Jamie Sarkonak: Jagmeet Singh targets carbon tax in a flaccid attempt to imitate Poilievre

The NDP, just like the Liberals, haven't a clue what working-class voters want

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Published Sep 12, 2024  •  3 minute read

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh responds to a reporters questions during a news conference, Thursday, May 30, 2024 in Ottawa. Photo by Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press

Once secured tightly to Canada’s economic engine, the carbon tax now flaps dangerously in the wind: the critical strap that is the NDP has come loose.

On Thursday, Jagmeet Singh hinted that he will oppose the country’s current carbon pricing regime, vaguely stating that “big polluters” must pay their share, and remaining mute on the subject of the consumer carbon price. It was an echo of a speech Singh made in April at the Broadbent Institute’s annual conference, in which he accused both the prime minister and the Conservative leader are failing on climate.

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“(Pierre Poilievre) wants to ignore the climate crisis entirely, but Justin Trudeau has divided Canadians on who pays the cost of fighting it,” Singh told the crowd. “He doesn’t see the climate crisis as an opportunity to unite us to take on this threat; he sees it as a political wedge he gives exemptions where he wants to buy votes, and he hands out taxpayer-funded subsidies to big polluters.”

From March 2022 until last week, Singh had kept the Liberal government — and with it, its unpopular carbon tax program — locked in with a confidence-and-supply agreement. In that time, the “price on pollution” doubled from $40 per tonne to today’s $80 per tonne; it’s set to somehow reach $170 per tonne in 2030. A painful price tag to pay in a country that would barely make a dent in global emissions if it were vaporized tomorrow.

People across Canada aren’t having it, and that’s clear. Last November, an Angus Reid poll found that 42 per cent of Canadians want the carbon tax outright abolished. It very well could reach a majority this time around.

Along with the other slate of failing Liberal policies — over-migration, anyone? — this has spelled disaster for the supporting NDP. In August 2021, pre-coalition deal, EKOS had the Conservatives polling 52 per cent higher than the NDP among working-class voters; by August 2024, that lead grew to 119 per cent. Take it with an EKOS-worthy pinch of salt, but the results should trouble any dipper regardless.

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Singh, it seems, had to learn the hard way that punitively taxing people for existing in a modern (but cold) economy isn’t exactly the way into a working voter’s heart.

The Liberals and NDP have forked on how to manage this mess: the NDP are denouncing the present iteration of carbon pricing (sort of), invoking the disproportionate suffering workers are supposed to experience in a changed climate without openly opposing it. The Liberals, meanwhile, are trying out another hopeless rebrand while giving carve-outs to strategic provinces (Atlantic Canada).

Layered with other flaccid working-class pitches, it’s not hard to see why the Conservatives are in the lead. The NDP has largely veered from labour politics toward campus-style identity concerns, even supporting the Liberal government as it caved to the rail duopoly in its dispute with train engineers.

The Liberals have performed miserably worse on worker appeal, touting rebates and welfare programs nobody wants to have to rely on. Sure, there’s a carbon tax rebate, but the scheme is still a net negative for all but the bottom quintile — most people know that money is best left in their pockets anyway.

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The free amenities don’t resonate all that much better. Liberal free school lunches, Liberal free birth control — all while Canada is getting collectively poorer respective to peer countries. Trudeau, confronted by a dissatisfied steelworker two weeks ago, even tried to play the free dental-care card. Didn’t this tradesman appreciate the latest expansion of the welfare state? No, of course not. “I pay for it myself…. Why? I have a good job,” responded the worker.

The Liberals, and to a lesser degree, the NDP, struggle to understand the great insult of having welfare jigged in front of one’s face like a lure. No, a few hundred-dollar “Climate Action Incentive Payment” isn’t enough to buy someone’s vote, and it’s offensive to even suggest that it might be. No, another free service that everyone could afford in 2005 isn’t going to cut it, especially when many of us can’t reliably find a doctor.

Climate justice was only fun when the rich were the ones paying, and handouts only felt great when most workers didn’t need them.

National Post

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