Premier David Eby’s credibility is likely going to drop a lot further than the price of gas did overnight.
A night full of argument in the legislature Monday was expected to end with passage of a bill that follows the federal lead in eliminating the provincial version of the carbon tax on consumers, once considered a world-saving way to cut emissions.
It was introduced at the last possible moment and slammed through the legislature in one day to avoid a mandated increase in the tax scheduled for today.
It will be undeniably popular. It is expected to cut the pump price of gasoline by about 17 cents a litre. (That’s assuming oil companies don’t find some bogus excuse — a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, a shift change at a refinery — to hike their take of the price.)
There’s no doubt B.C. would have difficulty going it alone with a carbon tax, even though Eby promised a year ago he would do just that if need be.
But it’s a strikingly crass move. He’s shifted from helping to save the planet to saving his own skin. He had a lot of help from past self-serving B.C. Liberal and NDP governments along the way.
You could fill a library with quotes from Eby and his cabinet over the last few years extolling the virtues of the carbon tax — “the single most effective tool we have to reduce emissions.” The depth of their conviction to maintain it as the made-in-B.C. measure to fight climate change knew no bounds.
But last September they realized they were in danger of losing the upcoming election. So just before the start of the campaign, Eby signalled that if the corresponding federal law imposing a national carbon tax was rescinded, he would follow suit.
Federal abandonment loomed after then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau made a hash of it with special exemptions for Atlantic Canada.
Conservative Party of B.C. Leader John Rustad, who accomplished his own carbon tax pirouette and now opposes what he once supported, was making headway with that stance. Eby saw that and decided to follow suit.
He said then that people were struggling with affordability, the tax was getting too expensive and Trudeau had damaged its acceptability to the public.
It was quite telling that a week later B.C.’s municipal leaders passed an emergency motion at their convention defending the carbon tax. But they were just thinking about the future and the greater good. Eby and Rustad were focused on their own popularity, so they ignored all that.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney quashed the federal carbon tax in March, Eby started the rush to follow suit.
On Monday, he had some bigger, better reasons to abandon what was once a core belief.
The first was that it is mostly U.S. President Donald Trump’s fault.
“The tax has become divisive and when British Columbians and Canadians need to be pulling together, when there are huge pressures … from the Trump White House… it was important … to ensure that British Columbians were not having to pay the consumer carbon tax.”
The second was that the carbon tax became “absolutely toxic” due to the dedicated and concerted campaign by the federal and B.C. Conservative parties.
It boiled down to: “the Conservatives made me do it.”
“British Columbians don’t want it,” Eby said. “The policy has run its course. We listen to the people.”
He acknowledged the elimination might not be as big as it looks. Gas prices have increased recently, which negates part of the impact of a 10 per cent drop.
What’s left of the entire Clean B.C. suite of climate measures will have to be significantly retooled to make up for the $2 billion annual revenue hit.
The climate action tax credit for lower income earners is now abandoned as well.
Christy Clark, when she was premier, started weakening the tax — invented by the Gordon Campbell government — cancelling scheduled increases for a protracted period just to maintain poll standings.
But it was the John Horgan government that set the stage for this when it eliminated revenue neutrality — the mandate that every carbon tax hike had to be offset with cuts to other taxes.
Even with some artful bookkeeping that detracted from that principle, it was still a key reason why the tax was surprisingly well-accepted over its 17-year run.
If it had been left alone, some vestige of the tax could have survived. But an assortment of federal and provincial politicians of all stripes over the years took a valid idea and ruined it.
So today we can revert to filling the sky with fumes for free, and hope that the ongoing penalties on “big polluters” — those same industries the NDP is desperate to save from tariffs — will save the world.
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