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Gas price jump makes Moe carbon tax opposition really easy today

A four-cent-a-litre tax hike will not convince people to trade in their F-150 to save the planet or to keep money in their pockets. 

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The Saskatchewan Party government won the carbon tax war long before local gasoline prices jumped to $1.24 a litre Monday morning as a result of the four-cent-a-litre federal carbon tax.

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Premier Scott Moe was always destined to win this war because he picked a fight with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose capacity for incompetence and self-destruction is only exceeded by the sometimes-deranged loathing he faces on the very-conservative-minded prairies.

Certainly, it was helpful that the federal Liberal government carbon tax is as massive a policy failure as it is a political failing on its own.

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That we all get an income tax break to offset a four-cent-a-litre tax hike will not convince people to trade in their F-150 to save the planet or to keep money in their pockets. However, Monday’s gas price increase will serve as a constant reminder — boldly emblazoned on every gas station sign you drive past — to vote against Trudeau in October.

Moe, federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and other conservative politicians are winning because we live in a here-and-now world, where it’s remarkably easy to stir up resentment against the existing government.

Damn Trudeau is why it costs so damn much to fill up my tank?

Well, as bad as the carbon tax is, not quite.

Monday’s four-cent-a-litre jump is actually less than a quarter of the total 18-cent-a-litre local gas price hike we saw in March, says GasBuddy, noting Saskatchewan’s average price on March 1 was $1.03 a litre. Yet while gas prices jumped 15 per cent in March (prior to the carbon tax increase), oil prices only increased five per cent from about $58 US a barrel (West Texas Intermediate) on March 1 to about $61 a barrel Monday. Yet no one got any any texts from Andrew Scheer railing about the the oil companies.

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Yes, this is the nature of politics, and one can’t fault conservative politicians for being better at it than Trudeau.

But those who were idling their vehicles in long queues at Costco and Regina Cabs to fill up up their tanks and jerry cans Sunday, should also know the problem isn’t just the Trudeau carbon tax. And there will  be more gas pump hikes to come.

According to the Canadian Fuels Association, compliance with the new clean fuels standards by 2030 stands to be a far bigger hit, with some suggesting the bill to the industry will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, that bill — much like the costs we will all incur because of manmade climate change — is well into the future. Politics is almost always in the present.

The federal Conservatives have so far not produced a climate change strategy. And the Sask. Party government climate change strategy Prairie Resilience — while perhaps not quite as woeful as some critics suggest — does not address heavy emitters for another two years.

Instead, Scheer and Moe are eager to make this about the carbon tax and demonstrate they will use whatever and whomever to do so.

Sure, Moe (although not so, Scheer) has been smart enough to disassociate himself from the increasingly toxic yellow-vest brand that denies manmade climate change and launches off into flights of fancy about one-world government. There will not be yellow vests at Thursday’ rally that Moe will headline. Yet the Rally Against the Carbon Tax twitter feed stated “the made-up catastrophe used by globalists and socialists to instil fear and guilt to tax, regulate and remove our freedom while pretending to be saving the planet.

It was a quote from rally organizer Jason LeBlanc of Estevan from the “United we Roll”/yellow vest rally in Ottawa in which he spoke. Moe doesn’t support the yellow vest movement, but is willing to share a stage with a yellow-vest rally speaker who is saying pretty much the same thing yellow vesters are saying, the NDP noted Monday.

Evidently. According to Moe et al., the only issue we need be concerned about right now is how much Trudeau is costing you at the pump.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.

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