Article content continued

Without a carbon tax, that’s all at risk. The “value-for-money audit” targeted less than two per cent of government spending, which isn’t unreasonable. Candidates are now promising to fill holes with more pain-free spending cuts. At a certain threshold their credibility becomes a serious issue, and Liberal portrayals of the Tories as mad hatchetmen will gain currency.

The platform’s basic promise was a Tory government that would much more competently govern a slightly tweaked status quo — a reflection of the fact Liberal policy is much more popular than the government and (especially) the premier implementing it. That pitch was radioactively unpopular in some segments of the party, but there is no reason to believe it was misguided as a plan to win the election.

I wouldn’t put much past a politician on the cusp of victory, but surely Elliott or Mulroney couldn’t flip-flop on carbon taxes between March 10 and June 7 without risking internal revolt and massive public humiliation. Patrick Brown had almost three years to completely screw over the right-wing members of his party who helped him win the leadership; it can’t be done in a few weeks.

The basic message would stay the same even if the tax cut were smaller or some new spending vanished

Still, I don’t think the Tories’ carbon tax situation is quite as dire as some commentators claim. There is middle ground. “What they could do is take all the cap-and-trade revenue and use that to lower taxes,” says Tombe. There’s a conservative pitch to be made there: we trust the market, rather than government programs. The “blame Trudeau” narrative still works: we have to do something or the feds will. And it wouldn’t rule out binning cap-and-trade for the federal backstop at some point in the future.