Taxpayers shouldn’t buy Trudeau’s carbon tax bait and switch

Atlantic MPs forced the prime minister to stop punishing people with the carbon tax just because they depend on furnace oil to heat their homes.

That’s a good thing.

But that won’t help about 60 per cent of Atlantic Canadians who heat their homes with something else.

And those families are struggling to pay for heating bills and everything else.

Here’s the good news: those Atlantic MPs can stand up for their constituents and vote to take the carbon tax off all home heating bills. That motion is coming up in the House of Commons on Monday.

It’s the obvious next step.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced his government is suspending the carbon tax on home heating oil for three years.

This is after Trudeau travelled to every part of the country for years telling taxpayers that they were better off financially with the carbon tax after federal rebates.

But that math never added up.

The average Atlantic household will lose between $347 and $465 this year, even after the rebates. That’s according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

And those numbers will rise to between $1,316 and $1,521 by 2030.

The government’s carbon tax exemption for furnace oil shows that even Trudeau knows it leaves families worse off.

While up to 40 per cent of Atlantic households use home heating oil, most Canadians will be left out in the cold. Home heating oil is only used by three per cent of households nationwide.

Meanwhile, Trudeau is refusing to exempt cleaner home heating methods, such as natural gas, from the carbon tax.

The government is hoping that taxpayers in Atlantic Canada can be bought off by temporarily taking the carbon tax off home heating oil. But taxpayers are smarter than Trudeau’s brain trust thinks. They can spot a gimmick when they see one.

Having a break on paying the carbon tax on home heating oil is nice.

But let’s not forget that this is a temporary pause until after the next election. The punishing carbon tax is set to come back in three years. And it will actually be higher than it was before Trudeau hit the pause button.

Then there’s the fact that the federal government is completely ignoring the 60 per cent of Atlantic Canadians who heat their homes with something other than furnace oil.

And, of course, there’s the fact that the carbon tax isn’t only clobbering taxpayers on home heating.

Parents still need to get their kids to school. Folks still have to drive to work. And the prime minister is doing absolutely nothing to bring down sky-high gas taxes.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland once suggested that taxpayers avoid the carbon tax by biking to work or taking the subway.

Tell that to folks in Corner Brook or Summerside.

Next, consider the cost of food.

Farmers are still paying carbon taxes on the natural gas and propane they use to warm their barns and dry their crops. That makes milk and eggs more expensive. And truckers still need to pay the carbon tax on diesel when they’re bringing that food to the grocery store. The federal carbon tax makes farming and trucking more expensive and that makes food more expensive.

More than 50 per cent of Canadians say they are $200 away from not being able to pay their bills. They need real help on affordability, not a temporary political stunt.

Let’s address one final point. The Trudeau government claims the carbon tax is necessary because of climate change. Evidence shows the policy is ineffective. British Columbia has Canada’s longest running experiment with a carbon tax. Yet the province’s emissions actually increased from 2011 to 2021.

Trudeau credited his “amazing” Atlantic MPs for his decision to give folks a break on home heating oil. And they deserve credit. But those MPs have more work to do: they need to stand up and vote to take the carbon tax off all home heating on Monday.