Everybody is an environmentalist. At least, they are until its time to pay the bill. Then the tune changes dramatically. The Trudeau regime is discovering this the hard way as support for their government continues its freefall in public support.Climate change doesn’t mean a damn thing to Canadians when they can’t make the rent or fill the refrigerator. Canadians are seeing the link between economically damaging climate taxes and policies and the difficulty in making ends meet. They are rightly taking it out on the federal Liberals.Recent polling indicates that while 72% of Canadians are concerned about climate change, only 5% of them see it as their top issue. Inflation tops the list at 20% followed by healthcare at 14%, housing at 13%, the economy at 11% and taxes at 6%. Building windmills while political leaders virtue signal at lavish overseas climate conferences doesn’t sit well with Canadians who can’t find a family doctor or are one paycheque away from losing their homes.The Trudeau government stubbornly remains blind to the sentiment of Canadians as it continues to pile on more regulations and taxes contributing to more inflation. Public support for the Liberals continues to collapse and if an election were to be held today, it appears the party would be obliterated at the polls.While Canadians are sick and tired of ineffective Liberal policies raising the cost of living, one has to ask if Canadians are ready to face the austerity that comes with fiscal responsibility?Among those polled who feel the country needs to transition away from carbon-based energy generation, only 5% felt the price should be paid by consumers to do so. There were 32% who felt that industry should pay for the transition through taxes and regulations and another 18% who felt that government should have to pay for the change. A quarter of respondents felt nothing should be spent and that technology will fix things over time.What the vast majority of respondents don’t seem to understand is they ultimately will end up personally paying one way or another. There is no magical form of government money generation aside from taxation. Likewise, corporations ultimately get their funds from consumers. There's no escaping the fact that individuals eventually end up paying the bill. The only thing people are escaping is reality.Conservative supporters must look at these numbers and remind themselves not to become complacent while Liberal numbers plunge. Clearly electors are fed up with the Trudeau government, but it doesn’t mean they are ready to embrace austerity either.In the next election, the Trudeau Liberals will promise to save the world from climate change and they will promise that citizens won’t have to pay the bill to do so. They will campaign on a bold lie, but we have a large segment the population that would prefer to be lied to than pay the piper.Trudeau can’t seem to go a day without another new spending announcement despite a bleak fiscal outlook and growing federal deficit. These actions aren’t simply fiscal incompetence, though there is plenty of that to be found in the Liberal ranks. What they are doing is establishing programs and getting an ever-increasing number of Canadians dependent upon them. They are spending generations of Canadians into debt to try and buy electoral love and it might just work.Conservatives will have to campaign carefully. Calling for the elimination of spending programs and entire government departments may sell well to the Conservative base, but the imagery of thousands of people being laid off will tug at the heartstrings of the Canadian swing voters. Remember, they don’t like fiscal reality. They just want promises of more shiny things. The CPC shouldn’t give up on campaigning based on fiscal responsibility. The nation desperately needs it and it would be disingenuous to hide such intentions while campaigning. They just have to be very careful.Canadians need to be eased back into reality. The campaign in the next couple years needs to be respectfully educational. People need to understand the need for spending restraint and how they ultimately will benefit from it. In the early 1990s, we faced double-digit interest rates that shocked voters into supporting balanced budgets as debt servicing costs exploded. While Canada is pouring billions into debt servicing, the waste in maintaining such a large debt is still not clear in the minds of many voters. The Trudeau Liberals have fostered dependency, complacency and fiscal ignorance among Canadians during their term in power. The CPC needs to reverse that damage but it must be done with care. People are seeing the need to get things back in fiscal order, but they still don’t understand they ultimately pay all the bills. Trudeau could conceivably campaign on unicorn power and get away with it in 2025 unless the CPC has built a voter base of informed realists by then. Take no polls for granted.
