Will Trudeau’s carbon tax exemption be the final nail in his political coffin?

Justin Trudeau’s proposed plan to temporarily exempt home heating oil from the carbon tax has sparked both outrage and questions that could threaten to unseat his party from power. Here’s why Canadians are so upset with Trudeau. 

Canada’s carbon tax has been a sore spot for many citizens in the country ever since it was announced in December 2020. But the policy has become a hallmark of Trudeau’s attempts to reshape and change climate policy in Canada. 

However, Trudeau undermined one of the cornerstones of his climate policy in October when he announced a temporary exemption on the carbon tax for people who used oil to heat their homes. This was a major mistake for the prime minister. 

"This is an important moment where we're adjusting policies so that they have the right outcome,” Trudeau said at a press conference according to CBC News, adding that the change was made to support Canadians while fighting climate change.

Home heating oil in Canada was exempted from the carbon tax for three years and the prime minister also announced that the federal government planned to double the rural supplement rebate as well as offer new programs. 

The new programs on offer will focus on helping rural Canadians move from using oil to heat their homes and towards electricity via the switch to electric heat pumps. However, Trudeau’s announcement was hit with heavily criticized almost immediately. 

One major point of contention was that the carbon tax exemption is a clear benefit for the Liberal Party’s core supporters in Atlantic Canada, an area of the country that has been a political stronghold for the party for decades. 

CBC’s Darren Major reported that while the temporary carbon tax exemption was meant to be nationwide, the policy would help Atlantic Canadians the most since 30% of those in the region use furnace oil to heat their homes.  

This was a point Trudeau didn’t shy away from in his announcement and explained that he has listened to the feedback from Members of Parliament in Atlantic Canada, saying “certain features of that pollution price needed adjusting to work for everyone.”

Conservative Party opposition leader Pierre Poilievre quickly capitalized on Trudeau’s mistake and wrote on Twitter that the prime minister was “flipping and flopping” on his carbon tax after “plummeting in the polls.”

Trudeau has since doubled down on his new policy and made it clear that there would be no more carve-outs to his policy for other Canadians after calls to scrap the carbon for everyone started making their way into the debate.

“There will absolutely not be any other carve-outs or suspensions," Trudeau said during an October 31st press conference according to CTV News. "This is designed to phase out home heating oil, the way we made a decision to phase out coal.”

“This is specifically about ending the use of home heating oil, which is more polluting, more expensive, and impacts low-income Canadians to a greater degree,” continued the prime minister. But Canadians aren’t happy with the new carve-out. 

Economist Trevor Tombe noted pressure for more carve-outs will only increase now that Trudeau has made one exception, and he wrote in a recent op-ed for The Hub that the “entire future path of Canada’s carbon tax is now no longer credible.”

This was a sentiment the right-leaning political commentator Rex Murphy agreed with in an article for the National Post where he declared that the carbon tax was dead and that it was Justin Trudeau who killed it. 

However, more importantly, the death of the carbon tax could precipitate the end of the Liberal Party’s grasp on power as the country comes to see the move as a naked play to retain votes in Atlantic Canada or just another major Liberal policy error.