What’s left for a Conservative climate plan after the carbon tax?

Climate change has been eclipsed by the cost of living and Donald Trump in terms of Canadians top concerns. Will the Conservatives’ plans matter?

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has made it official: a future Conservative government would eliminate Canada’s carbon pricing system entirely, including for large industrial emitters.

The question now is what, if anything, a Conservative government would do to address the existential threat of climate change in Canada. Poilievre’s approach would be to let provinces and territories decide their own policies, rather than the federal government leading.

Poilievre told reporters Monday that the carbon price was a “bad idea” even before U.S. President Donald Trump launched his trade war against Canada and suggested Prime Minister Mark Carney would re-impose the consumer price should the Liberals win re-election. “(We) will repeal the entire carbon tax, including the federal backstop that requires provinces impose industrial taxes. There will be no taxes on consumers, no taxes on Canadian industries,” Poilievre said.

“Instead, provinces will continue to have the freedom to address this issue (climate change) how they like, but there will be no federal obligation to impose the tax.”

The Conservative leader has spent months trying to frame the upcoming federal election as a referendum on the carbon price, vowing to “axe the tax” at a time when cost of living is top of mind for Canadians. Poilievre and his party have spent considerable time and money attempting to label the prime minister as “Carbon Tax Carney” despite the Liberal pledge to do away with consumer carbon pricing.

Until Monday, he was silent on whether that would include eliminating the federal backstop for large industrial emitters. Most provinces and territories have their own system for making industrial polluters pay — the federal backstop only applies in Manitoba, Nunavut, Yukon and Price Edward Island.

With Carney having vowed to eliminate the consumer carbon price in those provinces who don’t meet the federal benchmark, that particular line of Conservative attack seemed neutralized. Poilievre’s announcement on Monday could be seen as an attempt to recapture the political narrative.

Michael Bernstein, the president of Clean Prosperity, told Global News that the industrial carbon price is the single largest policy contributing to reducing Canada’s overall emissions.