Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s problem with selling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax on its first day of application in Ontario on Monday was simple.

It’s Trudeau.

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Because if you’re going to make the argument, as McKenna did on Toronto talk radio, that Trudeau is imposing a carbon tax on us that will make four out of five Ontario households richer, while simultaneously fighting climate change, she needed to have one key weapon in her arsenal to succeed.

That’s that people trust Trudeau is telling them the truth about the apparently miraculous merits of the carbon tax he imposed on Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick.

McKenna’s problem is that trust in the prime minister these days isn’t exactly in great supply among Canadians.

True, that’s because of a non-carbon tax issue.

That is, most Canadians aren’t buying the Liberals’ ever-changing explanations for why Trudeau dumped Jody Wilson-Raybould as attorney general in the Lavscam scandal.

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But as any good lawyer will tell you, once jurors believe a witness has misled them on one aspect of his testimony, they tend to mistrust everything else he has to say on the witness stand.

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Asked on CBC’s Metro Morning what she would say to people who are worried that Trudeau’s carbon tax is raising the cost of basic necessities such as home heating fuel and gasoline, and will have an impact throughout the economy, McKenna responded:

“Well, so it’s gas, it’s home heating and gas, and we’ve been clear that we’ve done the math and people will get more money back because we’re also making big polluters pay.”

So, we should believe Trudeau because of Liberal “math?”

THE CANADIAN PRESS

The math that Trudeau used in the 2015 election to assure us that in the fiscal year that started on Monday, Canada will record a $1 billion surplus, now predicted to be a $19.8 billion deficit in Trudeau’s recent budget?

Leave aside that Trudeau’s carbon tax actually impacts 22 different forms of fossil fuel energy and that “big polluters” will pass along their increased costs to us in higher prices for most goods and services.

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The real question is this:

Do you believe that Trudeau, McKenna and the Liberals have “done the math” and that “people” (meaning four out of five Ontario households, according to Trudeau) will get more money back in their carbon tax rebate than they will pay in carbon taxes?

Or, as Ontario Progressive Conservative Environment Minister Rod Phillips said on the same show: “Do people believe that in an election year, a Liberal government might promise them something and not carry it out? … I don’t think that people are confident that when a government says ‘we’re going to tax you more,’ they’re going to end up with more money in their pocket.”

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Bob Reid, of Veritas Communications, commenting on McKenna’s interview with Newstalk 1010’s skeptical Dave Trafford, took McKenna’s argument to its logical, and unbelievable, conclusion:

“When any politician tells you, ‘you’re going to get more money back as a result of this tax than what you actually pay,’ nobody buys that because it just plain doesn’t make sense. If that’s true, then raise the tax five times … so I get five times more money back than I paid, right? It just doesn’t pass the common sense test with people, so that’s a liability right out of the gate.”

No matter how many times McKenna and Trudeau say it’s true.