Giving critics new ammunition

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2023 (704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re dealing with people who like to hit you on the head, maybe it’s a bad plan to keep handing them a new stick.

It’s nothing short of astounding that the people who form Canada’s federal government have yet to figure that out.

We are writing, of course, about the federal government’s decision to “carve out” Atlantic Canadians who heat with home heating oil from having to pay the carbon tax for the next three years.

Immediately after the decision was announced, the opposition federal Conservatives — and a growing number of provincial premiers — piled on to attack the decision, a response that was absolutely predictable.

Are there arguments to be made for having carbon tax relief only for fuel oil users?

Of course there are.

The simplest, perhaps, is that fuel oil is a remarkably expensive way to heat a home: while Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, for example, complains that the carbon tax should be taken off of natural gas and other heating methods in his province for fairness, he doesn’t address the issue that heating with home heating oil in, say, Prince Edward Island costs as much as four times as much as generating the same amount of heat in Saskatoon with natural gas. (And yes, P.E.I. is warmer in the winter than Saskatchewan, but that doesn’t cancel out the cost.)

Couple that with the argument that high fuel costs hit even harder in economically depressed areas like rural parts of Atlantic Canada, where wages and employment levels are typically lower than in the Prairie provinces, and you can see how a cogent explanation could be made that people need disproportionate levels of relief.

However, if the goal of a carbon tax on fuels is to move customers away from heating options that create more climate-threatening pollution, then carving out one part of the tax and exempting fuel oil in the Atlantic provinces is a boneheaded move — because it essentially admits the carbon levy isn’t about stopping pollution.

Home heating oil is far from being the best solution for heating from a climate point of view. (Though new research on the supposedly-cleaner option of natural gas suggests that methane leaks from natural gas infrastructure mean the greenhouse gas impacts of using natural gas make it more harmful than — gasp — burning coal.)

So, either the carbon tax plan is to coerce people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or it isn’t.

Having the federal Liberals argue that giving a three-year reprieve to Atlantic Canadian oil customers will give them time to change over to more environmentally friendly systems undermines the carbon tax claim even more — wouldn’t, then, a three-year carbon tax holiday for everyone in the country make everyone move to more environmentally-sound heating solutions?

All of the above could be classed as reasonable debate and discussion about a policy decision that, in the end, is precious hard to defend.

But all of that, of course, doesn’t matter the tiniest little bit right now.

In the grievance theatre that currently dominates Canadian politics, where everything is always someone else’s fault, even the regularly imperious federal Liberals should have realized they were handing not just a stick to their opponents, but a cudgel.

You could give some Canadian politicians a free cake every single day, and they’d complain about its flavour or its colour, its calories or its cost. (Or that other premiers got a better cake.)

The Liberal move is dumb politics layered on top of dumb politics, with an extra buttercream frosting of short-sighted political ignorance.

And it gives politicians who oppose any move by the Liberals a brand-new weapon.

Anyone should have seen that coming.