When future historians retrace the rise and fall of carbon taxes in Canada, they may well conclude that last week was the point at which policy's decline became irreversible. That's because it was the week when the Trudeau Liberals gave up insisting that a carbon tax is the best way to fight climate change.
There's really no other way to interpret Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's pledge not to raise carbon taxes beyond 2022. The pledge came in response to a Parliamentary Budget Officer report, which concluded the federal carbon tax would have to rise from the planned $50 per tonne in 2022 to $102 per tonne by 2030 for Canada to meet its Paris Agreement emissions commitments.
