Postmedia News

Published:April 13, 2021

-Toronto Sun

 

It’s rather shameful that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously celebrated the turmoil Canada has been facing during the pandemic as an “opportunity” to engage in a reset of the economy.

No leader should be thinking along those lines. Instead, they should be working tirelessly to get us back to normal.

A recent poll from Leger, commissioned by the new think-tank SecondStreet.org, asked Canadians what approach they prefer when it comes to managing the economy.

Option 1: “Now is the time to restructure the economy through carbon taxes, rebates, regulations and subsidies for alternative energy.”

Option 2: “No, we should focus on fighting COVID-19 and getting things back to normal.”

While a third of Canadians backed the first option, more than a majority of respondents – 57% – took option 2. (The rest were undecided.)

This restructuring is what some people — including the Bank of Canada’s deputy governor — have referred to as a Great Reset.

The idea of government using a national crisis to push a particular agenda on Canadians when they’re vulnerable doesn’t strike us as all that great though. It’s good to see that most Canadians agree.

This opinion survey also asked questions about the carbon tax and their findings confirm what we’ve long known:

Canadians like the carbon tax in the abstract. But they don’t like it once they learn the details of it and they sure don’t like it if they’re the ones most affected by it.

These new numbers reveal that the majority of respondents who identify as using natural gas to heat their homes — natural gas is something targeted by the carbon tax — were against the tax.

A previous SecondStreet.org poll from the other month also found that the majority of Canadians oppose the feds’ plans to slowly increase the carbon tax from $30 per ton to $170 per ton by 2030.

A majority of respondents — 52% — said they were against this, with only 32% in support. (The rest said “don’t know.”)

Politicians, academics and elite members of the business community may get excited at the “opportunity” to enact some sort of great reset upon the Canadian economy.

We encourage them to remember that the people of Canada aren’t guinea pigs for the experiments they cook up with their buddies on the champagne cocktail circuit.

c. TORONTO SUN