This post originally appeared in the Western Standard

Well, the election is over, and it turns out that I was right to be sceptical of the polls. Polling which showed collapsing support for the Conservative Party, which I said over and over didn’t track with what I was seeing on the ground, was clearly wrong. In fact, the Conservative Party increased their share of the vote by more than 7 points, breaking 40% for the first time since 1988, while picking up 23 seats in parliament.

That kept the Liberals to a minority government — something the pollsters were definitely not predicting — and they only did as well as they did because the Bloc Québécois lost ground and the NDP were absolutely decimated.

For this we have Donald Trump to thank, and his unprecedented intervention in our election. Not to mention Canadian boomers, who as a group ranked Trump as the most important issue in this election, and “Making Canada a better place to live” as their least important issue, just behind “Growing the Economy” and making life more affordable.

They’ve made their money, after all. They’ve built up tremendous equity in their homes. And it just made them feel good to vote in a way that they thought would make Donald Trump mad. (Not that it did.)

We are now seeing a rising generation of younger adults who will be the first to lose ground as compared to their parents since the Great Depression. And why is that? Because the Baby Boomers decided to vote to reward those politicians whose policies have been, and will continue to be, a direct assault on the Canadian cost of living.

Carney’s government will double down on the worst policies of the Trudeau era. He is, after all, the Apostle of Net-Zero.

That means doubling down on carbon taxation, especially in the form of the Industrial Carbon Tax, which will hurt existing businesses and discourage others from getting off the ground. And if he sees an opportunity to go back to charging the Consumer Carbon Tax — remember that it remains on the books — he will do that as well.

It also means continued electric vehicle mandates. Many Canadians remain ignorant of the fact that the Trudeau Liberals banned the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, beginning in 2035, just ten years from now. It took some prodding, but the Conservatives vowed to scrap that mandate.

Now it will remain in effect, and that means higher priced gas-and-diesel driven cars in the near term, as Canadians start to process the fact that they won’t be able to buy them soon. It will mean eventually being forced to buy even more expensive EVs and, if nothing changes, without government support, as the federal EV subsidy program ran out of money months ago.

Meanwhile, prepare for every story about an auto company bailing on commitments to build electric vehicles in Canada to feel like a crisis. Those agreements were negotiated at a time when decision makers assumed that Donald Trump would lose his second bid for the White House, and Americans would have EVs forced on them as well.

In that climate, it seemed like a great idea to accept the mountains of taxpayer dollars being offered to automakers by Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford. But without the American market, doing so makes much less business sense. Even with Doug Ford bellowing that he’s going to “hold them accountable” and force them to “continue manufacturing automobiles here in Ontario!”

And it further means that the Trudeau government’s war on pipelines will now become the Carney government’s war on pipelines.

Remember, while campaigning just a few weeks ago, how Carney went to Edmonton and proclaimed his intention to:

Make Canada “the world’s leading energy superpower,”

Invest in our “natural strengths and ensure our economic sovereignty,” and

fast-track “projects of national interest,”

while acknowledging that,

“any major energy project that comes from this great province is going to pass the boundaries of other provinces?”

His clear implication was that he intended to change course from his predecessor, to facilitate the building of pipelines, perhaps to revive Energy East, and to do so even over the objections of Quebec.

Suffice it to say, we didn’t believe a word of it. And now we see we were right not to do so, as we’ve just seen two of Carney’s ministers — Steven Guilbeault and Dominic LeBlanc — throw cold water on the idea that the Carney government would support new pipeline projects.

That’s because the activists who continue to run our country would prefer the pat on the head they get from the Davos brigade than to support the backbone of our economy, the natural resource sector, upon which Canadian jobs, energy affordability, and our overall cost of living rests.

All this means, of course, is that our work is not done. Our fight to protect the Canada we all know and love, where regular people can do honest work, buy a house, raise a family and live comfortably, goes on.

As disappointing as the outcome of this election was, it is just a setback. More and more people are hearing our message. We’re already seeing signs of buyer’s remorse among Carney voters. And, to put it bluntly, if something can’t continue on one way forever, it won’t. Which is to say, we’re going to have to change course sometime. The sooner, the better.

So, to borrow a phrase, Elbows Up.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.