As Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall has made his voice heard in recent weeks in the lead-up to his re-election campaign, and the Conservatives in Ottawa have taken up his banner on all manner of topics, it is the issue of carbon pricing that is driving home a few truths about both Wall and the Conservative Party. While there is talk about setting a baseline $15/tonne carbon price nationally, which can be implemented either by carbon tax (per BC) or cap-and-trade (per Ontario and Quebec), Wall is adamant that he doesn’t want it imposed on his province, and is going so far as to suggest that any “national carbon tax” (which, let’s be clear, it is not what is being discussed) would be exempt from SaskPower because it’s a provincial Crown corporation. And in the House of Commons, former Speaker Andrew Scheer gave a ridiculous and gobsmackingly boneheaded Members’ Statement on Monday which mocked the notion of a “carbon tax” (which, again, not on the table) as a market mechanism, and tried to apply it to other forms of taxation, generally making a fool out of himself in the process. But if you listen to what both Wall and Conservatives like Scheer are saying, it becomes obvious that intelligent, principled conservatism in this country has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo, and that we are left with right-flavoured populism in its wake. Because seriously, an actual conservative thinker would look at a carbon price, and using whichever mechanism (but likely an actual carbon tax), use that in order to encourage the market to find their own ways to reduce their carbon emissions. In fact, it’s what the oil sector has been demanding for years now, and they’ve even built carbon pricing into their books while they waited for some kind of direction as to just how much it would be and by what mechanism it would be applied. But rather than having an actual conservative government that would take this tool to and use the market to innovate and achieve the desired end (being lower carbon emissions), you have a bunch of populists in both Saskatchewan and Ottawa who howled instead about a fictional “job-killing carbon tax” and who held their breath and stamped their feet rather than dealing with the problem of carbon emissions for an entire decade. So while the Conservative Party starts to re-examine itself in advance of its leadership contest, perhaps this is something that they should consider – a return to actual conservative principles rather than this populist noise, which resulted in a decade of poor economic decisions (like lowering the GST), incoherent policy decisions, and as we can see here, childish tantrums to what should be an actual conservative approach to solving problems.

Good reads:

• Closing arguments concluded in the Duffy Trial. Expect a verdict April 21^st. (Reevely, O’Malley and Blatchford).
• From the Public Safety Committee, CSIS says they have used the disruption powers from C-51, while the RCMP admits they have a bullying problem.
• Making all cabinet ministers equals was a mess of Orders in Council, seeing as one can’t create line departments out of whole cloth.
• Melinda Gates wants more male cabinet ministers to follow Catherine McKenna’s plans to take evenings to be with her family.
• It has been revealed that Senator Patrick Brazeau was hospitalized because of a suicide attempt.
• Environmental groups are warning that meeting our climate targets means no more expansion of the oil sands or pipelines.
• The public service pension plan has a paper deficit (that isn’t really a deficit) owing to low interest rates and changed accounting rules.
• The Royal Canadian Navy has decided to use existing foreign designs for their new frigates rather than designing new ones from the ground-up.
• The Parliamentary Press Gallery kicked off their 150^th anniversary celebrations. (Yes, a year before Confederation).
• In lieu of Parliamentarian of the Year, Maclean’s held a welcome for new MPs, and honoured Lloyd Axworthy with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
• Anita Vandenbeld has ideas about bringing more women into politics. (I am sceptical about some of them).
• Roméo Dallaire writes about how to get child soldiers out of the ISIS conflict (and tacitly endorses the new mission).
• Andrew Coyne is not impressed with how the Liberals are selling their deficit plans. Susan Delacourt dissects that sales job into credit and blame.

Odds and ends:

Mélanie Joly looks to be serious about making changes to the governance of the NCC.

Herein lies a strange tale of a strange co-worker that spiralled out of control quickly.

The Royal Canadian Navy had its first ceremonial same-sex kiss when HMCS Winnipeg returned to port in Victoria.

https://twitter.com/yair_rosenberg/status/701968006092611584