With the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals all retreating from the consumer price on carbon pollution, there’s no denying that all three parties betray our kids and future generations.

The 'free lunch' each party is offering may look like a good deal, since they're telling us we don't need to worry about cleaning up the pollution messes we've already made. But in reality, it's our kids and future generations who will foot the bill. Party leaders are asking our kids to pay more down the road for pollution messes that their parties are unwilling to pay for today. 

The deepest betrayal comes from the Conservatives

Mr. Poilievre led the charge to “axe the tax.”  Now he promises he won’t stop with axing just the consumer carbon price. He also plans to eliminate the price charged to big industrial polluters.

This move would dismantle what the Canadian Climate Institute identifies as the single most important policy measure that Canada has to reduce carbon pollution. Ending this price would double down on the betrayal of our kids by gutting the core of Canada’s climate strategy. To date, the Conservatives have offered no clear measures to compensate for the one-third of emissions that the industrial carbon price is set to cut. Cutting the industrial price would also ramp up uncertainty for the Canadian businesses, global markets and trading partners who have planned around the current policy, and undermine the clean investment and job creation that carbon pricing is driving.

The NDP betrayal is on a smaller scale than the Conservatives, but bigger than the Liberals

The NDP has pledged to stand by the industrial price on pollution, and implement carbon tariffs on imports from countries lacking stringent carbon-pricing mechanisms.  These are critical commitments in this election. 

However, Mr. Singh did help open the floodgates for consumer carbon price opponents when he joined the misinformation fueled political retreat from this policy. In April 2024, the NDP leader abandoned the family value we all teach our kids: when you make a mess, clean it up. Instead, he suggested that our pollution messes only need to be cleaned up when it isn’t too hard or inconvenient: "We don't want working people to feel like they're shouldering the burden [of paying for their pollution]. That's not fair. And frankly, not a New Democrat solution to the problem."

It’s true that no one wants to feel duped into paying for their pollution when large-emitting industries evade doing their fair share. That’s why it’s essential to retain industrial pollution pricing, and to tighten other regulations on emissions from sectors like energy, transportation and agriculture.

It’s also essential to recognize that we are all polluters – in fact, everyday Canadians are among the highest polluters in the world. Fairness doesn’t mean giving all of us a free pass to continue to create messes that we aren’t willing to clean up. That’s not fair to our kids, grandkids and future generations who will inherit these messes, and pay the steepest price for our failure to clean them up. 

The smallest betrayal comes from the Liberals – but a betrayal nonetheless

Under Mr. Carney, the Liberals ultimately killed the consumer carbon price that the party fought hard to implement just 6 years ago, following overwhelming evidence about the efficacy and low cost of this policy tool. Mr. Carney has been clear that he chose to drop the consumer carbon price because it had become politically “divisive,” not because it is ineffective. This distinction matters, because Mr. Carney plans to offset the loss with two important adaptations:

• Strengthening the price paid by large industrial emitters, and
• Introducing carbon border tariffs, which could also support Canada’s response to Donald Trump’s tariff war.
• (It's worth noting the NDP now affirm these ideas too).

The bottom line in this election is that history is unlikely to judge favourably the erosion of Canada’s leadership on pricing pollution for individual consumers.