Majority call for end to carbon-pricing in Quebec, poll suggests
Published Tuesday, the Léger survey also found that a majority of Quebecers support building a pipeline across the province to transport oil or gas from Western Canada to international markets. The poll offers the latest evidence of shifting public opinion on environmental issues in Quebec, where there has long been a broad consensus in favour of carbon pricing and against pipelines.
Quebec has had some of the highest gas prices in the country since April, when Carney ended the consumer carbon levy that applied in most provinces. British Columbia quickly moved to end its own carbon tax as well, leaving Quebec as the sole province that remains fully committed to carbon pricing.
According to the survey conducted for Québecor media properties, 56 per cent of respondents believe Quebec should put an end to its cap-and-trade carbon-pricing scheme. That includes a majority of supporters for all major political parties in the province, except the left-leaning Québec solidaire. Another 28 per cent said the province should keep its price on carbon, while 15 per cent didn't know or refused to answer.
An even larger majority – 68 per cent – said the cost of the carbon price should be clearly indicated on gas station receipts, which is not currently the case. The cap-and-trade system adds about 10 cents per litre to the price of gasoline.
The survey comes as Statistics Canada reports that lower gas prices drove inflation down across all provinces except Quebec in April. On Tuesday, the agency said the annual pace of inflation in Canada cooled to 1.7 per cent last month, down from 2.3 per cent in March, driven largely by the removal of the consumer carbon price. But in Quebec, the annual inflation rate rose 0.3 percentage points from March to 2.2 per cent in April.
According to the website GasBuddy.com, Quebec on Tuesday had the highest average gasoline price of all provinces except B.C., and had an average price more than 20 cents per litre higher than in Ontario.
Weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney scrapped the federal consumer carbon levy, more than half of Quebecers want their province to follow suit and abolish its own price on carbon, a new poll says.
In response, the Parti Québécois called on the government to reduce the "unfair gap in the price of gasoline" between Quebec and neighbouring provinces. Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said the government has several options to reduce the disparity, including cutting the province's fuel or sales taxes.
Quebec, he added, could also return some of the proceeds from the carbon market to taxpayers. Currently, the money goes to Quebec's electrification and climate change fund, to be spent on programs that reduce emissions.
However, St-Pierre Plamondon said it would be costly to scrap Quebec's cap-and-trade system, which is linked to California's. "There are several options for harmonizing pump prices across provinces, but leaving the carbon market would be the least intelligent option from a cost-benefit perspective," he said in a social-media statement.
The new survey also found that 55 per cent of respondents think it would be a good idea to relaunch a pipeline project that would cross Quebec to export oil or gas from Western Canada. Another 26 per cent said it would be a bad idea, while 19 per cent didn't know or refused to respond.
Quebec Premier François Legault has repeatedly said there's more openness to pipelines in the province since U.S. President Donald Trump began his tariff war. Speaking at the national assembly on Tuesday, Legault said the province could support an oil or gas pipeline if there are benefits for Quebecers, but said he would invest no public money in such a project.
"We're not dogmatic. We're OK with Quebec making money," he said. "The world has changed."
The poll surveyed 1,051 people between May 9-11 from Léger's online panel. A margin of error cannot be assigned to panel surveys.
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Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
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Opinion: Ottawa must resist the temptation to fiddle with CMHC amid housing market slump Raymond Sullivan, executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, an organization that represents the social and non-profit housing sector, said he's encouraged to see affordable housing at the heart of Build Canada Homes' mission. But given how long it can take to set up a new bureaucracy, Mr. Sullivan said the government should roll out elements of Build Canada Homes as they become ready, rather than wait for the entire organization to be set up. 'We're not going to have a cake that's fully baked and ready to launch in the fall. So let's focus on the pieces that are already available to us,' he said. 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Mr. Lee said building affordable housing on public lands also won't be enough to get the government to its goal of 500,000 housing starts a year. (The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 283,734 units in June.) Meanwhile, the private and social-housing sectors are impatient for clarity on other policy fronts, including the promised GST rebate for first-time homebuyers. Mr. Lee said the delay is affecting demand at a time when the economy is already slowing down the housing market. 'Having something like that that was promised not get turned into official policy has really thrown another wrench into the system,' said Mr. Lee. Proposed GST rebate for first-time homebuyers could offer average relief of $27,000, PBO says Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne introduced legislation in late May to provide the GST rebates. 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Vancouver Sun
3 hours ago
- Vancouver Sun
'They were just hell-bent': Mayor battling Ottawa over 'really left' housing mandate
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The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. City council didn't dare to accept the funds and later renege on the feds' conditions, Drew says: 'We basically walked away from $30 million because we refused to succumb, or be co-opted into something we felt was bad for the community.' Then-Liberal MP for Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, Irek Kusmierczyk (who lost the 2025 election by just four votes to Conservative MP Kathy Borrelli), implored Windsor's city council to reconsider, insisting the feds were only asking for 'gentle density.' It's not so gentle, Drew counters, if you find yourself living next door to a new four-plex and you bought your house based on the community's single-family residential character. 'We did it in our way,' Drew explains in a recent conversation, 'because there's no one who knows their community better, no level of government that knows their community better,' than the local council. The 53-year-old lawyer-cum-mayor grew up in Windsor, and has served on the city's council for nearly two decades, 11 as mayor. And when you look at Canada's Constitution, Drew points out, these issues are 'under the bailiwick of the provincial government … who delegate it to the municipalities.' The city's locally generated housing strategies — intense densification along transit routes; blanket rezoning in new neighbourhoods to allow for greater density; repurposing several municipally owned properties for housing — were rejected by the fund's managers as 'not ambitious enough.' 