The end of tolls on the Coquihalla Highway isn’t good news for everyone.

My drive to this picturesque Okanagan town for the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention took me up Highway 3, and through of Hedley and Keremeos. Those towns, felt the pinch of lost tourist traffic when the Coquihalla opened 22 years ago, and they will feel it again now that the faster alternative route is toll-free at last. Motorists will be more likely to skip the canyon’s tunnels, twists and stunning views.

Premier Gordon Campbell’s surprise announcement of the death of tolls was the highlight of a convention dominated by the carbon tax debate.

NDP leader Carole James gave a risky campaign-style speech that ripped the Campbell government. Sample: “Remember the Heartlands? Five years ago the Premier discovered it somewhere between Hope and the Yukon border. And he promised to put forestry on a sound and sustainable footing.”

James said she would axe the carbon tax, but keep at least the initial round of personal and business tax cuts, at a cost of around $600 million.

Where will that money come from?

Wait for our election platform, James says, but mostly it will come from a cap and trade system on big industrial emitters of greenhouse gases. With her speech she handed out the latest version of the B.C. NDP climate change plan. It too refers to “a carbon tax at source,” something the NDP seems to use interchangeably with carbon trading.

James would impose carbon trading immediately, rather than wait for 2012 when the partnership of provinces and U.S. states might be ready to proceed.

Even if B.C. had any steel mills, as James conjured up in a recent radio interview, we couldn’t have our own cap and trade system.

The NDP either doesn’t understand carbon trading, or they’re blowing smoke.

Campbell opened with a surprise move to rebate carbon taxes incurred by municipalities and school districts, he then sprinkled his keynote speech with goodies for smaller communities. The small-town infrastructure program gets extended to places up to 15,000 people, and another $5 million goes toward cell and internet service for rural communities.

The big issue remains the carbon tax on fuel, and its disproportionate impact on rural and northern places. This more than anything could decide the spring election.

I asked one of B.C.’s most respected veteran mayors, Gerry Furney of Port McNeill, what he thinks of it.

“There are lots of people who will be paying that tax who will make no profit in their businesses,” Furney said. “They’re having a tough time and they’re not going to get anything back.”

He’s right about that, and it’s the places with the most fragile economies that will feel it most.

So far, the choice is between a government that adds to rural burdens, or an opposition whose policies don’t add up.