Mr. Mulcair gave his maiden speech on the economy as leader of the NDP in Ottawa Thursday and said he plans to look at every problem in government “through the framework of sustainable development.”
Who could argue with that? It sounds like it is for the common good. The problem is, it may cost us all our goods.
The NDP leader’s logic, such as it is, goes like this — the Canadian dollar has risen to par with the greenback because of “artificially high” profits in the oil sands. This is the result of a failure to impose a real price on carbon.
The solution is to make sure companies make less profits by “internalizing” environmental costs. “It will bring down pressure on the Canadian dollar if we force them to include these costs,” he said.
So there you have it. The man who would be prime minister plans to drive investment out of Canada, in order to make manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec competitive again, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What could go wrong with that — a central planning experiment that proposes to kill two birds with one silver bullet? While he’s at it, while not force the Bank of Canada to abandon its inflation target in order to use interest rates to slay polluter profits?
The Conservatives have already pounced by suggesting that Mr. Mulcair’s suggesting a carbon tax that would send gas prices, already touching record highs, into the stratosphere.
Curiously, there are no Tory attack ads yet. Could it be they are happy to allow Mr. Mulcair to cement his popularity in Quebec at the Liberals’ expense? The NDP released its first TV ads promoting their new leader in Quebec Thursday, presenting him as a personable fellow, smiling into the camera as he rolled up his sleeves, while claiming he will listen to Quebecers to create a greener and more prosperous country.
He is certainly enjoying a gilded honeymoon, with a new Harris-Decima poll putting the NDP in a statistical tie with the Tories, at the expense of the Liberals, who have slipped back to the level they polled in last May’s election.
Mr. Mulcair has been sure-footed, serene and focused in the House of Commons — neither making hysterical calls for heads to roll over the F-35 saga, nor being distracted from the big issues like health and Old Age Security by the latest petite-scandal sweeping Parliament Hill.
He looks far more like a prime minister-in-waiting than anyone on the Liberal benches, interim leader Bob Rae included.
Mr. Rae went into hyberbolic overdrive on the F-35s in Question Period Thursday, allowing Stephen Harper some fun at his expense: “I understand the Honourable Member’s need for attention these days….”
The interim Liberal leader clearly does not enjoy sharing the spotlight he stole for himself after the untimely death of Jack Layton. On Wednesday, he launched a personal attack on Mr. Mulcair, comparing his uber-partisan style to that of Mr. Harper.
He also suggested the new leader has ditched the collaborative style of his predecessor. “It’s a new regime,” he said.
Mr. Mulcair relished the chance to retaliate, commenting on how the goal for the NDP is to persuade Canadians the party is capable of competent public administration, as it has displayed provincially “with perhaps one exception — the Bob Rae government in Ontario.”
He has also suggested Mr. Rae’s hopes of becoming permanent Liberal leader have dimmed because of Justin Trudeau’s success at a charity boxing match. “I think he’s having a tough week,” he said. Suffice to say, a merger does not look imminent.
Mr. Rae’s mood will not have been improved by a visit to Ottawa of the new Liberal president, Mike Crawley, to tell him that he needs to make a decision on whether he is going to run for the leadership by the end of the spring session. The party’s view is that allowing him to use the leader’s budget to travel the country during the summer would scare off any other contenders.
With the Liberals about to be consumed with their own family feud, the field is wide open for Mr. Mulcair. He will discover a growing audience for the message that the Conservatives policies have failed to solve some big problems — a middle-class that feels increasingly strained; growing income inequality; climate change.
But he has made the potentially fatal mistake of saying things that people will remember.
Reducing “artificially high” profits sounds like a good opening gambit for a political suicide note.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison
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