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Really!? Seriously!? There are actually Canadian voters who think the Trudeau Liberals can be trusted to keep their promise not to raise the federal carbon tax above $50 a tonne (about 12 cents per litre of gasoline) if they win re-election?

Of course they’ll raise the tax if they win October’s general election. How do I know? Because Liberal MPs have done more flipping on the subject this summer than most of them did at pancake breakfasts back home in their ridings.

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When it has looked as if they might win support from middle-class suburban voters this fall – like, say, before the federal ethics commissioner’s report scared voters off – the Libs promised a cap on the tax of $50 a tonne.

The tax is widely unpopular, so any party looking for broad-based support cannot push it too high. Middle-class voters will pay some premium towards saving the environment, but not much.

However, after Justin Trudeau’s latest ethics scandal put a hard ceiling on Liberal support, party strategists started thinking it was more important to keep core Liberals happy than to woo middle-of-the-road voters. Preserve the base and settle for a minority rather than swing for the centre-field fence and possibly lose.