Some people just don't get it

Our friend, Garth Turner, loves to keep stirring the pot like no one else can. In his most recent post, (which I think is supposed to stand in for a sort-of apology) has this to say under the section entitled, "Things I've Learned"...

"that a bunch of people in the West can’t get over a 28-year-old policy and a dead prime minister. What a burden to carry around"

Well, as a Central Canadian who "gets it", I thought I'd take a stab at trying to explain it to my fellow Central Canadian...

Mr. Turner, when you've been forced to watch as a particular political party economicaly exploited your province in the name of political expediency, have been too long governed by this same party that obviously cares nothing about your economic well-being, and who while in Opposition are now once again proposing to devastate your local economy in the same way they did 28-years ago, you better believe that the folks "out West" would have a very long, and unforgiving, memory.

As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Well, it looks like the folks "out West" have learned all to well from history... they've learned that the Liberal Party of Canada cannot be trusted to look out for their best interests, and that the Liberal Party of Canada is more than willing to sacrifice them economically at the drop of a hat if they think they can squeeze more votes out of Ontario and or Quebec. They've learned their lesson very well... and you bet they're going to do their best to ensure that Mr. Stephane Dion NEVER becomes Prime Minister.

Because they don't want to be forced to bear the additional burden of having their lives ruined AGAIN by a yet another Liberal Prime Minister's program.

"Dion's credibility shot on carbon tax"

Lorne Gunter viciously rips into Dion over his Carbon Tax idea in today's Edmonton Journal.

"Dion's credibility shot on carbon tax"
Don't believe it will be revenue-neutral, and don't believe it won't hurt producers

Lorne Gunter
The Edmonton Journal
Friday, May 16, 2008

For at least two years now, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has been clear -- emphatic even -- there will be no carbon tax if his party wins the next federal election with him at the helm.

Of course, he was being disingenuous about that sometimes. For instance, last spring he suggested that instead of a carbon tax, the country's 700 largest carbon emitters might be charged a carbon fee.

On a practical level, there would be no difference. A gouging, punitive, regressive tax by any other name would still be a gouging, punitive, regressive tax.

Still, on a dozen or more occasions, Dion has pledged never to introduce a carbon tax.

In June 2006, during the first Liberal leadership debate, Dion scoffed when Michael Ignatieff said a carbon tax "would do more to address climate change and help us be good stewards of our environment than any other measure." Then, as now, Dion was a passionate defender of the Kyoto accord and even he rejected the notion that a carbon tax could help reduce emissions to the levels mandated by the UN's global-warming accord.

Weeks later, when he released his campaign platform it referred to a tax on the production or consumption of fossil fuels as "simply bad policy."

Also, Dion told the National Post's editorial board in November 2006 (just weeks before he was selected as Liberal leader), if he ever became prime minister he would not even consider a carbon tax, because "for Albertans it's a non-starter."

He claimed in the Globe and Mail to have "always been against" a carbon tax. He had "other ways" to achieve emission reductions -- mostly investment in new energy-saving technologies and tax incentives for individuals and businesses that reduced their carbon footprints.

Dion did say he wanted to establish a link between Canadians' pocketbooks and the environment -- between "your wallet and the planet," in his words -- but not by taking money out of those wallets, but rather by fattening them up with government cash.

Within weeks of becoming Liberal boss, Dion rushed to Alberta to assure the Journal's editorial board, among others, that there would never be a carbon tax if he had his way.

I wrote at the time that I didn't believe him. His plan, regardless of what he was going to call its components, would hit Alberta disproportionately hard and as such amounted to a carbon tax. Dion wrote our editors insisting "the plan I will reveal soon to decrease Canada's industrial greenhouse gases will not include a carbon tax. I have said that I will be the best partner for Alberta and I mean it."

Even this past winter, speaking to an Alberta audience, Dion assured the crowd he had two "bottom lines": "there will be no carbon tax" and the profits earned by Albertans in the current energy boom "will stay in Alberta."

So, of course, what has Dion proposed this week? A carbon tax.

Sure, the Liberal leader says his I-will-never-impose-a-carbon-tax tax will be revenue neutral, meaning for every dollar raised by his tax another tax will be lowered by the same amount. But I think he's shot his credibility on the carbon-tax front. So excuse me, at the risk of provoking him to write another "best partner for Alberta" letter to my editors, I don't believe him.

Promising that a new tax will be revenue-neutral has about the same credibility to begin with as a realtor's pledge that your new home is just 15 minutes from downtown or a carmaker's promise that your new SUV will get 20 kilometres a litre in the city and 30 km on the highway. But coming from Dion, the vigorous opponent of carbon taxes, the pledge of revenue neutrality is even less believable than usual.

Also, Brian Mulroney pledged that the GST would be revenue-neutral, and we all know how that song and dance ended.

The British Columbia government made a carbon tax the focal point of its spring budget and promised it would raise no new revenues. But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates that once all the rebates for low-income residents are paid out and administrative costs are factored in, middle- and upper-income taxpayers could pay $1 billion more in taxes each year than they do now.

And even if Dion's carbon levy is revenue neutral, will it be regionally neutral? Will it be imposed on consumers --and thus felt all across the country -- or will it be imposed mostly on producers and thus be mostly born by Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, and possibly Newfoundland and Labrador?

If Dion follows the long tradition among Liberal leaders in their treatment of Alberta, we know the answer. Electoral reality will take precedence over regional equity. He will see few votes to be won here and many to be gained elsewhere by championing a tax that hurts Alberta and the other producers and -- blink -- the tax he would never impose, in part because he said he didn't want to hurt Alberta, will be dumped on our backs.

