 pollution pricing
- $20 billion cheaper to buy climate-polluting fuels
- 15 to 20 million more tonnes of CO2 projected by 2030
- Climate solutions undercut
Omg will people never be happy. What feels like 12 million years of Poilievre screeching “AxE tHe TaX”
Carney’s like fine, bet.
Now the journalistic take is we’re mad the tax was axed?
Listen - I don’t really care about this for the moment because if we don’t elect Carney I’m genuinely worried there won’t be a Canada, all of our shit will get privatized, and industrial pollution regulations will get deleted.
What a time for this take. Yeah price to pay to shut up the sloganeering zombies so we can actually have an election. We can double back on climate after - I think Carney’s serious about climate.
It's every voice just as loud at once. We're more psychologically geared for living in a bubble.
That being said, the Liberals dropped the ball on playing any politics with the carbon tax. The cheques should have come only in paper, and in a pretty envelope covered in windmills. People are too dumb to actually pay attention to how the policy works on their own, apparently.
Yes I agree. I think the media/propaganda game of the conservatives was just better on this issue.
The liberals overestimate how much normal people pay attention and feel their policies will speak for themselves. No you need to repeat it on a never ending loop and make it very very simple for people to understand. They started doing this but only after they let the conservatives set the tone and message - by then people weren’t listening. I also blame our absolutely toothless legacy media. The fact that they let Pierre talk about how Carney was “unelected” without IMMEDIATELY fact checking that, preferably TO HIS FACE, is disgraceful. The fact that they let him continue to lie and gaslight us around his security clearance is cowardice.
Similar to how Poilievre’s trying to repaint his relationship with MAGA - people just don’t believe him and I don’t think there’s anything he can do to change that. And they shouldn’t believe him - he’s a twat.
The liberals were just really bad at operationalizing their policies. Too much thinking and talking - not enough doing.
That said, I cannot overstate how misinformed and disengaged our electorate has been. I had to push my friends to go vote in Ontario’s provincial election - they didn’t know it was happening, didn’t know where to vote, didn’t know what they needed to vote, and thought THEY WEREN’T ALLOWED TO VOTE because they hadn’t received their voter card in time.
I do think we as a society need to give people more permission to try things out and get things wrong without absolutely excoriating them, however. Decriminalization in BC comes to mind.
I assure you the National Observer is not a media outlet that was calling for the carbon tax to be cancelled.
I know.
I know we can walk and chew gum at the same time and hold the government to account on climate measures.
Big caveat - it seems pretty tone deaf at the moment relative to the threats on our sovereignty.
I don’t see a path for Carney to be elected without getting rid of the tax, at least momentarily.
We do need to realize that not everyone is aligned with Stephen Guilbault on this issue. My big gripe is that there’s always been a lot of analysis and policy and talk but no actual plan to sell to the electorate in a way that will improve their lives without costing them exorbitant amounts of money.
For example, the electric car 2030 push. Seems good on paper. But, I frequently drive 5-6 hours to northern Ontario. No electric car is going to make it there without having to stop to charge for HOURS. So I’m doubling my travel time for what? A good quality EV is 30k+. Who has that kind of money for a product that is going to be less convenient? The solution would be to improve rail service and mass transport but have there been ANY plans to do that? No. This is why people get pissed off about climate policies. Because it’s a huge inconvenience and will massively disrupt their lives. Instead of the government doing things that actually help people in the face of this, we get paltry rebates and almost no supporting infrastructure.
I’m incredibly pro- climate measures but the government has to make things easier for people. The population is fucking tired and not receptive to more inconveniences that make their lives harder. The government needs to solve for that to get people onboard. I’m not talking discounts or rebates I’m talking FREE - free solar panels, free heat pumps. Cheap and affordable public long distance transit. The passenger train goes to my destination ONE time every week. That’s simply not enough. Requiring automakers to standardize charging inputs and somehow speeding up the charging. Charging stations at every gas station, yes, even in rural areas. It has to be better, cheaper, and more convenient than the status quo to get Canadians onboard.
Liberals when conservatives do conservative shit: "this is awful"(rightly so)
Liberals when liberals do conservative shit: "this is fine"(it's not)
Everything points to a right-wing pivot for the liberals and the voters seem just fine with that.
This reminds me of the gaza genocide; vote for a candidate that's going to continue the killing, or vote for a lunatic that will increase it tenfold, or don't vote at all. How did the latter work out again?
Maybe we have to lose this battle to win the war.
If we had proportional representation, we could vote for parties that took serious action. Instead, we're still playing this same broken game.
Yep. I still really hope that will come together.