Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said on Wednesday that he’s giving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau twenty-four hours to announce that he’s pausing his planned carbon tax increase before he proposes a non-confidence motion in a bid to force a “carbon tax election.”
The Poilievre Conservative’s new strategy comes as Trudeau’s ever-increasing carbon tax is set to raise on April 1, from $65 per tonne of carbon emissions to $80.
“BREAKING: Common sense Conservatives will move a motion to declare non-confidence in the Trudeau government & call for a carbon tax election,” the Opposition leader posted on X.
Will this actually work?
The motion is unlikely to actually work given that the Trudeau Liberals and Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrat Party are effectively a coalition party, with a formal supply-and-confidence agreement in place that provides protection to Trudeau against such motions.
In exchange, the Liberals promised to take action on NDP policies like climate change, affordable housing, childcare and health care.
The NDP and Liberal Party finalized their agreement in March 2022.
Since then, the NDP under Jagmeet Singh has played lackey to the Trudeau regime, ensuring that the latter has the votes to routinely pass legislation, despite only having a minority government.
Some predict Trudeau will cave
CTV’s Don Martin said last week that the Liberals’ recent backtrack on plans to hike the beer excise tax “almost guaranteed a similar carbon tax move in the offing.”
The widespread disaproval of the Trudeau Liberals’ carbon tax is well documented. Seven Premiers have now asked Trudeau to at least pause the tax before his next planned increase, including Newfoundland’s Liberal Premier Andrew Furey. In a poll, the majority of Canadians have also expressed opposition to the tax.
In Ontario, the opposition Liberals led by Bonnie Crombie have recently distanced themselves from supporting the federal carbon tax, as they’re getting smoked in the polls against the Conservative Ford government that’s staunchly against it.
Amid truly horrid polling numbers, the federal Liberals are arguing that Poilievre is trying to “rob” money from citizens by advocating for the carbon tax to be scrapped, as doing so would mean the Liberals’ carbon tax rebates would also stop.
