NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has come under fire from the government after comments he made last week distancing his party from the Liberal version of consumer carbon pricing.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Liberal MPs accused the NDP of caving into pressure from the Conservatives on climate change, in a sign of increasingly frosty relations between the two former parliamentary partners as House of Commons sittings resumed Monday.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came under fire from the government after comments he made last week distancing his party from the Liberal version of consumer carbon pricing.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been taunting the NDP for months for supporting a key plank of the Liberals’ climate-change policy.
But on Monday, a string of Liberals lined up to criticize the NDP, setting the tone for a fractious parliamentary session with an earlier-than-expected election looming. At a Monday news conference in Parliament, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he was “not certain that this session will last a very long time.” The parties are “playing chicken,” and “eventually one will hit another one,” he said.
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At a press conference in Parliament on Monday, Government House Leader Karina Gould claimed the NDP Leader is “responding to the demands of Mr. Poilievre,” not just on carbon pricing but by ending the supply-and-confidence agreement with the minority Liberal government.
Mr. Singh ended his party’s agreement to support the Liberals in confidence votes earlier this month, which makes it more likely that a federal election will take place before the fall of 2025.
At the first Question Period of the parliamentary session, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said as soon as the Conservatives attack the NDP, the party hides and runs.
“They wanted to avoid the criticisms of the mean old Conservatives and tried to save themselves,” he added.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in an interview that on carbon pricing, “the NDP can’t take the heat and the pressure from Poilievre and the right-wing influence.”
At a Commons press conference, Mr. Singh denied he was aligning his party with the Conservatives’ stand. He did not provide details of his party’s position on consumer carbon pricing.
The NDP Leader indicated last week that he opposes both the Liberal and Conservative approaches to tackling climate change. He said the NDP wants an approach “where it doesn’t put the burden on the backs of working people, where big polluters have to pay their fair share.” He said his party is working on an alternative climate plan.
The federal government has two carbon-pricing regimes: one for individual consumers and another for heavy industry called the industrial carbon price.
On Monday, Mr. Singh told journalists his party would be focusing on big companies that pollute.
“Big oil and gas should not be getting a free ride. We need to make sure that we have the courage to stop big polluters from polluting,” he said.
Last week, British Columbia’s NDP Premier, David Eby, who had previously defended carbon pricing and whose province was the first in Canada to have a broad-based system, said he would scrap the levy if the federal government drops legislation requiring it.
At Question Period, Conservative MPs claimed that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had been sidelined by the Prime Minister in favour of Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England.
Earlier this month, Mr. Carney was appointed by Mr. Trudeau as a special adviser and chair of a new Liberal task force on economic growth.
Conservatives referred to reports in The Globe and Mail this summer that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, is concerned about Ms. Freeland’s effectiveness in selling the government’s economic message at a time when the Liberal government is seeking to revive its political fortunes.