SIMS: Albertans don’t need Trudeau’s carbon tax lipstick

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government doesn’t have a carbon tax communications problem. It has a “the carbon tax helps make life unaffordable” problem.Premier Danielle Smith needs to put up a shield to protect Alberta from this mess coming home to roost in our province.The feds think Albertans are too dense to understand the bountiful brilliance of the mandatory minimum carbon tax and its paltry rebate scheme.In an attempt to get it through our thick skulls, the Trudeau government has rebranded its carbon tax rebate as the “Canada Carbon Rebate” instead of the “Climate Action Incentive Payment.”See what they did there? They put lipstick on a pig.The Parliamentary Budget Officer has done the math and the numbers are clear: the average Alberta family will be out about $900 this calendar year because of the carbon tax, even after the rebates.Why? Because Albertans are not just paying 14 cents extra per litre of gasoline at the pump. The carbon tax also costs us 17 cents extra per litre in diesel, 12 cents more per cubic metre of natural gas to heat our homes, and 10 cents extra per litre of propane. And all of that is going to be even more expensive on April 1, when Trudeau cranks his carbon tax up even higher.Since nearly everything we need to eat and use is delivered by a truck and then stored inside a store, the costs to transport and sell those items also goes up with Trudeau’s carbon tax.The government can’t market itself away from the consequences of common sense. Trudeau would have you believe that you are paying the carbon tax, then the GST on top of it, all while the government is paying bureaucrats to process it through the money abattoir of Ottawa and then somehow you magically get more back than you paid.The PBO only confirms what we already know from common sense. The average family is poorer because of Trudeau’s carbon tax, with the rebates included.No amount of slick marketing or tubes of lipstick will change that.Which brings us to the interesting silver lining here.This lame attempt to cover up the ugly truth about the expensive carbon tax spotlights just how unpopular it has become.Here in Alberta, NDP leadership candidates are now claiming they are opposed to the carbon tax. Yes, that’s right: the same Alberta wing of the NDP that surprised the province with a carbon tax in 2016, after not mentioning they were going to create one during the 2015 election, now opposes carbon taxes.This is the same NDP that has a federal leader in Ottawa, Jagmeet Singh, who routinely refuses to support scrapping the federal carbon tax.But things can change in politics, no matter the colour of party jersey.The federal Conservative Party had a brief fling with a carbon tax. They called it a carbon levy until they turfed their pledge-breaking leader. Now, they are back opposing the tax again.In 2008, former NDP federal leader Jack Layton said it was wrong to punish people with a carbon tax on their home heating bills. At the same time, the NDP in BC campaigned with a slogan to “axe the tax,” calling the notion of a revenue neutral carbon tax promoted by the BC Liberals “lipstick on a pig.”Sound familiar?The lesson is that politicians flip flop and break their promises.That’s why Smith should strengthen the Taxpayer Protection Act to shield Albertans from a provincial carbon tax from happening here again.The next government might try to call it a carbon price or cinnamon carbon sparkles. If a guard against it is written into the law of the Taxpayer Protection Act, it will provide a bigger shield for taxpayers.If Albertans are protected against a future provincial carbon tax via the Taxpayer Protection Act, we won’t need to worry about the next lipstick-wearing pig eating our wallets.Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

SIMS: Albertans don’t need Trudeau’s carbon tax lipstick

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