Justin Trudeau’s resignation as Canada’s Prime Minister signals the departure of one of the world’s leading hawks. From the moment the charismatic progressivism seized power a decade ago, he has charged his career into aggressive climate action, pushing a carbon tax, clean energy subsidies, and a slew of regulations hated by the country’s large oil and gas industry.
The Prime Minister’s impending exit, announced on January 6, comes as his Liberal Party heads towards a wipeout in an election that must happen before October. Voters are angry at what they see as Trudeau’s failure to address housing costs and crime; His handling of the epidemic. And his climate action, which blames much of the energy and gas costs. This popular swing against climate policy parallels a trend seen across the developed world, including Europe and the United States, where President-elect Donald Trump has promised to repeal… Climate law in question for the Biden administrationThe law of limiting inflation.
Trudeau’s policies have gone far beyond Biden’s—he has passed a federal carbon marketing system and successfully defended it against numerous challenges, something Democrats in the United States have been unable to do. Ultimately, his ambitious carbon price program contributed to his downfall. Pierre Poilievre, who leads a growing Conservative Party, has over the past year launched a campaign to “unpack the tax,” which he maintains caucuses have led voters to become frustrated with energy costs and made climate policy a liability for the Liberal government.
“It was a relatively global national carbon tax on consumers, and people were angry, they were feeling pinched,” said Sherri Metcalf, a law professor at Queen’s University in Ontario and an expert on Canadian climate policy.
The Trudeau government has made significant progress in each of the key areas of climate policy. Trudeau has rolled out clean energy subsidies, stepped up Canada’s offshore aid funding for climate disasters, and enshrined the country’s net-zero goal into law. But the centerpiece of his legacy is a carbon tax based on a policy adopted in left-leaning British Columbia. The tax, launched in 2019, requires big polluters to buy emissions credits, like major cap-and-trade schemes in Europe and California, but also imposes a surcharge of a few cents on every gallon of gasoline or heating oil used.
It’s too early to say how the carbon tax has affected Canada’s emissions trajectory, but the government says the ruling in British Columbia that it inspired has reduced emissions by 15 per cent from where they would have been. Federal officials also say the tax will pay for more than a third of Canada’s total emissions emissions by 2030, and by then, the government hopes Reducing emissions by half from peak levels.
“Justin Trudeau has achieved more on climate policy than any other Canadian prime minister to date,” Caroline Brouillette, executive director of the Canadian advocacy organization Climate Network, said in a statement after his announcement. “The past 10 years have seen a revolution in how we address climate change in Canada, moving from a gradual, voluntary approach toward one where the government proactively plans…to reduce emissions to reach our climate goals.”
The Liberal leader’s climate record has been far from perfect, especially when it comes to Canada’s $250 billion oil industry. He has been fussing over the drilling issue for years Alberta’s oil-rich tar sandsFor example, at some point, production must have been “phased out” and in another “no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there.”
Although he imposed strict regulations on oil producers in the Alberta Tar Sands and a carbon tax made drilling more expensive, critics viewed his spending $9 billion on anti-carbon projects to make that work an attempt to prop up the industry. In 2018, his government purchased and completed the struggling Trans Mountain Pipeline project, increasing Canada’s export capacity over the angry objections of First Nations groups. Oil and gas production, which comprises a staggering 31 percent of Canada’s total emissions (compared to… About 4 percent in the United States) is the main obstacle to the full country Carbon removal.
Besides his uneven work on fossil fuels, Indigenous leaders say Trudeau has a spotty history with environmental justice, addressing Canada’s colonial history of oppression and genocide.
“He took far more progressive action than any other prime minister we have ever seen, but he lacked any element of clear justice to address the historical wrongs and ongoing legacy of colonialism,” said Ariel DeRanger, an indigenous climate activist and member. From the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Deranger has battled potholes in Alberta’s Sands, her mother’s ancestral home, for more than a decade.
“Canada is a petrostate, and they haven’t figured out their fair strategy to transition from that,” she added, noting that oil exports have reached an all-time high of 4 million barrels per day in 2023, driven in large part by growth in the tar sands.
