Everything I have heard or read suggests that the recently-announced carbon pricing proposal from the Canadian federal Conservative Party is in fact a serious one, and people are bending over backwards to give credit to Erin O'Toole for at least trying to drag his intransigent party into the 21st century.
At the very least, he deserves some props for having the audacity to release a plan to deal with climate change just a week after his party members voted not to recognize that climate change is even a real thing. It certainly takes some cogones to shrug that off and pretend it didn't happen.
Be that as it may, it looks like the carbon pricing policy Mr. O'Toule has outlined IS a serious one, even if it is far from perfect, and even if does come wrapped up in a whole bunch of inconsistencies and paradoxes.
Essentially, O'Toole proposes completely cancelling the current Liberal carbon-pricing model which he dismisses as a "tax hike", and replacing it with a very similar Conservative one, which he insists is "not a tax", conservatives being congenitally opposed to taxes, and all. The words "levy", "price" and "pricing mechanism" were used instead of "tax", which is of course a dastardly Liberal idea.
The main difference is that, whereas the current Liberal scheme redistributes the carbon tax levied back to individuals through a tax rebate in order to make it revenue neutral, the Tory plan is to create individualized green savings accounts, which will be credited by some mysterious mechanism every time they fill up with gas, and which can only be used for purchases of climate-friendly goods like bicycles, transit passes electric cars or energy-efficient furnaces. It is thought that gas-buyers would literally swipe a card, Air Miles-style, when they pay for gas, in order to get their green savings.
It's an interesting idea, I guess, if a bit gimmicky, but I can't imagine how well it would work in practice. Many commentators - including some Conservative apologists and, at one point, O'Toole himself - have openly likened it to a loyalty rewards program, except that it would mainly reward those who use the most gas, enabling upper income earner to buy goods that they would probably have bought anyway, and arguably encouraging the very behaviour a carbon tax is supposed to deter. You can imagine the Liberals preparing their "the more you burn, the more you earn" attack ads as we speak.
Oh, and the Liberals' price per tonne of carbon is currently $40, and is set to gradually increase by $10 each year to $170 by 2030 (which is barely adequate, as regards Canada's international Paris Agreement commitments), while the Conservatives would set their price at a lowly $20 per tonne, rising to a maximum of $50 (which is, of course, nowhere near adequate).
To be fair, there is more to the Tory plan. They plan to keep the existing separate carbon pricing system for large industry, and to follow the Liberals' planned price increase schedule for it, although confusing the matter somewhat by also talking about trying to link the industrial price to that of trading partners like the EU and US (which doesn't even have an industrial carbon price).
On some fronts, though, they even plan to go beyond the current Liberal stance, by increasing the current Clean Fuel Standards (which the Conservatives originally railed against), and by requiring 30% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2030 (an idea it is rumoured the Liberals intend to pursue in the upcoming budget). They are also talking about additional taxes on luxury non-electric vehicles, as well as on frequent fliers. Finally, they are proposing a pretty comprehensive building energy retrofit program, additional funding for carbon capture programs and support for small modular nuclear reactors, and a carbon border adjustment tariff for products imported from countries with lower environmental standards than Canada.
All in all, it is not a plan to be laughed at, even if it is a bit vague and inconsistent in places. It is, however, a very liberal (i.e. un-conservative) plan, and it remains to be seen whether the party faithful can be persuaded of the merits of such a tax- and regulation-heavy program. It seems like a rather desperate case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". It looks increasingly like the realization that the Conservatives' best bet for getting elected is to move more toward the centre and becoming more and more like the Liberals. How many conservatives will be willing to follow O'Toole there remains to be seen.
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