Poilievre says the next Canadian election will be about the carbon price

Pierre Poilievre returned to Ottawa on Thursday after the holidays with a familiar demand for Justin Trudeau: call a carbon-tax election.

Pierre Poilievre returned to Ottawa on Thursday after the holidays with a familiar demand for Justin Trudeau: call a carbon-tax election.

Neither Trudeau's announcement that he plans to resign as Liberal leader nor U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's recent rhetoric about using "economic force" to take over Canada seem to have swayed the Tory leader, who said the ballot-box question -- and even his opponent -- remain the same.

"It's ironic, we have an American president who's threatening tariffs on Canada and we have a Canadian government that is threatening even more devastating tariffs on Canada in the form of a carbon tax," he said.

Poilievre added that Trump would likely be happy to see the consumer price on carbon rise in April, as scheduled, because "he'll be on the phone with our trucking companies, our factories, our mines, he'll be saying 'Pick up your billions of dollars and move 50 kilometres south, create the jobs for Americans."'

Trump has threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods when he takes office later this month. In response the federal government released a $1.3-billion plan to beef up the border, but Trump has not backed down.

Poilievre said the country needs a prime minister who can make the case to economic allies in the United States that tariffs will be harmful to American businesses, and that Canada has opportunities including vast amounts of green energy to power artificial intelligence that's being developed in Silicon Valley.

But when asked which allies he's speaking with south of the border, Poilievre said, "Look, I'm not the prime minister."