Trudeau’s exit comes as center-left parties suffer electoral defeats across the West. Republicans scored a convincing victory in the US federal election, while France and Germany are expected to see conservative governments take power this year. Climate issues have proven effective fodder for right-wing parties in countries like the Netherlands as well.
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Disaffected voters in many of these countries have benefited from climate issues: cloudy weather that blocks solar power has caused political outrage over energy prices in Germany, while the Dutch government’s efforts to limit nitrogen emissions from agriculture have caused political uproar. Biden administration Indefinite inflation control law It was an attempt to meet these concerns head-on, but it failed to convince voters upset by rising costs.
Trudeau’s hold on power began to slip last year when polls showed support for the Liberals swamping, even in reliable strongholds like Toronto and Vancouver. According to the latest projections from election forecasters Canada 338, the Conservatives are on track to win more than two-thirds of the 343 seats in Parliament, more than double their current number. Meanwhile, the Liberals may finish by at least 25, putting them behind both the Progressive New Democratic Party and the Quebec separatist party known as the Bloc Québécois.
The election of Donald Trump, who promised a devastating imposition 25 percent tariff on all Canadian importssinking more of Trudeau’s fortunes. The Prime Minister flew to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to meet the president-elect in November for what he called an “excellent conversation”; Trump later referred to Trudeau as Canada’s “governor” and said he wanted to annex the country. Around the same time, Trudeau announced a nationwide sales tax rebate, which he pushed down with Finance Minister Chrystia Friederland, another Liberal politician. Freeland called the tax holiday an “expensive political expedient” that the country could not afford to see Trump’s impending tariffs. Dozens of other liberal representatives soon called for him to resign.
Climate change isn’t the only issue coming down to Trudeau’s party. A large portion of voters still have not forgiven Trudeau for his aggressive response to the pandemic, which included the federal vaccine mandate. Concerns about crime and the cost of housing remain top of mind even in Liberal strongholds like Toronto and Vancouver. Trudeau’s own brand of politics, and a laundry list of personal scandals, including revelations that He wore blackface on at least three occasions As a young man, he also became burdensome to many voters.
But no issue has proven as effective for Conservatives over the past year as climate change, especially the impact of a carbon tax on gasoline and home heating oil. The tax raises the price of gasoline by about 3 cents per gallon, a fee that will continue to rise in the coming years. The Conservatives tried to raise the issue in the national election early in 2019, but it didn’t go down well with voters until costs started to rise in every part of the economy after the pandemic. The trend has allowed Conservatives to blame Trudeau’s climate policies for shocking voters’ stickers, even though about 80 per cent of Canadians get more in tax rebates than they spend on carbon penalties.
“There was actually very good support for action on climate change initially,” Metcalfe told Grist. “The current backlash is more focused on the consumer side of the carbon tax, given that we’re facing really big inflation. You also see some of the same aspects that you see in the United States or in Europe, you’ve got a populist disillusionment with federal policies steering from the top.” “down.”
With heating and gas prices rising, Poilievre traveled the country holding dozens of rallies where he blamed Trudeau’s climate policy for inflation and rising heating prices. In response to public outcry, the federal government in 2023 halted the carbon tax for home heating oil in several provinces, but that only gave the Liberals’ opponents more ammunition. But then last spring, Trudeau raised the tax from about $45 to about $55 per ton of carbon, barely surviving a vote of confidence imposed by Poilievre.
As the Conservatives prepare to take power, Metcalf said it is too early to know how to deal with climate issues. Poilievre has pledged to eliminate the consumer carbon tax, but the fate of the rest of Canada’s climate policy is still up in the air, including Trudeau’s less controversial subsidies for clean energy. As in other countries that have faced voter backlash, the right’s success has been more about frustration with previous climate action than an alternative vision for how to address the emissions problem.
“It remains to be seen what Poilievre will do,” she told Grist. “Except for his slogans about dismantling the tax, we don’t have much information.”
