In early September, former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made a prophecy about the role climate change would play in our federal election: “The broad middle class in Canada will not accept indifference on this issue. Anybody who doesn’t understand that — or campaigns against it — is going to pay the price.”

Mulroney saw things differently than the current Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer. Scheer ran on a platform of tax cuts and other so-called pocketbook issues and relied on slogans over substance when it came to climate change.

When Scheer spoke about climate change on the campaign trail, it was typically to attack Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for introducing a carbon tax. The Conservative leader even said the carbon tax does “nothing for the environment” and was just a “government tax grab,” a claim refuted by economists and made nonsensical by the fact that all the money from the tax is sent back to households and businesses.

So how did Scheer’s approach to climate change play out in the election? Together, our organizations conducted an online exit poll of 1,100 voters following the election. The results are telling — and suggest that any leader who ignores Mulroney’s words does so at their peril.

We found that voters who turned away from the federal Conservatives were overwhelmingly concerned about climate change. Of the voters who did not vote for Scheer’s Conservatives, 20 per cent said they would have considered supporting the party. Among this Conservative-friendly pool of available voters, 77 per cent said climate change was among their top voting issues.

Those same voters were unimpressed with the Conservative platform on climate change, giving it an average grade of D. What those results tell us is that the Conservatives left thousands of votes on the table, especially in battleground regions like Toronto and the 905 belt around Canada’s largest city. Had those people switched their vote to the Conservatives, we might be looking at a very different government today.

If Conservatives are going to win elections in the future, they will need to advance a more credible plan on climate change — and that begins with not only accepting, but embracing, the reality of the carbon tax and rebate.

Our poll results show that non-Conservative voters expressed a strong support for the carbon tax, a policy that the Liberals, NDP, Greens and Bloc all endorsed. Fifty-nine per cent of Canadians said they support a carbon tax that returns revenues to families and businesses, compared to only 16 per cent who opposed. The same number — 59 per cent — said the carbon tax and rebate were one of their top election issues.

What this tells us is that carbon pricing has moved from being good policy to becoming good politics. Some leaders, it seems, are already taking notice. In New Brunswick, Premier Blaine Higgs recently announced he will reverse his government’s position on opposing the carbon tax. “People voted for it, so we have to find a way in New Brunswick to make it work,” he said.

Here in Ontario, it seemed Premier Doug Ford might follow Higgs’ lead. After all, back in August, Ford went out of his way to say the people, not the courts, would decide the fate of the carbon tax.

“Once the people decide, I believe in democracy, I respect democracy, we move on,” he claimed.

But late last week, Ford announced he’d proceed with his court challenge against the carbon tax at the Supreme Court of Canada. This is perplexing. Support for carbon pricing among non-Conservative voters stands at 61 per cent supporting and only 15 per cent opposing the policy of taxing carbon and returning the proceeds to families and small businesses. To put it bluntly — opposing the carbon tax in Ontario is the political equivalent of running headfirst into a buzz saw.

The message for Ford — and Scheer, or whoever succeeds him — is clear, whether it comes from this month’s election results, from polling or from a former Conservative Prime Minister. Conservatives will pay a price for ignoring climate change. Better to put that price on carbon.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Peter Loewen is a professor at the Munk School at U of T.Michael Bernstein is executive director of Clean Prosperity.

Read more about: