When Justin Trudeau turned tail and retreated from his carbon-tax policy, he also offered a way to save some of the emissions-reducing virtues: He told Atlantic Canadians he’d be handing out free heat pumps.made a fairly convincing argument that giving people a new home heating and cooling system that uses electricity, and a lot less energy overall, would be an effective way to reduce carbon emissions.
But as Atlantic Canada Liberal MPs boiled in a political cauldron for five months, Mr. Trudeau and his political strategists held firm right up to the moment when they caved. As policy, it’s an awkward knot. Carbon taxes will be levied on natural gas but not on dirtier heating oil. And since this climbdown was going to look like a climbdown, Mr. Trudeau needed a way to say it wasn’t one. That’s where the heat pumps came in.
That really means an increase in maximum income-related rebates for heat pumps, from $10,000 to $15,000, plus another $5,000 through federal-provincial grants. But if that reduces the cost to zero for half the families in Atlantic Canada, you’d expect many to take the money.