Cap-and-Trade Bad For Saskatchewan, Bad For the West

Ignatieff's green plan could be Green Shift II

Looking back on the 2008 federal election, it becomes clear that then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion's vaunted green shift -- which would have re-designed Canada's tax system around a carbon tax -- was a millstone around the neck of the Liberal Party.

While Dion took the blame for that defeat, the carbon tax itself was actually an idea adopted from the current Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff. With Ignatieff now proposing a cap-and-trade system in the place of that carbon tax, he's again provoking serious concerns regarding its effect on Canadian industry.

For his own part, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has been trying to stay out of the 2011 federal election. But as the Premier of a province that would be hit hard by the proposed cap-and-trade scheme, Wall has been forced to start speaking out.

Cap-and-trade, he points out, would be bad not only for Saskatchewan, but for the west as a whole.

"There's already been speculation in the media that it could be very costly to the industry in Western Canada, to Alberta and Saskatchewan, not just to oilsands but to the fossil fuels industry," Wall explained.

Wall would be prepared to consider a cap-and-trade system if he could secure assurances that the funds accrued through the trading would remain in the province in which they are paid.

"We need assurances from all parties that if provinces are serious about dealing with the issue, and we are, that any proceeds from fines related to emissions stays in our province," Wall announced.

"Cap-and-trade is different," he declared. "Cap-and-trade is very much about a wealth transfer because it can't respect borders by definition. That's certainly the cap-and-trade that I understand. That's the one that some of the central Canadian provinces want."

It's also approximately what then-Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff said the Green Shift would do in 2008. Boshcoff was defeated by now-Conservative MP John Rafferty in the 2008 federal election, but is now running again.

"If it's different than that, that's what we need to know and we should know it soon," Wall insisted.

But if Michael Ignatieff approaches his Green Plan the same way Stephane Dion approached the Green Shift, Canadians should expect to not know precisely what this Green Plan entails. Dion evaded questions about how a Liberal government would replace falling revenue from a carbon tax. Until Ignatieff becomes more forthcoming, Canadians -- Brad Wall included -- shouldn't hold their breath waiting to hear the details.

Back to Square One for Eco-Opportunists

Van Jones resignation a set-back for cynical environmentalists

In what has turned out to be a spectacular collapse of vetting, Barack Obama's Green Jobs csar, Van Jones, resigned from his office yesterday.

Within Jones' troublesome past was his defense of a known cop killer, racially charged comments about schoolyard shootings and his status as a signatory to a 9/11 "truth" website.

Particularly troublesome in regard to the manner in which Jones was serving the administration were his comments about "maximum and minimum goals" in regard to environmental policy.

"Right now we're saying that we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism where at least we aren't fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet," Jones had explained.

"Will that be enough? No it won't be enough," Jones coninued. "We want to go beyond systems of exploitation and oppression altogether."

"Green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society," he explained.

To date, the brazen accusations that Barack Obama is some kind of communist have been nothing short of empty hysteria. But in the specific case of Van Jones, it certainly seems like he's calling for some kind of "incremental communist revolution".

But Jones isn't the first person to allow an ulterior motive for their environmental policies to slip.

Meanwhile, just a few months before the 2008 federal election, which then-Liberal party leader Stephane Dion fought on the back of his Green Shift policy, then-Thunder Bay Rainy River MP Ken Boshcoff let the cat out of the bag when he speculated that the carbon tax could be used to transfer wealth out of oil-producing provinces to the rest of the country.

"The shift will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oilpatch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians," Boshcoff wrote in a blogpost. "Clearly, I feel it would be an expansion of prosperity nationwide. Everybody wants to share in Alberta's good fortune."

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Britain, meanwhile, one finds George Monbiot (the zoologist that Elizabeth May gushed over while divulging the true content of her character).

Monbiot is the author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning. In it, Monbiot essentially argues that unless stopped soon, climate change will enter a self-perpetuating stage.

Before heat, however, he wrote Manifesto for a New World Order, in which he argues in favour of establishing a "World Parliament".

Monbiot is well known to be an advocate of the Kyoto protocol. But just as, for Van Jones environmentalism was just an incrementalist movement toward supplanting capitalism and for Ken Boshcoff the carbon shift was a method of siphoning wealth out of Western Canada, Monbiot's support for Kyoto was simply an incrementalist approach to establishing a precedent for a World Parliament with actual governmental powers.

If individuals like Jones, Boshcoff and Monbiot really considered the allegedly-imminent alleged catastrophe of climate change to be so serious one would suspect that they could at least do a better job of concealing their individual ulterior motives.

