Skip to main content
opinion

Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer hoped to raise his stature as a prime-minister-in-waiting when he met with Indian leader Narendra Modi, Tuesday. But Doug Ford has already done much more to advance the Conservative cause.

Ontario’s Premier and Alberta Opposition Leader Jason Kenney headlined a jam-packed rally in Calgary last Friday, dedicated to fighting the Liberal carbon tax. Two days earlier, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Premier Brian Pallister switched positions and announced that his government will not co-operate with Ottawa in pricing carbon. Saskatchewan has rejected the idea from Day 1.

If Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs becomes premier of New Brunswick, and Mr. Kenney wins the spring election in Alberta − both of which appear likely − that will make five provinces opposed to a carbon tax.

Which means that the federal government will impose financial penalties on provincial governments representing 60 per cent of Canada’s population because they refuse to put a price on carbon.

Mr. Scheer also opposes the carbon tax, which will be a front-and-centre issue in the next election. A coalition of premiers campaigning to axe that tax would be a powerful asset for the Conservative Leader. It could help make him prime minister.

Mr. Scheer was in India for obvious reasons. Opposition leaders want to be taken seriously. Meeting with foreign leaders is one way to convey that impression.

Photographs with Mr. Modi are particularly welcome, because they contrast with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fashion disaster there earlier this year. Mr. Kenney was in India last month.

But the next election won’t be about trade with India. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals are keen to fight the election on the issue of putting a "price on pollution,” as the Grits prefer to put it.

The advantage for the Liberals is that the facts are solidly on their side. The latest United Nations report, released on Sunday, shows the world barrelling toward a climate catastrophe unless every country ups its game.

Most economists, including one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics, argue that carbon taxes are the best way to fight global warming by modifying behaviour.

But people don’t want to modify their behaviour. To be more specific, middle-class suburban home-and-car owners in Canada hate to see their fuel bills going up, even as the United States, China and India − who collectively account for almost half of all emissions − don’t do enough to bend the curve.

Opponents of the carbon tax are on more solid ground when they argue that while Ottawa should encourage provinces to reduce carbon emissions, prime ministers have no business ordering premiers to do their bidding. If the federal government wants a carbon tax, it should impose a federal carbon tax, not penalize provinces that refuse to impose one of their own.

Besides, as Jen Gerson pointed out in Maclean’s on the weekend, fighting the carbon tax is about more than fighting the carbon tax: It’s about taking on the entire Liberal agenda, and the downtown elites who embrace that agenda. Promising to kill the carbon tax is populist. It helped Doug Ford become Ontario Premier.

Put it another way: This fight pits plain-talking-family folk − as Mr. Scheer and Mr. Ford like the style themselves − against Mr. Trudeau’s sometimes grating tendency to divide society into the enlightened and the unenlightened. Those he considers unenlightened don’t take it well.

We can’t predict what the political terrain will look like a year from now. What if next summer is a repeat of the recent past, only worse: more and bigger forest fires in the West and Northern Ontario, more severe flooding in Toronto, a hurricane that sideswipes Atlantic Canada, tornadoes?

What if five white male premiers stomping around complaining about carbon taxes while ignoring environmental issues anger women and younger voters?

Most important, what if the Tories shift the focus of the election by succumbing to anti-immigration dog-whistles? Many − in some ridings, most − of those suburban middle-class home-and-car owners are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Even a hint of right-wing nativism will send them stampeding to the Liberals.

The situation is complex. But to those who tend to discount the impact of the coalition of premiers, ask yourself this: If you were a federal political leader, would you rather have the premier of a given province campaigning with you or with your opponent?

Exactly.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe