Shifty promises

Given the state of my maturity, I can safely say that I have been witness to many elections in Canada. However, I’ve never seen an election where a candidate for prime minister promises the country that he will have them paying more. . .for everything. That’s exactly what Stephane Dion with his much ballyhooed “Green Shift” is promising Canadians.

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The program, as envisioned by Mr. Dion, will tax producers and users of carbon-intensive energy products, such as fuel oils, kerosene, natural gas and coal. Now, remember, we live in Canada and despite the hysteria over global warming we tend to have winters that are fairly cold and Mr. Dion is proposing to raise taxes on home heating oil and natural gas! Sure, there’s the usual disclaimer that this proposed new tax scheme will be “revenue neutral”, but that’s like saying if one changes one’s diet from pure fats to just veggies you won’t experience any weight loss. Message to Mr. Dion: There is no such thing as a “revenue neutral” tax, to which most of us who witnessed the introduction of the GST, another alleged “revenue neutral” tax, will attest. The Liberals’ Green Shift document refers to carbon emissions as “pollution”. But without carbon, life on earth would be impossible. There are four substances in our biosphere that are absolutely essential to maintaining life as we know it. These are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon. That’s why scientists tend to refer to earth’s flora and fauna as carbon-based life forms. Yet the Liberals of this country believe that the voters are so stupid and ill informed that they will believe one of life’s most important elements is a pollutant. There appears to be a true sense of intellectual bankruptcy within the Liberal Party of Canada in their desperate pitch that promises to make peoples’ lives more expensive and difficult. The promise of income tax-cuts concomitant with the anticipated increases in items such as propane, diesel and home heating oil is akin to automobile dealers claiming to sell cars below dealer cost and making up the losses in volume. Also, there is the law of unintended consequences, of which Mr. Dion and his brain trust seem to be unaware. These include job losses in the energy sector, which has been the engine driving Canada’s current buoyant economy, the negative impact on low income Canadians, about which the Liberals claim to care so much about, as well as the general dampening of business, as the price most everything will increase due to the increases in the cost of travel and shipping. Finally, there is the conceit on the part of the Liberal Party of Canada that any programs they might be able to enact would have any effect on climate change whatsoever. Strangely, the Liberals’ policy document talks a lot about the costs/benefits of their program in economic terms, but fails to mention what exactly they hope to achieve in quantifiable environmental terms. Since Canada is currently responsible for less than 2% of the world’s so-called anthropogenic carbon emissions, a 25% reduction in Canadian emissions would be so negligible as to be immeasurable, given the fact that forests, the oceans and bovine flatulence each account for nearly as much atmospheric carbon as does mankind. If the Libs believe that as an election platform the Green Shift is a winning plan, then they either think that the majority of Canadians are morons or they are so out of touch with reality as to be in need medical assistance.