Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre listens during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 18, 2023.pressing grimly on, while swarms of premiers peck out their eyes – it falls to a wayward journalist to muse: what if?
What if the tax had been phased in faster, while the Liberals were still popular? Most of all, what if the Prime Minister had not caved to pressure from his Atlantic MPs last fall and carved out an exception for home heating oil? Likewise, Mr. Trudeau would have been excellently placed to wrongfoot the Conservatives as seventies-style dirigistes, who want to use the “through regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the economy as opposed to trusting the market,” were his own policies not so reliant on the heavy hand of government using regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the economy.