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Worse, the 2018 Environment Canada report found that emissions were getting worse, not better — putting us further behind than previously thought.

The easy answer for the Liberals would simply be to increase the floor for the national carbon price. The carbon tax will be set at $50 a ton by 2022, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported last month that if all the current carbon-reduction or mitigation plans were adhered to, we could hit the 2030 target by increasing the carbon tax to $102 a ton by 2030. That would be a more gradual increase in the carbon tax than the Liberals are already committed to through to 2022 — but the Liberals have ruled it out. McKenna said last month that the Liberals had taken carbon-tax increases after 2022 off the table.

To recap: the Liberals first said the 2030 targets adopted by Stephen Harper was the bare minimum and they’d do better. Then they changed their minds and said, no, we won’t do better, but we’ll do by 2030 what Harper agreed to. Then their own government agencies told the Liberals that they weren’t on track to hit their targets, but that there was an easy way to get there — just ramp up the carbon tax. And the Liberals said … no.

Like I said above, Erskine-Smith is right about one thing — if fighting climate change is your number one goal, you’re probably not voting Conservative in the fall. But considering the Liberal record on climate change — a threat they declared a “national emergency” just weeks ago — it’s far from clear that such a voter would find the Liberals much more impressive. The Liberals would be on much firmer ground when they criticize the Conservatives if their own “emergency” plan to stop what they claim to consider a threat to human civilization wasn’t literally failing, by a wide margin, at this very moment.

National Post

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