OPINION: Ford must fight the carbon tax on Ontario industries

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Premier Doug Ford is the only thing standing between Prime Minister Mark Carney’s hidden industrial carbon tax and the people of Ontario.

Carney dropped the consumer carbon tax to zero. That’s a good thing because that carbon tax punishes people for driving to work and heating their homes.

Getting rid of that tax saves people about $13 when they fill up a minivan, about $20 when filling up a pickup truck and about $200 when filling up a big rig that delivers food and supplies. It will also save the average Ontario family more than $325 per year on heating bills.

But here’s the thing: Carney is going to shift the carbon tax we paid at the gas pump over to a hidden industrial carbon tax.

That puts Canadian businesses into an impossible situation.

Many businesses will have to pass on the cost of the hidden industrial carbon tax to ordinary Canadians by raising prices. When refineries and utilities get hit with a hidden carbon tax, it’s a good bet the real bill shows up on gas station receipts and home heating bills.

For other businesses already struggling with tariffs, a hidden industrial carbon tax makes it even harder to compete, so the only viable option is shifting production south.

Canadians will still be punished with the cost of Carney’s hidden carbon tax on businesses, but it will be harder to know where the pain is coming from.

“The issue wasn’t, to coin a phrase, whether to ‘axe the tax,’ the issue was how to change it,” Carney said.

Carney is not getting rid of carbon taxes, because carbon taxes are central to his worldview.

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“Meaningful carbon prices are the cornerstone of any effective climate policy,” Carney wrote in his book, Value(s). “Carbon prices should increase in a gradual and predictable way.”

Carney laid out his plans to crank up the hidden industrial carbon tax at a press conference in Halifax.

When CTV’s Todd Battis asked Carney if the cost would be passed on to consumers, Carney replied, “How much steel are you using around here, Todd?”

The government of Canada reports: “One of Canada’s largest industries, the steel sector, generates annual sales of more than $11 billion, including $3 billion in exports, and directly employs about 35,000 workers.”

And that steel production is concentrated in Ontario.

Workers in Ontario’s steel industry are warning Carney’s hidden industrial carbon tax will be devastating.

A Hamilton trade union endorsed Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives because they’re promising to scrap all carbon taxes, including the hidden industrial tax.

“The industrial carbon tax that Mark Carney has pledged to keep and undoubtedly increase will decimate the City of Hamilton and all its supportive industries,” said Nathan Bergstrand, the business manager for the Canadian Piping Trades, Local 67, in Hamilton. “I have spoken with top officials at our most vibrant steel producers and industrial carbon tax costs upwards of $800 million dollars a year and will increase once the consumer carbon tax is shifted upwards to producers.”

The trade union representative said the industrial carbon tax will “play right into Donald Trump’s hands, moving that steel production to the states and all the jobs that come with it.”

Ford should speak out against Carney’s industrial carbon tax because it’s going to cost the people of Ontario a lot of money and it will drive jobs south of the border.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe clearly stated he is against Carney’s hidden carbon tax on businesses and that his province is now Canada’s first carbon tax-free zone.

It’s time for Ford to get off the bench, stick up for his industries and workers and push back against Carney’s carbon tax on Canadian businesses.

— Franco Terrazzano is the federal director and Kris Sims is the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation