Poilievre is running out of ideas

Pierre Poilievre is rattled. After months - nay, years! - of Conservative poll leads, the rejuvenated Liberals under new leader Mark Carney are now (at least) neck and neck, with a federal election expected to be announced any day now.

People really don't like Poilievre, and with good reason. The only reason he was doing well in the polls is that they disliked Trudeau even more. But now the Liberals have a new leader and he seems to be more palatable.

And since Carney announced that the unpopular consumer carbon tax is now toast - whatever you might think of that - "Axe the Tax" Poilievre is left without a major plank of his platform. So, what's a populist to do but up the ante?

Yesterday, Poilievre announced that, not only would he axe the consumer carbon tax, but also the industrial carbon tax, if he were ever to be let loose on the Canadian economy This tax, technically known as the Output Based Pricing System, has always done much more of the heavy lifting in the country's climate change strategy, representing about a third of our potential greenhouse gas reductions in the run-up to the 2030 Paris Accord deadline.

Instead, Poilievre says he will "boost incentives" and "expand eligibility for the clean technology and clean manufacturing investment tax credits", although it's hard to see how that would take up the slack from the current industrial carbon tax. We will need those as well, of course, but not instead of.

The industrial carbon tax is actually administered by the provinces in all cases except for Manitoba, PEI, Nunavut and Yukon, which don't have their own system in place, so it's also hard to know whether such a drastic-sounding policy would actually have any effect at all, although you can expect that Alberta will gleefully take advantage of any loophole Poilievre presents. Danielle Smith will do whatever she can to suck up to Poilivre; she does NOT want another Liberal federal government.

Poilievre has not come clean with any revised carbon targets, and quickly changes the subject when this is mentioned. Mr. Carney, currently on his European charm offensive, also points out that, if we are trying to diversify trade away from the USA, trade with the EU, with the UK, with emerging Asia, all require some kind of a carbon price as a prime requirement (this does seem to be true - it's called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism CBAM), and it's pretty new - despite what you might read in the more conservative corners of the internet). So, what is Mr. Poilievre's workaround for that?

Clearly, the Conservatives had to come up with something to try to arrest their precipitate slide in the polls. But this is not what the country needs. Let's hope the voters can se through Poilievre's electoral machinations.