'Ambition' was their favourite word, Drew grumbles: 'We weren't ambitious enough and they wanted to work with municipalities who had greater ambition.' One of the biggest sticking points for Drew? The minimum ticket to entry for this fund was city-wide rezoning to allow four-plexes to be built on any residential lot, as a right — removing the public hearing process and the possibility for appeals. In the suburban Calgary neighbourhood where I live, blanket rezoning means neighbours hold their breath when a lot comes up for sale. The province of Ontario already mandates three buildings on a residential lot, the bureaucrats told Drew, so what's the big deal about adding four? His rebuttal: 'Then what's the big deal about adding five? I mean, where does it stop? And when do you get to say enough's enough; that we have processes in place that allow us to look at sewer capacity, that allow us to deal with parking, that allow us to deal with garbage control? 'We hope to work with the federal government — who wants to truly be a partner in helping build more housing — without jamming down our throats something residents don't want,' pleads the veteran mayor. To that end, after Carney took power, the mayor sent a letter — as yet, unanswered — to the government, asking for a re-evaluation of this rigid approach to the housing accelerator fund. Drew has previously worked with Gregor Robertson, former mayor of Vancouver and now Carney's point man on housing and infrastructure. He's optimistic Robertson will bring practical insights about the correlation between affordable housing and density to the federal table. I noted that if increased density brought affordability, Vancouver would be cheap by now. 'I think the benefit of having a fresh government,' Drew offers, 'is they can come in and say, 'Listen, we looked at the program … while we appreciate the intention the past government was trying to employ here, we think there's a better way of working with municipalities, allowing them the flexibility to determine how to accomplish the goal. We'll set the goals and then we'll hold them to account.'' Drew's suggestion echoes what I heard Pierre Poilievre say in the last election campaign. But, we agree, there's nothing wrong with the Liberals stealing good ideas from the Conservatives. We hope to work with the federal government ... without jamming down our throats something residents don't want While the housing accelerator initiative is the focus of Windsor council's attention, Drew's not happy these blanket zoning mandates are being applied to other programs — including federal public transit and housing infrastructure funding available to municipalities. 'And it gets even better,' Drew continues, his tone increasingly agitated. 'Guess who doesn't have to do this? The entire province of Quebec. They have an exemption. They carved out a different pathway … four units as of right was not a requirement in the province of Quebec.' Indeed, Premier Francois Legault trumpeted his $900-million deal with Ottawa as being 'free of conditions.' The economy of Windsor has taken a sharp downturn in the past 18 months. Before Donald Trump's re-election, the Conference Board of Canada predicted Windsor would be the fastest-growing city by GDP of the 24 big cities they studied. 'We had the battery factory well under construction,' Drew reports, 'and we've got the Gordie Howe bridge that is winding up construction and should open officially the first week of December this year. 'But the reality is, there's a lot of fear here,' he shares. 'Our unemployment rate was almost 11 per cent and people are in rainy day mode. People are pinching their pennies … The housing market is very slow and everyone's just in a wait-and-see mode.' Property developers are on standby, he says, waiting to see if the Carney Liberals will cut development charges by 50 per cent at the municipal level (as promised during the election campaign), and whether the feds will offer low-interest loans for multi-storey residential units. 'Things have just kind of ground to a halt here,' Drew says with a sigh. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .
Edmonton Journal
3 hours ago
- Edmonton Journal
'They were just hell-bent': Mayor battling Ottawa over 'really left' housing mandate
In a very civil tone, the mayor of Windsor, Ont., is asking the fresh faces in the Mark Carney-led Liberal government to butt out of city planning. Mayor Drew Dilkens especially wants to see an end to Trudeau-era affordable housing mandates from Ottawa that don't serve his community. Article content 'They were just hell-bent on putting forward this really left-principled version of what housing should be,' Drew says of the conditions imposed on cities under the $4-billion housing accelerator fund launched in 2023 by then federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser. Article content Article content Unlike most other big cities in Canada, Windsor chose not to apply for the housing accelerator dollars — turning down the possibility of a $30-million cash infusion into the city's densification strategies. Article content Article content City council didn't dare to accept the funds and later renege on the feds' conditions, Drew says: 'We basically walked away from $30 million because we refused to succumb, or be co-opted into something we felt was bad for the community.' Article content Then-Liberal MP for Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, Irek Kusmierczyk (who lost the 2025 election by just four votes to Conservative MP Kathy Borrelli), implored Windsor's city council to reconsider, insisting the feds were only asking for 'gentle density.' Article content It's not so gentle, Drew counters, if you find yourself living next door to a new four-plex and you bought your house based on the community's single-family residential character. Article content Article content 'We did it in our way,' Drew explains in a recent conversation, 'because there's no one who knows their community better, no level of government that knows their community better,' than the local council. The 53-year-old lawyer-cum-mayor grew up in Windsor, and has served on the city's council for nearly two decades, 11 as mayor. Article content Article content And when you look at Canada's Constitution, Drew points out, these issues are 'under the bailiwick of the provincial government … who delegate it to the municipalities.' Article content The city's locally generated housing strategies — intense densification along transit routes; blanket rezoning in new neighbourhoods to allow for greater density; repurposing several municipally owned properties for housing — were rejected by the fund's managers as 'not ambitious enough.' Article content 'Ambition' was their favourite word, Drew grumbles: 'We weren't ambitious enough and they wanted to work with municipalities who had greater ambition.'
