LILLEY: Freeland and Carney run away, kind of, from carbon tax

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Liberals are now all in on axing the tax, the carbon tax that is. Less than two weeks after Justin Trudeau announced he would resign as Liberal leader and PM once the party picks a replacement, his signature policy is dead.

At least in name, though voters should be wary based on statements from the key players that they will just rebrand the tax on everything. To paraphrase Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would stink just as much.

“I’ve said for a long time if you’re going to take out the carbon tax, you should replace it with something that is at least, if not more effective,” Mark Carney said on Thursday at his launch.

The former central banker and United Nations environmental crusader has long advocated for carbon taxes. In fact, in the past, his only complaint about Trudeau’s carbon tax is that it wasn’t high enough, he called for even steeper prices.

Now, seeking to become Liberal leader and PM, Carney is hinting that maybe, he might, kinda will ditch the carbon tax but … he’s still trying to tell you that you are better off with it.

“Perception may be that it takes out more than the rebate provides, but reality is different, and Canadians will miss that money,” Carney said.

Until this week, the position of everyone in the Liberal Party was that if you axed the carbon tax as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has suggested for more than two years, that you would be taking money away from Canadians. In fact, as Poilievre’s support has grown due to dissatisfaction with the carbon tax, that’s been the argument the Liberals have pushed back with.

“The only thing they know how to do is cut, cut, cut, so it is no surprise that they want to cut the carbon rebates that leave eight out of 10 Canadian families better off,” then Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said last year.

They portrayed cutting the carbon tax as making Canadians poorer, now they want to run away from their central policy.

“She is ready to make difficult decisions to meet our emissions targets and make sure big polluters pay for their outsized emissions. But she will not fight Canadians on a policy, they have been clear, they do not support,” CTV quoted an anonymous source on Freeland’s team as saying.

Is it any wonder that the Conservative Party has launched a series of online videos and a website to tie Freeland and Carney to Trudeau’s carbon tax. They supported it for years, even as polling showed it was becoming less popular, and only distanced themselves once Trudeau stepped down.

The Conservatives have launched the website JustLikeJustin.ca to track each of the prospective Liberal candidates and their support for Trudeau and his carbon tax. The main focus is on Carney and Freeland though with each of them also being the subject of videos.

The one-minute video for Freeland shows how close she is to Trudeau and how the two of them repeatedly stated they had full confidence in each other. For Carney, the Conservatives have launched a 30-second video saying that Mark Carney showing several clips of Carney backing the carbon tax and one of him saying, “speaking as a European.”

Carney declared himself a European while on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While born in Canada, Carney also carried Irish citizenship through his grandparents as well as British citizenship. The Liberals downplayed the dual citizenship of past leader Stephane Dion but attacked Conservative leader Andrew Scheer over his dual citizenship in the 2019 election.

While there are other prospective candidates to become Liberal leader including Frank Baylis, Ruby Dhalla, Karina Gould, Chandra Arya and Jaime Battiste, this is really a race between Freeland and Carney. What is fascinating is how little either campaign wants to be associated with the current Trudeau government and their record.

In addition to running away from the carbon tax, both front runners want to distance themselves from Trudeau. Beyond the catchy slogan, though, the Conservatives are accurate in saying that based on their records, both Freeland and Carney are both like Justin.

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