The Conservative Party of Canada candidate for Swift Current-Grasslands-Kindersley riding believes his party played a role in pushing the federal government's removal of the consumer carbon tax on Monday.
"If it wasn't for Conservatives pushing on the government, it never would have happened," Jeremy Patzer said. "Currently, the Liberals have set it to zero, but they haven't actually scrapped policy, so there's nothing preventing Mark Carney jumping that price back up after the election is over."
Carney announced on March 14, as his first move as Prime Minister, that his government would remove the tax. However, his party is only able to set the rate to zero until Parliament resumes and it is put to a vote. Patzer believes Carney should have gone a step further with the carbon tax and said his party would if elected on April 28.
"He's also left the industrial carbon tax in place," he said. "That's more hidden from consumers, it's harder to see the impacts of that because it's not a line item on your energy bill, but you will pay that. It's ultimately consumers that will be the ones paying for it."
Patzer, who's seeking a third term as an MP, believes if the Liberals are re-elected, Carney could reinstate the consumer carbon tax again.
"I think he'll put the carbon tax back on after a period of time, once it's kind of cooled down," he said. "They've always just said it's too divisive, so we're going to take a pause on it. They aren't scrapping it because it's bad policy; they just know that Canadians don't like it, so they're going to put a pause on it and figure out how they can re-implement it later."