Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:57 pm
Dion's carbon tax talk pulling Alberta's leg
Don Braid, Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, July 06, 2008
We're polite in Calgary, -- at least during Stampede and as long as we're not driving. Maybe that's why Liberal Leader Stephane Dion chose Saturday to show up for a day of speaking, meeting and greeting.
He was treated graciously, which is good. Dion himself is a gracious man, mild, polite and personally respectful as long as you aren't Stephan Harper.
I've always admired the way Dion handled himself when he was in charge of reconciling Quebec and the rest of Canada during the fierce debate over the Clarity Bill. Often vilified by both sides, he acted with intellectual integrity and never lost his dignity.
However . . . after scratching through every word of his June 19 Green Shift speech, hoping to cut the Stampede visitor a break, I just can't see this as anything but a disaster for Alberta.
His carbon tax would be imposed on carbon-emitting products sold at the wholesale level. This means immense new costs for oilsands operations that power themselves with natural gas.
The energy industry in Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan would be heavily penalized. But there is no tax for tailpipe emissions, which of course are much heavier in more populous
Ontario and Quebec.
Dion says there's already an excise tax on gasoline, as if energy companies don't pay any taxes themselves. In fact, they're fuelling the federal treasury more powerfully than any other Canadian industry.
But Dion, with breathtaking gall, claims he's doing it for Alberta's own good. "It's very important for the world to know how much Albertans care about the environment, how much you are green and you want to do the right thing," he said Saturday.
"I cannot accept that your reputation is damaged as it is now."
Premier Ed Stelmach isn't saving us from this evil reputation, he suggests, so he must. (Never mind that Dion's words hurt our reputation even more.)
So thank you, Mr. Dion, for fitting Alberta with a fiscal hair shirt so we might redeem ourselves.
On one level, this is just more of the time-worn Liberal politics that play so well in Central Canada. The real worm in Dion's green apple is the way the tax would work. It is a wealth transfer from one area of the country to the federal treasury, the second major effort since the 1980s to skim off the cream and spread it around.
If this were genuinely aimed at reducing emissions, it might be hard to argue, but the Green Shift is nothing of the sort. The vast majority of the new tax revenue would be aimed not at green initiatives, but at social programs.
Dion lists them in detail: tax cuts for low-income people, child tax credits, a new Guaranteed Family Supplement and on it goes, a list of nearly a dozen social tax measures.
They sound wonderful. Wow, let's have them. But don't try to sell them as environmental policies. They're classic vote-getters for people who cross over between the Liberals and NDP.
Dion's environmental targets for the newfound western loot, on the other hand, are very limited. An accelerated capital cost allowance for green technologies and unquantified boosts for research and development, basically.
In the end, the Green Shift is no more than a slick plan to fund election promises with western cash. Dressing the leader up in Stampede duds can't change that.
You are very welcome here, Mr. Dion. Come back any time. But really, stop trying to pull our leg.
CKA Elite 
