If there’s one thing federal Tories hate more than Thomas Mulcair’s facial foliage, it’s a carbon tax.

Perhaps unaware that Her Majesty’s loyal subjects in beautiful British Columbia are still standing, despite a levy on carbon use, including gas at the pump, since 2008, the Conservatives repeatedly dismiss such a tax as the Darth Vader of economic destroyers.

“It would impact on virtually everything and the cost of living of all Canadians,” stormed federal Environment Minister Peter Kent, during a recent, late-night yawn fest in the House of Commons, known to parliamentary insiders as the committee of the whole shebang.

“Let me clear the air [hehe] once again, Mr. Chair [see Romper Room, 1962]. This government will not now or in the future impose a carbon tax on Canadians.”

Chimed in mild-mannered Mr. Kent’s Daily Planet colleague Michelle Rempel: “A carbon tax is a tax on everything, that would hurt jobs in this country, and our government will not do that.”

This followed Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s rant a few days earlier that a carbon tax is so lethal, imposing it would actually “kill and hurt Canadian families.”

Now that’s scary. Has something dire been happening in carbon-taxed British Columbia that we don’t know about? Is Premier Christy Clark’s vaunted “Families First” agenda just a cover-up to mask a hidden body count of families, asphyxiated by paying an extra 7.2 cents a litre for gas?

Yet there was our Premier this week, freshly returned from her sojourn to Seoul, journey to Japan and march on Manila, still espousing “well-paying jobs for B.C. families,” even at the risk of death via carbon tax.