Soon there Shall be Blogging Once Again

My Dad reminded me about the National Post when I was over giving him his belated Father's Day presents.  He wasn't home on Sunday because he was up at a fly-in fishing resort in the Yukon with a bunch of other building inspectors last weekend, something he's never done before.  Anyhow he pointed out how Stephen Dion and the Liberal party are starting to tout a new Green policy for if they get elected in next year.  It's a bad policy in ways I can't begin to describe and would crater the industry I make my livelihood in like a stick of dynamite in an anthill.  

The idea of course is to tax pollutants even more than is already done now.  Taxation is the reason why Canadian's pay $1.50 more per gallon than Americans do currently do on gasoline.  This new bill would impose further taxes on fuel, place tariffs on Canadian Oil and Natural Gas going into America unless they imposed similar taxes, and tax major carbon producing industries.  The Liberals promise that all this won't cost the "average" Canadian anything because it will go hand in hand with tax breaks in other areas to make it revenue neutral.  This of course is disregarding the blow to the Canadian economy which in B.C. and Alberta makes up the majority of those provinces prosperity and subsequently their tax payouts to Ottawa.  I might also add that 30% of all federal tax revenue from western provinces stays in the East rather than going back into programs within the provinces the money originated in the first place.  This has been standard procedure in Canada since it's inception.  The West feeds the East and that won't ever change, but that still doesn't stop the east from getting jealous of all those energy revenues.  

And that is the real issue.  Dion's proposal is great for communities that don't rely on the energy sector to stay afloat, the tax breaks they'll receive will come as a welcome boon.  While out west far away from Ottawa the increase costs of operation will drive the energy companies away, eventually to the point where the additional revenues generated from the additional taxation that justified the offset tax breaks in the first place will no longer be there and Canada will see a recession.  Meanwhile the Oil companies that were driven away will move to nations where the environmental standards aren't as strict and they can operate with greater autonomy and still supply the energy demands of the world that will not have changed one bit.

It's interesting how the Conservative paper examines the proposal and points out it's issues as they are perceived, however CTV has only deigned to report on how the conservatives are "mocking" the proposal.  Now admittedly I have a personal investment in the topic, but I also drive a vehicle and plan to buy a car with fuel efficiency in mind in the fall, not because I feel it's my job to save the environment, if that were the case I would donate to saving wetlands or the rainforest that help destroy carbon built up in the atmosphere.  Instead my decision to buy a car that gets 50 mpg is based solely on cost which is dictated by supply and demand.  Though I guess that's the point the Liberals feel justifies their actions, if they raise the cost to the point where no one can drive then they must be fixing the problem... right?