Goodale Weekly Email - Why The Green Shift?

Had a chance to read through Ralph Goodale's last two update emails... He has some more solid facts to support the case FOR the Green Shift, AND he points out holes in the Harper environmental plan.

Keep in mind, Mr. Goodale's letters are in response to a torrent of Conservative junk mail (some of questionable source - can MPs bombard another MP's riding with partisan junk mail?) falling into Mr. Goodale's riding. It comes after loud, vocal, and pronounced fear-mongering by Saskatchewan and Alberta Conservatives, in a feeble attempt to frighten voters into voting Conservative.

A real good read:

HARPER PLAN IMPOSES QUASI-CRIMINAL SANCTIONS

Critics of Stephane Dion’s Green Tax Shift plan conveniently fail to mention that Stephen Harper has his own plan to fight greenhouse gas emissions. It’s called Turning the Corner. You can look it up at www.ec.gc.ca.

Rather than just attacking Mr. Dion, the critics need to compare the two plans.

The Conservative approach relies heavily on government regulations intruding into private enterprise – which business leaders hate.

Mr. Harper’s regulations – if they’re going to be effective in tackling carbon emissions – will drive-up operating costs across the economy. The Conservatives admit as much in the fine print on their Website.

But unlike Mr. Dion’s proposal, the Conservatives provide no tax cuts or other offsets to cushion the impact of the higher prices they will cause.

Furthermore, it will take a small army of new bureaucrats to design, administer and enforce the Harper regulations. And the enforcement mechanism he has in mind is quasi-criminal sanctions like fines and imprisonment.

In Saskatchewan, Mr. Harper’s greenhouse gas regulations will hit the entire oil and gas sector, as well as IPSCO steel, the Potash Corporation, cement companies, chemical producers and many others -- including utilities, like SaskPower and SaskEnergy.

Wait a minute!

Are the Harper Conservatives threatening criminal penalties against provincial Crown Corporations. Premier Wall may want to put Saskatchewan’s constitutional lawyers on red-alert.

Those who find it so easy to throw stones at Stephane Dion should keep a closer eye on Stephen Harper.

As pointed out by distinguished, independent, western experts like Jack Mintz at the University of Calgary and Mark Jaccard of Simon Fraser University, the Harper government has not been honest or straight-forward in its propaganda around these issues.

According to Dr. Mintz, under the Conservative plan, “Canadians could be faced with brownouts, high fuel costs and lost jobs”.

CONSERVATIVE LIES EXPOSE THEIR FEARS

The lies and smears used by Conservatives to attack Stephane Dion’s tax reform proposals show how worried the Harper government is about the Dion plan catching on.

The principle is simple – we should cut taxes on the good things that we want more of (like incomes, investment and innovation), and we should begin to collect taxes on those things that are harmful (like pollution, waste and greenhouse gases).

Across the country, the vast majority of economists and environmental experts agree that Dion is right and Harper is wrong.

The “disinformation” the Conservatives are peddling has been discredited as “vitriolic” and “dishonest”.

Their biggest allegation is that putting any price on carbon pollution would discriminate against western Canada due to our large concentration of fossil fuel industries. But the Dion plan is designed to avoid such unfairness.

For example, in the case of Saskatchewan’s petroleum industry, two-thirds of our oil is directly exported to the United States and consequently would not be subject to any “carbon tax” in Canada.

The remaining one-third is processed into fuel products, mostly gasoline, and gasoline at-the-pump is explicitly exempted from Mr. Dion’s proposal, because it’s already subject to an equivalent federal excise tax.

Moreover, the “carbon tax” suggested by Mr. Dion would NOT be levied at the wellhead level. To do so would place all the responsibility on the oil and gas sector, and that would not be reasonable.

Instead, the Dion plan would apply the tax at the wholesale level which spreads the overall impact among producers and consumers alike, and balances the costs across all sectors and regions.

And one final point, this “Green Shift” plan uses every penny raised from putting a price on carbon pollution for substantial income tax cuts benefiting every Canadian family and business.