So much for “western alienation.” If the current polling holds, and it has for the entire campaign so far, Mark Carney is on track to win more seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan than any Liberal leader since Pierre Trudeau in 1968. But if he really wants to put a lid on that stew of grievance and anger, and put a stop to the politicians who keep salting it, he should eliminate the oil and gas emissions cap as one of his first acts as a re-elected prime minister. 

This wouldn’t be an act of surrender or concession, and it certainly wouldn’t be about lowering his government’s ambitions on climate change. Instead, it would be about shifting the fight onto more favourable political and policy grounds where his government could better defend its position. Carney has already talked at length about his belief in the importance of the industrial carbon tax and the need to strengthen it. And when it comes to climate policy, there might not be safer political ground than a tax on large industrial polluters. 

Eliminating the emissions cap while simultaneously improving the industrial carbon price — perhaps by returning to industry-wide benchmarking, as was the case under the Alberta NDP government’s so-called “Carbon........

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