“It’s almost as if they’d been planning this together.”
This is a thought that I have read on many blogs and in quite a few of the newspapers who bothered to report the Green Party carbon tax plan at the same time as the reported on the Liberals plan.
The only problem with the idea that the Green’s and Liberals cooked this up together is that Tax Shifting has been central to the Green Party platform for the last several elections. It was not planned with the Liberals as they’ve ridiculed the idea for years now until they decided it was time to adopt is as their own.
Don’t get me wrong, I applaud them for doing so, since another consistent feature of the Green Party is that we encourage other parties to adopt and implement our policies. The downside of this is that most of our policies are not developed in isolation but are intended to work in concert. reinforcing one another rather than fighting each other.
(If anyone doubts me on these points you can visit http://www.greenparty.ca/visiongreen which was released in the fall of 2007, or somewhere around here I have copies of the 2004 and 2006 election platforms.)
But I do have two concerns with the way the Liberals are doing it.
First, for the Green’s, Tax Shifting is an underlying philosophy of economic policy, not merely a one-off policy to address climate change or highlight a policy difference from another party. The fact that the Liberals have adopted a weak version of our policy but not the total philosophy is evidenced by the fact that they will not apply the tax to gasoline. And since a weak version will likely not achieve the desired results, I fear that even should the Liberals get a chance to implement it, it will still be seen as failed policy.
Second, only $10 per tonne and not applying to transportation fuels (transportation is, after all, a very large segment of Canada’s emissions) indicates that the Liberals still seem to think that there is plenty of time to ease ourselves into addressing climate change. There’s not. This is a crisis situation that demands bold leadership. Leadership which is not being provided by either of Canada’s largest two political parties.
All that said though, if I can’t choose to have the Green policy in place and my only choices continue to be Conservative or Liberal, I’ll take the Liberals weak plan (at least moving in the right direction) over continuing to do the “Baird minimum” any day of the week.
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Good points, Glenn. The timing of our Wednesday GPC media splash on the tax-shift policy was quite likely influenced by Dion’s scheduled Thursday announcement. I’ve seen the speculation that the two plans were released in concert as a way of softening the LPC plan by releasing the tougher GPC plan just ahead of it. I don’t buy that reason.
I think the reason Elizabeth chose to make the media aware of our plan had to do with piggybacking on media attention. As you say, we’ve had a tax-shift/carbon tax policy for years. Up until Dion adopted it (albeit watered down), the GPC policy failed to get much MSM attention. The Wednesday presser did get a fair bit of media play.
The other reason for the GPC release speaks to Dion’s blatant attempt to woo new, possibly soft, GPC supporters over to the LPC ranks. Here’s a blog that discusses that effort. This overt attempt to attract our supporters makes an additional argument for getting Elizabeth in the TV debates, as well as an additional argument to the Greens=Liberals, Liberals=Greens BS.
So, we come to a question. If this is longtime GPC policy, what was the excuse for the Wednesday PR event? BTW, I have it on top authority that the Wednesday release was pushed up from a later, undisclosed date.
The documents Elizabeth released are significant and new. Up until Wednesday, we didn’t have documentation of a “fully costed” plan. The PDF’s that accompany the press release at greenparty.ca offer copious examples of various income levels and demographic groups showing what the GPC tax shift will mean to their annual bottom lines. This is important supporting material and warranted a dedicated press release and media blitz.
All that said, we are definitely seeing some pundits comparing the GPC’s “extreme” plan to the LPC’s “moderate” plan. I take issue with the labels. Since both plans aim for revenue neutrality, what’s the difference if you shift $15 Bn or $40 bn. It’s a shift rather than a new, additional tax. The average Canadian’s bottom line would be about the same. In fact, using the GPC tables versus the LPC’s calculator, most individuals and families would actually fare better under the GPC’s $40 billion shift.
I agree, a step in the right direction is better than no steps at all. If only more parties would adopt our policies… of course, better than that would be some Green MP’s or MPP’s!
“The Baird Minimum”, I love that!
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