Carbon Tax reversal feels like a beginning of the end moment for Justin Trudeau

This policy will help people, but can it really help the Prime Minister?

Yesterday, Prime Minister Trudeau announced a series of measures meant to alleviate the cash crunch many rural Canadians are facing. The government will double the rural supplement on the carbon tax rebate, help make heat pumps more accessible and affordable, and will exempt home heating oil from the carbon tax for three years. While the measures will impact more people in Atlantic Canada than elsewhere, they will apply nationwide.

Pausing the carbon tax on home heating oil will help people. And that’s not nothing. In Atlantic Canada, where many have never truly warmed up to the modern Conservative Party, it could very well be the kind of policy that helps return Trudeau weary voters back into the Liberal fold, voters they cannot afford to lose if they want to have a snowball’s chance in hell of being re-elected. Still, these changes are not without peril.

The carbon tax exemption, naturally, has gotten most of the headlines. It’s a stunning policy reversal from the government, and one that presents both practical and political challenges.

The practical challenges emerged almost immediately. Danielle Smith had her blind squirrel finding a nut moment when she rightly pointed out there’s no reason the exemption shouldn’t also apply to those who heat their homes with natural gas. It’s the kind of practical question the Liberals will need to find an answer for now that they’ve opened the door to changes to their carbon pricing policy. Exempting natural gas seems plausible, if not likely, and down the road more exemptions may be asked for, and the government will have to explain why some Canadians are getting a break, and not others. The Liberals are the ones who opened the door and may be forced to open it further, one exemption at a time.

The credibility challenge the Liberals face is even more daunting. Carbon pricing is not just a singular unpopular policy the Liberals are walking back. It has been the centrepiece of this government’s environmental agenda. For eight years the Prime Minister considered it Liberal orthodoxy, right alongside bilingualism, public health care, and the flag. To listen to him was to think all that separated us from economic and environmental catastrophe was the Liberal price on pollution. And now it’s on pause. Hopefully the economic and environmental catastrophe is as well.

While it will have practical benefits for those exempted, it still smells of a government careening over a cliff, grasping for land but finding nothing but air. Voters tend to pick up on that kind of desperation. They certainly did in 2015 when Stephen Harper tried to fear monger his way to one more win with his barbaric culture practices tip line, and in 2006 when Paul Martin tried to unilaterally reform the Constitution on the debate stage by promising to get rid of the notwithstanding clause. How the Prime Minister intends to tout his bold climate policy as indispensable in comparison to Conservative indifference on the issue while said policy is (at least partially) on pause is beyond me.

It makes one wonder – and, for fun, to speculate – whether the Prime Minister is looking for an off-ramp. I have felt for some time, despite all the challenges he faces eight years into his time in office, that Justin Trudeau was still the best person to lead the Liberals into the next election. He’s a known commodity, can work the stump well, is sure-footed in leaders’ debates, and has the kind of following and loyalty among a certain section of the electorate that can protect the Liberal floor better than any alternative. A part of me still thinks that. But does he?

This walk back feels so blatant and so contrary to everything we’ve seen from him on the core tenets of his government, I wonder whether he’s taking one for the team. I’m not sure Justin Trudeau can credibly sell a revamped climate policy on the campaign trail, but a fresh face might be able to. While any new leader will have immense difficulty extricating themselves from the shadow of this Prime Minister, having some wiggle room on carbon pricing may give that person room to shift the Liberal policy on climate more credibly.

For years, journalists and pundits have been unwilling to take yes for an answer when it comes to the Prime Minister’s plans to run for re-election. I claim no inside information or insight, but for the first time, for me anyways, I’m wondering whether they may want to ask again.