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But the alternative — backing off on the carbon tax — has its own risks. Promising action on climate change was one of the issues that helped Trudeau win in 2015. With the help of the U.S.-financed environmental NGO (ENGO) LeadNow, the Liberals targeted 29 Conservative-held ridings in which their polling indicated that climate change was a priority for voters. Liberal candidates subsequently won 25 of these seats.

But these same centre-left voters that supported Trudeau in 2015 are no longer so happy with him. Many are angry about the federal government’s $4.5 billion bailout of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion in B.C. If Trudeau now backs down on his national carbon tax pledge, many of his 2015 supporters for whom climate action is still a priority may drift off to the NDP in 2019.

Many are angry about the federal government’s $4.5 billion bailout of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion in B.C.

Underlying the Liberals’ carbon tax dilemma is the spectacular failure of the Trudeau-Notley “social license” gambit: their belief that in return for their various carbon reduction policies, climate change ENGOs would acquiesce in Canada’s economic need to build the Kinder Morgan TransMountain expansion. Whatever plausibility this trade-off strategy may have had initially has now been destroyed. The anti-Kinder Morgan forces — the Horgan government, U.S. and Canadian climate ENGOs and B.C. aboriginal groups — have accelerated their opposition to TransMountain, not backed off.

Nor are they shy about explaining why. When CBC asked Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, why he would not give Trudeau and Notley any credit for Canada’s carbon reduction policies, he stated a simple fact: that at only two per cent of global emissions, what Canada does on the domestic “demand” side to reduce our emissions is too small to make any difference. What will make a difference, McKibben continued, is preventing the further development of the Canadian oil sands — the third largest reserve on the world. “To stop the oil sands, we have to stop all pipelines.”