© The Edmonton Journal 2008

"A new Boston Tea Party"?

That's what Warren has suggested may occur if this trend continues... with our reliance on our cars, Canadians can only take so much more of these rising oil prices.

My two cents? We need to start hammering home the point to Canadians, "You think it's bad now? If you vote for Dion, just watch what happens to oil and gas prices!"

His views on Kyoto will cause the price at the pumps to soar, there's just no way around it. To raise the funds he's going to need for implementation, and in an effort to curb usage, they're going to raise fuel taxes. Add to that the fact that they're going to punish the producers in Alberta, which will also cause a spike in oil prices.

The message? Same as it was back in the days of the Boston Tea Party... overtaxation on a staple product (tea then, gas now), and an overbearing ruling class as the root cause (the British King then, Mr. Dion's Liberals now).

In other words, "The Red Coats are coming, the Red Coats are coming!"

It's time for another Revolution.

NEP II - As per Mark Holland

Cut and pasted from Bourque... yea, a bunch of other people have already posted it, but I'm going to again anyway... we can't afford to let this story be buried by the MSM. Will the Liberals give another Trudeauesque "Up Yours" to Alberta with the introduction of a Kyoto inspired "NEP II"?

Sunday, February 4 - A Bourque Exclusive

LIB MP HOLLAND: "THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES"
When will the Mainstream Media start covering the Liberal Agenda?
by Charles Adler

As I apply my ink stained fingers to the trusty keyboard, it's been more than 72 hours since Mark Holland, the Liberal Natural Resources critic, belched out the most threatening words I have heard in a political conversation in years.

But for some reason the Mainstream Media has seen them not worthy of attention.

Pierre Bourque of the Bourque Newswatch asked me to scribble my thoughts on the interview with the Liberal MP which contained serious threats to the Western Canadian economy all in the name of respecting Kyoto.

When I asked Holland whether a Liberal government under Stephane Dion would shut down or limit oil sands production if necessary to meet Kyoto targets, his response was, "Exactly." He then went on to say "I think what you are going to see is we're going to say you cannot exploit that resource, basically go in there and pump it out as fast as you can to give it to the Americans and sell out our national interests and blow apart our emissions targets."

I want to give credit where credit is due. Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Journal in his Sunday Feb 4 column did write about this. But is Lorne Gunter in the only mainstream journalist/columnist in the country who thinks this is newsworthy? Is he the only one who understands what it would mean to the economy of Western Canada and ultimately the entire national economy to tell the energy producers to STOP developing the oilsands, to just tell the guys with the dozers to take their "filthy work ethic" to the unemployment line. Is Gunter the only one who understands the message Stephan Dion's government would send to the capital markets about the unworthiness of investing in the Canadian Energy Industry? Is Gunter the only one who gets how this would level a frontal assault on the Toronto Stock Exchange where so much of what we call growth is dependent on a healthy Oil patch? Is Gunter the only one who gets that this would create an attack on our dollar?

Now perhaps the mainstream media feels that this is not a good time to second guess the fantasies of the Opposition Natural Resources critic. After all Dion and his crew are supposedly on the right side of the Kyoto angels. Perhaps waving a red flag at Alberta is considered the right thing to do in Western Canada. Why dwell on the obvious cause of CO2 emissions in Ontario and Quebec, the fact that half the population of the country, lives, works and drives there?

It's much easier for Liberals to demagogue the issue and pretend that it is ALBERTA energy that embarasses Canada in the hallowed shrine of Kyoto. Perhaps one ought to stop giving the mainstream media excuses for ignoring Mark Hollands sourgas? Maybe it's the oldest reason in the hills. Holland is to the left of the Canadian centre. Does anyone doubt that if a member of Harper's gang were to say something that came right out of rightfield that might be embraassing to the leadership that it would find itself planted firmly on the front pages as well as the teleprompters of Mansbridge, Robertson and Newman?

Warren Kinsella, who was interviewed on Adler on Line after Mark Holland offered his emissions, said he coudln't believe what Holland was saying and thought the Liberal brain trust would immediately disown this stuff.

But they haven't.

Perhaps it is because if the mainstream media don't seize on an event, the Liberal mandarins have no reason to think it ever really happened. Kinsella said that the Liberals need to be reminded that it was a Liberal Government after having reviewed environmental impact studies that approved the initial exploration of the oil sands in 1967 and that successive Liberal governments went on to approve the expansion of that exploration not once, but twice in 1978 and again in 1983.

A day after Mark Holland's threatening remarks, he appeared on my Corus colleague Dave Rutherford's program and was asked whether a Dion government would consdier nationalizing oil companies if they didn't meet Kyoto standards. Holland replied, "If they refuse to work with us....there will be consequences."

On the same day Holland fired this new shot not across but into the bow of Alberta, the former premier of the province, Ralph Klein told my radio audience, "I have a message for the honourable member from Ajax Pickering. Stay out of our business." Klein may no longer have political power. But nobody should doubt that if the Dion-Holland Liberals plan to put a clamp on the continued growth of the Alberta economy, the price to pay for all of us will be enormous.

At the moment, we need to ask the question, "What price are we paying for the Mainstream Media's cold blooded decision to ignore the Liberal agenda."

Charles Adler is the host of Adler on Line on the Corus Radio Network
Listen to Adler's interview with Mark Holland by logging on to www.charlesadler.com
Contact him through his website or email him at adleronline@gmail.com