February 1st, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
We should all be embarrassed that we’ve let shameless politics kill a system that cost-effectively reduces pollution and ensures the poorest are overwhelmingly made better off.
Policies need popular support to be sustained. I get that. And the carbon pricing + rebate system is now dead, killed by Conservatives in a dedicated campaign of lies.
We failed to defend it successfully.
Singh already walked away from consumer carbon pricing months ago. And now all LPC leadership candidates are ready to do the same.
We should all be embarrassed that we’ve let shameless politics kill a system that cost-effectively reduces pollution and ensures the poorest are overwhelmingly made better off.
We forget too easily that Harper, Poilievre, Manning and politicians who otherwise express unending devotion to free markets all previously supported carbon pricing.
Why? Because it’s a market-based mechanism for reducing pollution, by internalizing a negative externality and driving innovation.
Too many too easily accept the lie that carbon pricing makes Canadians poorer.
Yes, it could have been better designed to recycle revenues in a more targeted way to working class families rather than universal payments. But the rebate system clearly made the poorest in our society better off.
So what happens now?
1) Fighting climate change gets more expensive for the taxpayer. Consumer carbon pricing only represented around 10% of emission reductions in the overall plan, so it’s thankfully not fatal. But alternative subsidy approaches to reach the same cuts to pollution will cost us more.
2) The poorest will now be worse off. The rebate made most families whole on a fiscal basis, but the poorest in our society were much better off. Without the price on pollution, there’s no revenue for the rebates.
I’m not new to politics. I understand the need to win to implement good ideas. But it’s shameful that we’ve gotten to this place, where good ideas must be sacrificed to sustained lies.
Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) leadership contestants need to step up with better ideas now: on affordability, productivity, inequality, democratic reform, and climate action.
Nate Erskine Smith is the current Minister of Housing and the MP for Beaches East York; a Toronto community

Please read Philip’ reply again. He is right on. The Liberals only tell part of the story and stay away from the whole truth. And their plan was to keep on increasing it making the situation worse.
Sad to see it go. We embraced the logic of the price on carbon and added solar power and heat pumps to our home in northern Ontario. We used the Greener Homes grant to cut down some of the costs, bought a fuel efficient car and now we keep at least half of the carbon tax rebate as profit. If everyone did the same, they’d be upset that it will be discontinued like I am.
Thank you for your article.
The lies won??? Or perhaps Canadians saw through the lie that this Liberal seeks to perpetuate. First of all, it’s a myth that the carbon tax reduced emissions. EDGAR (the European Commission that monitors worldwide GHG emissions) shows that Canada’s GHG emissions actually ROSE by 2.43 mt in 2023. It also shows that from 2015 to 2023, those GHG emissions have only fallen from 755.9 mt to 747.7 mt–that’s a whopping 8.2 mt over 8 years of Trudeau’s focus on climate change! Achieved at a significant economic cost to Canadians. Meanwhile, China’s emissions increased in 2023 by 784 mt–more than the entire Canadian economy produces in a year!
Further, I suspect that the majority of Canadians have figured out by now that the Liberal fairy tale that 80% of Canadians subject to the federal backstop get back more than they pay is just that—a fairy tale, a complete fabrication. I’m a single, middle-income retiree living in his own home. My carbon tax rebate in the past year was $560 and that’s $120 less than I pay in direct carbon taxes (+HST on those carbon taxes). In addition, I pay another $350 in indirect carbon taxes on the other goods and services I purchase in the form of higher prices. And I’ve haven’t added in the cost of the Liberals’ carbon tax II (the clean fuel charges). Of course, the Liberals have deliberately kept the impact of these carbon taxes “hidden” from view and they have to be estimated. Bottom line, I’m out several hundred dollars per year due to the carbon tax and I’d wager that most working families in Burlington are just as badly off as a result of this regressive tax.
Lies are a problem–I would suggest Nathaniel look in the mirror to see the source of them.