Canadians really hate the carbon tax
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Summary
A new poll from Forum Research has some inconvenient facts about public opinion on the carbon tax that don't work in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's favor. In this episode, we talk about the poll and why it doesn't bode well for the PM's chances of re-election.
Transcript
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A new public opinion poll out from Forum Research has some rather inconvenient facts about public
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perception of the carbon tax that is not in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's favor. Now,
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this is a very controversial tax, of course. A public opinion is divided, and we've got a
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number of premiers going to court to fight over this matter, telling the federal government,
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no, we don't want you to impose this on us. Now, Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna rather
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bizarrely have said, all right, let's get it on. They want to take this fight all the way to the
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October election. It seemed like at one point they wanted the election to be a referendum on this
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issue. They continue to say, Andrew Scheer and others, they don't have a plan to deal with our
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emissions to meet our Paris agreements and so forth, even though the current data shows that
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Justin Trudeau's plan is not actually going to have Canada meet the Paris deal agreements in the first
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place. That's a bit of a side note. And by the way, the answer to it, I think, is not to do more
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to meet the agreements, to shut down various industries and sectors and say no to pipelines.
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It's to withdraw from the Paris deal, because we don't need to be in it in the first place.
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The United States has withdrawn from it. We can do it too. But that's a bit of a side note here,
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because Justin Trudeau is not going to withdraw from the deal. He wants to go ahead with it,
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and they're still going to be arguing about it to some degree in the election.
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You've got to wonder, what are they thinking, though? I had chalked it up to the fact that they
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are just true believers on the eco-alarmism front. I mean, the numbers surely don't suggest that they
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have opinion on their side. And there's been a few different polls here and there that suggest,
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surprisingly, there are a large number of Canadians that are actually okay with this carbon tax.
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Although I think now that it's set in and we've seen the prices at the pump rise and
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a lot of calling into question of its entire rationale, well, public opinion is moving away
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from it. And that's what this latest forum research poll shows. It was a telephone poll where they
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spoke with over 1,600 Canadians. 45% of them say, no thanks, we don't want it. And then about 25%
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say they support the carbon tax and then the remainder are not certain. They're not particularly
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for or against it. So there you have it, a plurality of Canadians against the carbon tax.
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Now, conceivably, he could win over those undecided, match those numbers up. So I guess we could say it's
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somewhat divided, but doesn't work in Justin Trudeau's favor. But here's where things get a
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whole lot more interesting in it, though. They asked people based on their political views and their
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their level of motivation for or against the carbon tax. Now, we find that 80% of conservatives
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dead set against this, so they really don't like it. And as for liberals, well, only about half of them
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actually really like the carbon tax. So the people who are against Justin Trudeau, really against the
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carbon tax, but his own supporters, his own liberals, I mean, they're not all in love with it. So there's a
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big problem there. The next one, though, is motivation. So 60% of Canadians, six in 10 of
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those respondents, they say that this is going to affect their vote at the ballot box, the carbon tax
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and their views on it, how they're going to vote. But how does that break down? Well, the people who
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actually don't like the carbon tax say that it'll affect their vote way more than the people who do
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support it. So basically, people who don't like it, really don't like it, they want to fight it, they
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want to see it go away, and they're willing to vote against it. People who are kind of okay with the
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carbon tax? Yeah, yeah, they're sort of okay with it. They like it. Is it going to really be the motivating
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factor for them at the ballot box? It'll make them donors and volunteers and so forth for Justin Trudeau?
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Not so much. So carbon tax support, to the degree that it exists, is soft. Yet another
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indication that Justin Trudeau should maybe reconsider such an aggressive push for this.
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I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, he's really deep into the fight right now.
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But you'd think of how divisive it has been, how damaging it's been to him.
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Maybe he should just open the door a little, open the window to the possibility that
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maybe he will soften on this. Maybe he will let us step away from it.