With Liberal leader Stephane Dion just having finished a tour of the west trying to sell his carbon tax plan, yet another Liberal MP has made that task significantly harder.
First it was Halton MP Garth Turner, who made offensive comments about Quebec separatists and alleged Albertan separatists.
Now, it's Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP Ken Boschoff, who published a statement on his website insisting that the green shift would provide a Liberal opportunity with a tool for further wealth redistribution:"The Liberal Party’s Green Shift announced on June 19th marked the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians."Not only does Boshcoff insist that the "green shift" plan will do all this, he even has a pretty good idea as to how:
"Roughly $9 billion of the $15.3 billion expected to be collected annually in carbon tax revenues would be returned to Canadians earning less than $40,000 annually. This would be done through a combination of income tax cuts and benefits targeted at children, low wage earners, rural residents, and individuals with disabilities."All of this with the revenue being transferred from "the oil patch to the rest of the country".
Considering that Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are Canada's leading oil producers, it's hard to interpret their comments as anything other than Liberal party intent to transfer wealth out of these provinces to Ontario and Quebec.
Of course, Garth Turner insists that the "mild-mannered" Boshcoff only wrote what he wrote for political gain:
"Ken Boschoff is a mild and caring guy, as far as I can tell. He’s my colleague from the Thunder Bay area, and an extremely effective communicator in his riding. That may be why, since his chief political opposition there is the NDP, he chose to write a piece the other day stressing the social aspects of the Dion Green Shift.But it's hard to decide what Dion would be saying to an Albertan MP, considering that he doesn't have any in his caucus.
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So, yeah, I know what Ken wrote. I also know why, and what he meant. I can also tell everyone reading this that not a single time, not once, has the notion of (a) screwing the West, (b) finding a new NEP, (c) transferring wealth from Big Oil to Toronto, (d) funding lavish new social programs or (e) dreaming up a plan to secure the Eastern vote, been discussed in national Liberal caucus. But I have heard Dion tell a room full of MPs, none of whom were from Alberta, that his plan will help diversify that oil-dependent economy and lead to a better life for every person living there."
Beyond that, while he again mischaracterizes reactions to Boshcoff's comments -- be they candid or otherwise -- as evidence of Alberta's allegedly bubbling separatism, Garth overlooks a very important fact:
There's a reason why Albertans don't trust the Liberal party. And yes, it does have a lot to do with the National Energy Program. And rightfully so.
The unconstitutionality of the NEP -- intervening in a policy sphere constitutionally ceded to provincial jurisdiction -- has long been established. The irreversable and irrecoverable damage done to the Albertan economy has long been established.
But the biggest slight -- the one that provokes the greatest amount of anger and resentment -- is the Liberal insistence that the damaging results of the National Energy Program should simply be dismissed to the pages of history.
All too often, this is insisted by individuals who lost nothing in the course of the NEP. And Albertans -- who, yes, do have a long memory -- remember these things quite vividly. And, no, Albertans do not believe those losses have beome irrelevant. And they certainly don't believe those losses are "yesterday's news".
Meanwhile, the Liberal party promises the carbon tax won't hurt our economy, and promise it won't result in any additional taxes. Yet the Liberal party has made such promises before, and broken them before.
Mr Boshcoff, Mr Turner: there is a reason westerners -- and Albertans in particular -- don't trust the Liberal party. And to figure out precisely what that reason is, all you need do is take a good, hard look at your own comments... and in a mirror.
We don't trust you.
Modern Canadian Liberalism (more accurately called the national statist collectivism or collectivist kleptocracy) is not only a mental illness but a morally bankrupt orthodoxy.
ReplyDeleteIt really POs me that these neo-communists hide behind the partisan branding of "liberalism" when it is so clear they are soft communists. There is nothing liberal about state enforced theft and the amoral totalism needed to extort wealth from it's producer/owners to cynically give to the unworthy as patronage entitlements in return for political support.
The modern liberal party of Canada is essentially a communistic corrupt "brokerage" cabal which uses communist economic systems to institute a plundering wealth confiscation plan and meritless redistribution system based on their political needs and not that of the individual or the nation.
If it were not for section one of the charter allowing this statist robber baron behaviour, we would be trying LPC leaders and strategists for sedition and treason in undermining the civil libertarian democratic governing system which existed in Canada until 1982.
"Commonwealth" does NOT mean "communism" but the dumbed down Canadian public and the generations of public-educated (indoctrinated) socialist zombies will never know the difference.
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I categorically disagree with portions of that.
ReplyDeleteLiberalism is not a mental illness -- it's a belief held by people who disagree with you, and who have different ideas about the proper role of the state.
Communism is dead -- let it go.
To describe Ontario and Quebec as "unworthy" is taking things a little too far. As it pertains to oil and gas revenue, I think it's rather simple: Westerners developed that resource, Westerners earned those revenues, and Westerners should be the ones to prosper from it.
Ontario and Quebec have their own resources. Quebec would probably shit a brick if Alberta tried to claim a portion of any hydro electric revenues.
The Liberal party is hardly treasnous. Get a grip.
I speak as a practicing liberal democrat Patric. From a family that have been active liberals untill about the mid 70s. The Federal liberal party left me decades ago ideologically. As a civil libertarian and laissez fair capitalist I have more in common with a lot of the CPC policy paper...even if it hasn't transfered to the caucus actuation yet.
ReplyDeleteI also spent my youth as a Union organizer and NDP worker.candidate..but left the party when I became educated to reality in my first real job as a private business owner.
Communism is statist collectivism and this is the economic ideal that the utopians who now pull the levers in the LPC practice.
Communism is not dead, it merely had a make-over as Neo-liberalism, and political environmentalism.
And as always communism (wealth redistibution) always appeals to the non productive or merritless who squander their own chances...much as Quebec and Ontario have by electing patronage socialist governments who have destroyed their economies and now want to plunder other jurisdictions to fund their patronage welfare economics. Ontario's economic down turn was self inflicted...as all of Quebec's budgetary short falls are.
"let go criticizing communism"?...maybe when I stop seeing resurface as made-over economic policies.
I can see you had your political education in the public system and public sector.
There's always been a conflict within the Liberal party between statist and conservative party members -- which has been most pronounced (at least within the last 40 years) in the struggle between the Gordon and Sharp camps of that party.
ReplyDeleteWhile most of the struggle has been supplanted by the ongoing struggle between Pearson and Trudeau Liberals, one can still see a real conflict within the party.
It's partially why individuals like Wajid Kahn are willing to leave the party to become Conservatives.
But you need to realize that in criticizing communism you're criticizing a spent historical force. No one who advocated the state ownership of all means of production could ever attain office in Canada.