One of the biggest mysteries of the past decade or so has been the lingering of Justin Trudeau. Just how has he managed to stay in post for so long? Nonetheless, the political crises that are inevitably caused by victims of woke-green ideology’s disengagement from reality ultimately led to the Canadian Prime Minister’s resignation. Rather than taking the question of the legitimacy of his Government to the public, in characteristically cowardly style Trudeau suspended Parliament until his party had chosen a successor. Subsequently, the Liberal Party has chosen former Governor of both the Bank of Canada (2008-13) and the Bank of England (2013-20), Mark Carney. Among his policy commitments, Carney has told Canadians that he will abolish the country’s hated Consumer Carbon Tax. But is this about-face on climate policy what it seems, and what does it say about Canada’s new Prime Minister and the next?
Canada’s Left- and green-leaning equivalent to the BBC, the CBC, reported earlier this year that “Nearly every single Liberal, NDP and Conservative MP who currently sits in the House of Commons… won their seat while carrying a commitment to apply a price on carbon”. The similarities between Canadian and British politics do not stop at the equivalents of state-owned news broadcasters. On both sides of the Atlantic, dominant political parties have been united on a consensus that has denied the public a choice and the scrutiny of public debate. These two democratic failures have invariably led to bad policy design. Despite the claims of Liberal and green wonks that the tax was ‘effective and popular’, by 2023 polling showed that the tax enjoyed the support of just 15% of Canadians. Trudeau’s opposite, Pierre Poilievre, seized the opportunity to make the tax an issue in the long-awaited next General Election.
