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The federal Liberals have put up the most conservative climate-change plan Canada has ever seriously considered and Ontario’s conservative government hates it.

It is, as you know, a tax on carbon-heavy fuels, of $20 for every tonne of carbon dioxide they’ll emit when burned. In the involved provinces, including Ontario, the money will be rebated in equal shares to taxpayers. The tax will rise over time.

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A carbon tax whose proceeds are returned this way — 90 per cent to individuals and 10 per cent to businesses, in this case — is the most conservative, economist-approved way of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Unlike most of our taxes, which skim off the top of wealth creation in various forms, a carbon tax punishes a behaviour we don’t want, namely polluting. This is the canonical right-wing approach to climate change.

“The Trudeau carbon tax does nothing for the environment,” Premier Doug Ford said. Because … prices don’t affect people’s behaviour? There’s no universe in which that’s true and it’s an especially weird notion to hear from a conservative. That prices matter is fundamental to everything we know about economics.