OPINION: Canadians win battle against consumer carbon tax

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Hardworking Canadians have a big reason to celebrate – they forced the Liberal government to drop its own consumer carbon tax.

And when taxpayers won the fight against that carbon tax, they proved they can win the fight against hidden carbon taxes on Canadian businesses.

The so-called consumer carbon tax is the tax you pay directly on every heating bill and at the gas station.

It’s the tax that gets hiked every year on April 1.

Everyday Canadians were fed up with paying $13 extra when they filled-up their minivans and paying about $400 extra to heat their homes in the winter.

Farmers and truckers were done with being punished for the sin of growing food and hauling supplies.

Over the last six years, federal politicians told those normal working people to sit down, shut up and pay their carbon tax bills.

They even tried to convince Canadians that a carbon tax made them richer. The Parliamentary Budget Officer proved this is incorrect – three times.

The numbers are clear: the carbon tax cost Canadians money even after accounting for rebates.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau said only rich people with a “big mansion, an indoor swimming pool and three big personal cars” were feeling the cost of the carbon tax.

Normal working people who are fighting to get by didn’t believe that nonsense for a second. They demanded Ottawa scrap the carbon tax.

At one point, all of Official Ottawa refused to listen.

The tone-deaf flirtation with the carbon tax was very short lived in the Conservative Party.

After the CPC ousted their former leader, Erin O’Toole, the Conservatives immediately opposed the carbon tax and they promised to scrap it once again.

CPC Leader Pierre Poilievre has been campaigning to axe the tax since he won leadership.

Normal working people knew the carbon tax was a tax on everything and they wanted it gone.

The people spoke up so loudly and so firmly that they forced Ottawa to listen.

Prime Minister Mark Carney told the government to set the consumer carbon tax level to zero.

People driving to the gas station should soon see the price drop at the pumps and the home heating bills will be a little less awful at the tail end of winter.

This is remarkable.

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Canadians opposed the carbon tax so firmly that even Carney – the recent UN Special Envoy on Climate Action, the Oxford PhD who wrote a 507-page book advocating carbon taxes – was forced to admit the carbon tax had to go.

Canadians should take this moment to celebrate their win because the consumer carbon tax is gone – for now.

In British Columbia, Carney’s campaign crowd laughed at the idea of axing the carbon tax.

In Halifax, Carney said he would shift the visible cost of the carbon tax into a hidden carbon tax on Canadian businesses and he would create new carbon tax tariffs on imports to Canada.

The last thing Canadians need is another tariff and it’s worse that Carney wants to slap them on us himself.

Carney’s hidden carbon tax on businesses will punish our job creators, our energy sector and our manufacturers.

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Utility companies, fertilizer plants and fuel refineries can’t just eat the cost of Carney’s hidden carbon tax. Businesses have to pass the cost on to normal people in the form of higher bills and higher costs.

The hidden carbon tax on businesses will also chase Canada’s manufacturers into the arms of U.S. President Donald Trump. He’ll be thrilled to welcome Ontario steel manufactures to set up shop in Ohio, where there are no carbon taxes.

In his book, Value(s), Carney wrote: “Meaningful carbon prices are a cornerstone of any effective climate policy framework” and “carbon prices should increase.”

Translation: Carney supports carbon taxes and believes they should keep going up.

This is a clear sign the war against the carbon tax isn’t over.

But when taxpayers won the huge fight against the consumer carbon tax, they proved they can win the fight against hidden carbon taxes on Canadian businesses.

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