Tory memo warns of NDP’s ‘risky’ carbon tax

OTTAWA — Most Canadians might be soaking up the last days of summer this Labour Day weekend, but the Conservative party has its sights firmly set on the fall session of Parliament.

The Conservative party issued a memo to its national caucus Sunday that attacked a ‘risky’ and dangerous’ carbon tax that the Tories say is the hidden centrepiece of NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s economic plan.

“As we prepare to come back to Ottawa for the fall session of Parliament, it is also important to ensure Canadian middle class families understand the threat posed by Thomas Mulcair’s risky and dangerous economic plan,” said the memo, from Conservative national campaign manager Jenni Byrne.

“Canadian families know that a tax on carbon is a tax on everything and therefore a tax on everyone.”

Mulcair has repeatedly called for a cap-and-trade system that would effectively put a price on carbon emissions. The Conservative memo said Mulcair is hiding the carbon tax because it would “kill jobs and raise the price of everything, including gas, groceries and electricity.”

“In short, it means fewer jobs, higher prices, and fewer opportunities.”

The Conservatives released attack ads in late June that also said Mulcair supported a carbon tax and accused the NDP of engaging in “risky theories” and “dangerous economic experiments.”

The NDP was unable to provide a comment Sunday, but in May Mulcair told a news conference the country did not need to implement additional carbon taxes and advocated a cap-and-trade system.

In a 2008 committee meeting, Mulcair called carbon taxes “regressive.”

“In fact, a carbon tax has the disadvantage of allowing companies to pollute as much as they like so long as they pay their prescribed taxes,” he said to the standing committee on finance at the time.

Mulcair has come under fire for blaming Alberta’s oilsands for the so-called “Dutch disease” — artificially inflating the Canadian dollar and killing manufacturing jobs in Central Canada. At the height of the controversy in May, Mulcair toured the oilsands for the first time to promote the idea of sustainable development and polluter pay which, he argued, many people, including Albertans, support.

He also noted at the time that he was not targeting any one region or any one sector and that the concept of sustainable development needed to be applied to all industries right across Canada.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Natalie Stechyson