Prime Minister Mark Carney's move Friday to end the consumer carbon price has done little to put the long-standing political battle to rest.
Rather, Carney's theatrical document signing led to another heated debate about whether the paper he signed was even a real thing.
The signing ceremony came as Carney allowed media in to witness the end of his inaugural cabinet meeting, to showcase to the cameras as he opened a document inside a red folder and signed it with a flourish.
"It's my honour, on behalf of my colleagues, to sign this," he said, as the cabinet erupted into applause.
The scene, unusual in Canadian politics and reminiscent of the slew of executive orders United States President Donald Trump has signed in the last two months, led some Conservatives to accuse Carney of signing a fake document.
Guy Giorno, who served as chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper and is currently a partner at law firm Fasken, posted on X that the document "has no legal effect."
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said on X that the paper "isn't worth the Sharpie it's signed with."
"The carbon tax still exists, and Mark Carney is apparently busy signing fakes while trying to copy [U.S. President] Donald Trump's daily executive signing ceremonies," she said.
Tyler Meredith, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and previous adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, said what Carney actually signed was a "record of decision", which is "the first step of actually beginning to formalize the change in policy."
A day after the signing, an order-in-council was published online that sets the "applicable fuel charge rates for all types of fuel and combustible waste to zero after March 31, 2025." The order-in-council is the legal instrument that puts the change in effect and is signed by the governor general.
Meredith said one reason Carney could have made the unusual move to sign that document so publicly was to have proof before the order-in-council was posted online that the prime minister had moved to change the policy, to head off any conspiracy theories.
"The value of the video, I suspect, was simply to be able to refute the claim that nothing has actually changed or been done," Meredith said.
He said the quick turnaround for that order-in-council to come into effect indicates that government departments already had done necessary work to prepare.
"As somebody who teaches public policy … I would just say that it's fascinating that we have had this detailed of a discussion online in the course of the last few days about the intricacies of how the policy-making process works, because this is usually only something that I get into in my second year of master's program."
Giorno seemed to acknowledge the fact when he retweeted another post after the order-in-council was published.
"An Extra edition of the Canada Gazette Part II is now published with the new Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act regulations," wrote Lyle Skinner, a constitutional lawyer and director of parliamentary affairs for the Senate.
"Below are the new fuel rate charges (nil) in schedule 2. Comes into force immediately. The Machinery of Government loop is closed."
Both the consumer and industrial carbon pricing systems were created through the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act passed in 2018.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett said at a press conference Sunday that Carney can’t repeal the legislation without a vote in Parliament.
Even so, the Carney government intends only to eliminate the carbon price charged to households and smaller businesses and other entities, like schools and hospitals, which individually do not have high emissions. He is leaving the industrial price for heavy emitters like oil producers and gas power plants in place.
Parliament is currently scheduled to return on March 24, but with the opposition parties pledging to bring down the government at the first opportunity, Carney is widely expected to call a federal election before then.
For more than two years, the consumer carbon pricing policy has been the focus of Conservative attacks on the Liberals, under Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s "axe the tax" slogan. But Liberal fortunes have been turning around and the party has rebounded in the polls after lagging behind the Conservatives for nearly two years.
Barrett said that without repealing the legislation, Carney could bring back the carbon price.
"Now here we are, on the eve of an election when Mark Carney needs Canadians' votes. And he's saying that he has zeroed the price that they've put on the carbon tax. But when Mark Carney doesn't need Canadians' votes, but he does need their money, he is absolutely going to put the carbon tax in place."
The Prime Minister’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Meredith said eliminating the carbon price was the "very clear will" of the Canadian people, something that "has been building as a point of consensus within the Liberal party," and a policy Carney ran on in his bid for Liberal leadership.
"I don't think that there's any world in which at least the retail-facing component of the carbon pricing system is ever going to come back in any manner," he said.