Al Gore and the Climate of Extremes

Featured on YouTube via TED Talks, former US Vice President Al Gore speaks about some alarming new signs of global warming.

In the video Gore talks about the alleged spread of oxygen-depleted "dead zones" in the oceans, and about methane emissions from lakes, including a video where some scientists set these methane emissions on fire. He then finishes up by debuting some campaign ads directed against clean coal technology.

Yet as it turns out, Al Gore is not at all a reliable source of information about global warming -- or as alarmists re-term it when challenged about the lack of a demonstrable warming trend, climate change.

Speaking via ForaTV, UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change member Patrick Michaels demonstrates how quickly Gore's sensationalist rhetoric can be exposed for what it truly is.

It quickly undermines any faith in nearly anything that comes out of the former Vice President's mouth, and reminds viewers that while individuals like Gore want to insist climate change will be the end of the world, and that we should all be extremely terrified of it, there's more afoot than these alarmists would have us realize.

It's difficult to overlook the extent to which climate change alarmism is being treated as a pretext for various political programs.

In Canada, Liberal MP Ken Boschoff let a wealth-transferring agenda slip when talking about Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff's) carbon tax.

George Monbiot has been amongst the most extreme of the alarmists, writing a book that insists that climate change will reach a "point of no return" if not stopped as immediately as possible. Monbiot, who is not a climatologist, had also previously spoken on CBC's Ideas radio program about the need for a global Parliament -- something that legally-binding climate treaties like the Kyoto protocol could arguably (but not necessarily) lead to.

On the other side of the coin there are those who deny climate change outright. As Gore rightly notes, many of them profit from oil and coal -- just as those who profit from oil and coal will rightly note that Gore has a political agenda that is served by climate change alarmism.

It would be foolish to deny that climate change is a problem. At the very least, it would be foolish to deny that there aren't countless other good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and other industrial emissions -- air quality being paramount among them.

But to allow Al Gore and his extremist cohorts to terrify people ignores both the tendency of these people to promote alarmism at the expense of scientific fact, and the political agendas they seek to promote.

Patrick Michaels is absolutely right. People need to stop feeding the climate of extremes.

An Alternative View of Stephane Dion's Green Shift

It was recently brought to my attention that a good personal friend of mine -- and U of A Gateway colleague -- Jared Milne recently published an article in the Edmonton Journal commenting on Stephane Dion's Green Shift.

Those following the story here on the Nexus are well aware of the criticisms previously offered here. That being said, let it never be said that we at the Nexus are afraid of offering a dissenting opinion. On that note, here is what Mr Milne had to say about Dion's Green Plan:

"Dion's Green Shift offers a place to start

Even if you don't believe in climate change, plan would address many problems

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's Green Shift plan for the environment has stirred up much controversy in recent months, not the least of which are the West's concerns about the plan's impact on the region's natural resources.

Some fear a repeat of the dark days of the national energy program, and others are raising the spectre of yet another national unity crisis.

Other parts of the country, such as Nova Scotia and the governments of the northern territories, have had similar reservations about Dion's policy. But before the debate becomes polarized, both sides need to take a look at each other's points of view.

For example, even if you don't believe in climate change, Alberta still faces a host of problems related to the development of the oilsands: the ecological devastation and the strains on our water supply, concerns noted by both right-wingers like Peter Lougheed and left-wingers like the Parkland Institute; serious medical problems among the aboriginal people of Fort Chipewyan resulting from contamination of their food supplies; the outsourcing of our bitumen and related jobs to the U.S.; the anger of some landowners over pollution of their property from sour gas wells and other problems, and their frustration over government activities related to the oilpatch, like the EUB scandal; inflation and a superheated economy putting a serious strain on ordinary workers, as Peter Lougheed has pointed out; and air and water pollution in general.

Unlike Stephen Harper, Dion is actually proposing concrete measures to try and respond to these problems that affect us all as Canadians. All of these things could be incorporated into a national green plan, which can propel it beyond the polarized debate on climate change.

And western concerns are very real, especially given the greater concentration of industrial emissions in the West, and the role of oil and gas development in the region's economy.

Some westerners even compare the Green Shift to the national energy program of the early 1980s, blamed by many for worsening or even causing Alberta's economic woes of that era. And their critics rightly point out that we're hardly the only polluters in Canada -- will the Green Shift have more of an impact on western resource development, than, for instance, Ontario's heavy industry or its coal-burning power plants?

The rhetoric on both sides doesn't help, either. Did Ken Boshcoff honestly think that his foolish blogging about a transfer of wealth from the West to the East would help Dion's cause? All that has done is fuel western suspicions, and made it that much harder to find an honest solution.

