Poilievre Calls for Carbon Tax Pause on All Forms of Home Heating

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre asks a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 3, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he will soon put forward a motion to extend the home heating carbon tax exemption to “all Canadians everywhere.”

“I am announcing today that the common-sense Conservatives have put forward a motion in the House of Commons, extending the pause on home heating to all Canadians everywhere,” Mr. Poilievre said in a speech to his caucus in Ottawa on Nov. 1.

The motion, likely to be voted on next week, will call on Ottawa to freeze the federal carbon tax on all forms of home heating until the next election, and then ask Canadians at the polls to decide if they want the price reapplied, which Mr. Poilievre called a “carbon tax election.”

Mr. Poilevre’s call for a pause on the carbon tax comes a week after the federal Liberals announced a three-year exemption on the carbon tax on heating oil to give Canadians time to switch to electric heat pumps. The pause will apply to all jurisdictions where the federal fuel charge is in effect, particularly benefitting Canada’s Atlantic provinces where 30 percent of homeowners still use furnace oil to heat their homes.

But the prime minister has since rejected implementing other exemptions to the carbon tax, saying he was only allowing it for heating oil because it is more expensive and impacts the most vulnerable Canadians.

“There will absolutely not be any other carve-outs or suspensions of the price on pollution,“ he said on Oct. 31. ”This is designed to phase out heating oil.”

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Mr. Poilievre said that Mr. Trudeau was dividing Canadians by implementing policies that disproportionately benefit some provinces and not others.

“He wants to turn you against your fellow Canadian, so you forget how miserable life has become after eight years of his government,” he said. “His latest tactic is to charge higher carbon taxes on some people than on other people. A divide and conquer strategy,” he added.

The Tory leader also remarked that Manitoba’s new NDP finance minister had recently called for “greater fairness” in how the carbon tax is applied, a week after Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called for the federal government to apply the same carbon tax exemption to natural gas.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also said during Question Period that the Liberals were delivering a carbon tax program that was “cynical and divisive,” and he alleged that the Liberals only want to help a region where they’re losing political ground.

Mr. Poilievre asked if Mr. Singh would stand with the provincial NDP and the “voters who put their trust in his MPs in places like Timmins and other cold northern communities,” or if he would “once again sell out working-class Canadians in order to suck up to Justin Trudeau.”

Mr. Singh told reporters that he didn’t know how his party would vote on the measure.

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem previously testified at the finance committee that if Ottawa abandoned the carbon tax, inflation in Canada would drop by 16 percent.