In Question Period on Tuesday, when Liberal MP Marc Garneau tried to attack the prime minister, Harper responded by comparing the Liberals unfavourably to the NDP.
“The NDP, while I disagree with its policies, has put a few of those things – carbon tax, protectionism – on the table,” the prime minister said. “The Liberal Party says, ‘Look at us, we’re not either of them.’ That is not a policy.”
The prime minister has selected his weapon for the grim war of attrition he must wage against the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair between now and the next election: confusion. It will be tedious.
All week in the House, Conservative MPs attacked the NDP for their plan to impose a “job-killing carbon tax.”
The NDP has always opposed a carbon tax. It’s not a matter of opinion.
Journalists point out the falsehood, and the NDP is protesting, but the government has a huge advantage in getting its message out. If Harper makes this attack the centrepiece of his communications strategy for next two years, he can convince a lot of people.
At the very least, he can keep Mulcair rolling around like an injured soccer player, demanding a red card rather than trying to score goals.
If the NDP is to win the next election, Mulcair must first convince Canadians that Harper is doing a poor job managing the economy – quite a challenge – and convince them that his team can do a better job, which looks even tougher, given that none of his MPs are economic experts.
But Mulcair is so far doing pretty well. Unlike Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, he understands the nasty side of the business after remorselessly trading blows with the Parti Quebecois for years.
He has so far managed to keep together the coalition that Jack Layton built, and is trying to sell the party in southern Ontario, complaining that Harper isn’t doing enough to support manufacturing.
That message is a threat to Harper, since a Quebec-style NDP breakthrough in Ontario could put Mulcair into power.
Harper must counter the threat, and he is doing so with his customary vigour.
One of the interesting questions for this fall sitting of Parliament is how effective that attack will be, since it is mostly based on nonsense. How far can a government go from the truth and still succeed in getting its message across?
The key national debate Canadians face now – what balance we should strike between the environment and natural resource extraction – is being reduced to gibberish.
To understand how we got here, we need to go back to 2008, when Stephane Dion introduced his Green Shift, a complicated plan to impose a $40-a-tonne tax on carbon emissions – imagine a meter on smokestacks – and use the money to reduce income taxes.
The Conservatives attacked the idea relentlessly as a job killer. Dion defended it inexpertly, and the result was electoral disaster for the Liberals. Layton, who could see which way the wind was blowing, side-stepped the attacks by calling for a cap-and-trade scheme, meaning that industrial emissions would be capped, and companies could trade their emission allowances on a market. Back then, the position was also advocated by the Conservatives.
As John Baird said in 2008: “Carbon trading and the establishment of a market price on carbon are key parts of our Turning the Corner plan.”
In the House on Friday, Baird dutifully attacked the NDP for advocating the same idea.
In 2008, the Conservatives wanted to set up a cap-and-trade system with the Americans. Then the Americans dropped that plan. The Tories now say they will reduce emissions with regulations, which likely means they will continue to do nothing, following in the footsteps of the Liberals.
There have been eight environment ministers – Liberal and Conservative – since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. All have drawn up plans to reduce emissions. All were quietly dropped.
In Australia this summer, the Labor Party government brought in a carbon tax much like Dion’s Green Shift. The opposition is applying a “python squeeze” on the issue, although polls show voters are coming to accept the tax.
If you think that governments should act to reduce the emissions that cause climate change, a carbon tax seems to be the best policy, since it imposes a cost on companies that they can avoid by cutting emissions.
Opponents say it is bad policy, because it will impose too high a cost on businesses and consumers.
In Australia, they are having a forthright debate on the subject, and voters will eventually render their judgment in the ballot box, which is how a democracy is supposed to work.
In Canada, we have unnecessary and tedious confusion.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Stephen Maher
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