Besides, whether it's through the interest-free grants and loans Lougheed made to financially strapped provinces in the 1970s, up to the centennial scholarships organized as one of Ralph Klein's final gestures in office, the idea that Alberta is always selfish and uncaring is just plain ridiculous.

By the same token, however, any refusal to co-operate on Alberta's part and, even more so, any talk of western separation in response to the Green Shift won't help matters, and just gives ammunition to people who say we're greedy and uncaring.

Such issues as landowner anger over the Energy and Utilities Board scandal, and contamination of their land and property, and the sharp criticisms made by Peter Lougheed, show that not only left-wingers and Liberals are worried about these things -- they're problems that affect everyone, regardless of political affiliation.

Lougheed, the grandfather of Alberta conservatism, the man who brought the Conservatives to power in the first place, has stressed the need for an "olive branch" to the rest of Canada -- if the federal Conservatives aren't going to do anything about pollution, then doesn't it make more sense to try and cooperate with Dion and the Liberals if they actually are trying to find a solution, and make it stronger and better with our own input, rather than simply refusing to speak to him because of his party affiliation?

Lougheed has said that the oil projects in Fort McMurray should be slowed down -- maybe this slowdown can take some of the pressure off both our ecology and our economy, and buy us some time to deal with everything from the pollution at Fort Chipewyan to runaway inflation to the strain on our water tables, to finding a solution to the problems with the Energy and Utilities Board and pollution of public and privately owned land, without crippling the oil industry and putting Alberta in the poorhouse.

At the same time, we could make a strong statement to the rest of Canada by pointing and helping with other problems, like Ontario's continued dependence on heavily polluting coal plants.

Prominent Liberals and Conservatives like Dion and Lougheed are discussing many of the same issues -- if anything, the East and West probably have more common ground than they realize.

From there, a competent federal government can act as mediator between the provinces, developing a pan-Canadian environmental strategy that combines policies that apply to Canada as a whole in with variations that take provincial differences into account.

Whether or not the Green Shift is the solution to Canada's environmental woes, at least it's a start.

If Canadians co-operate with and listen to one another, and make an honest effort to see each other's points of view, maybe we can come together to do something great for the landscape we love."

Update: The man himself has some more points he'd like to add about the article in question:

"I am not so much endorsing the Green Shift so much as I am urging people not to dismiss it out of hand. I'm trying to show Westerners, especially Albertans, the other side of the story, and some of the reasons why people feel a need for this type of legislation. It's especially important not to dismiss Dion out of hand just because he's a Liberal-he's trying to do something about pollution, problems we're dealing with in Alberta."

"That said, the critiques offered by people like Rajiv Sinha (in the Sunday, August 17 edition of the Journal) are quite right. One important thing I wanted to do in the article was get people to consider Alberta's point of view, and just why we're so leery about the Green Shift. I wanted to put more emphasis on the comparison to the NEP, and Alberta's connection between that program and the Green Shift, in the original version, but I had to reduce it owing to the editor's changes. Like I said in the article, if we're going to tackle pollution, we have to do it in a way that minimizes the risk of putting Alberta in the poorhouse. After all, many Westerners have pointed out-and quite rightly, I might add-that Alberta's serving as one of the country's major economic engines, and we're already sharing a lot of our wealth in transfer payments. From Lougheed to Klein, Alberta has always been there to lend a hand in one way or another, and portraying us as blue-eyed sheiks, or comparing us to Quebec separatists-thank you very much, Garth Turner, we really appreciate it-doesn't do a damn thing to help out. Damage Alberta's oil industry, and what will happen to the rest of the national economy? Harper's tax cuts and squandering of the federal surplus have left us with little cash to draw on in case of an economic crisis-and wrecking one of our best industries doesn't help one bit if another such crisis does come."

"Like I said, the Green Shift is a start. I don't really think it's the be-all and end-all of environnmental policy-indeed, it might have sold better in Alberta if the emphasis wasn't just put on climate change, and steps were taken to mediate the Shift's regional effects. Harsher environnmental fines, subsidies for R&D in energy-efficient technology, and more support for public transit could all fit into a national green policy, and gain more support in the process, including in Alberta. As it stands, the Green Shift's impact is going to have the biggest impacts in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, and its effects are going to be unevenly distributed across the country. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely important that we restore at least some of the social safety net, as the Green Shift proposes, but the "transfer of wealth" that Ken Boshcoff stupidly advocates isn't the way to do it."

And They Wonder Why We Don't Trust Them

Liberal MP envokes spectre of NEP, Garth turner feins shock

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.

...

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."

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.

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.