What might have been a choice between regulation and carbon pricing has instead become a choice between regulation-plus-pricing, on the left, or regulation-only, on the right
The Nov. 30, 2015 election that brought the Liberal party to power in Newfoundland and Labrador marked the demise of the last nominally Conservative government in the country. After the election of a Liberal federal government the previous month and the defeat of the once-mighty Alberta Progressive Conservatives in the spring, observers wondered whether Conservatism, if not conservatism, might be on the way out.
Indeed, under the Ford government the state will noticeably expand its reach, with a massive public transit construction program, dental care for seniors and a new child-care credit, even as it maintains the outgoing Liberals’ policy of subsidizing electricity rates, all of it out of borrowed funds. The target date for eliminating the province’s deficit is now 2023-24, assuming the expansion continues uninterrupted. The province’s net debt will remain in excess of 40 per cent of GDP for years.
Just how conservative these governments really are may be doubted; the country would seem less to have shifted right than Conservative parties have shifted left The Ford government scrapped the previous Liberal government’s cap and trade plan, almost as its first act in office; a Kenney government would do the same with the NDP’s carbon tax. Saskatchewan, which has never had a carbon tax, has challenged the federal “backstop,” which went into effect this month, in court; hearings began this week in an Ontario court on a similar challenge by the Ford government, with the UCP as an intervener.
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