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A recent poll showing that a majority of Canadians don’t understand or have never heard of a carbon tax demonstrates the gulf between the largely academic-bureaucratic elite who push for this tax and ordinary Canadians. For nearly three years, pro-carbon-tax governments and groups, such as the EcoFiscal Commission, which released last week’s poll, have controlled the commanding heights of this debate with funding and media support the fossil fuel lobby can only dream of. They have nevertheless failed to parlay these huge advantages into public understanding and support.

The campaign for the carbon tax bears a resemblance to that for the GST

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The reasons the public has not rallied behind a carbon tax are clear enough. Promises that the carbon tax would be revenue neutral were quickly forgotten, revealing it as just another tax grab that offended people on the right. Their promised aim of reducing emissions has ended up coming up short because the carbon levies, where they were applied, were not enough to materially change consumption when crude oil prices were falling, disillusioning people on the left. Carbon taxes also failed on the claim they would bridge the gap between the environment and the economy by creating the social licence to build a pipeline. In Canada, the final nail in their coffin was the election of a U.S. administration uninterested in an American carbon tax (or any costly climate measures) automatically putting Canadian industries at a competitive disadvantage with higher energy costs but no prospect of lower global emissions, making the whole exercise both costly and pointless.