Stephane Dion calls it a lie, but really who is the one doing the nose stretcher here?

Stephane Dion has been calling the PM a liar for the last couple of days because he does not like the way that his carbon tax has been treated by the Conservatives. It all boils down to the fact that Conservatives are not talking about the tax breaks that are going to be offered up by Dion's plan and Mr. Dion is not happy.

Well there is a good reason for that Stephane, because in the policy you are proposing, in this case it might be better referred to as bait and shift, those tax cuts are not going to even come close to the costs that the average taxpayer is going to have to shell out because of this twisted piece of bad policy.

The cost of EVERYTHING is going to go up, and if you want to talk truth why are you not telling Canadians that little fact about the fallout of your carbon tax?


Look at the following example with the results from the Liberal Green Shift calculator.

Joe makes 50K a year, lives in Alberta, is single and inherited his home.

He will get back $337 a year from those touted tax breaks under Dion's carbon tax. ( if he lived in Quebec he would only get back $282!! I wonder how many people in Quebec are aware of that little fact).

According to the Liberals: Joe is going to have to pay about $250 more to heat his home next year due to direct increases from the carbon tax leaving $87 dollars left over. But don't go out celebrating and buy up all that beer and popcorn just yet Joe, because you have not yet figured out how much more your electricity bill will be going up and the Liberal DO NOT even have an estimate for that. Any wagers that it will be well over the $87 dollars that Joe has left over?

A safe guess would be that the increase would be approaching that of his natural gas bill at around the $250 dollar mark*

So Joe gets hit with a $500 increase to his utility bills and now is $163 in the red. (The official colour of the Liberal Party of Canada BTW).

But we cannot stop there, oh no, because now Joe is going to be faced with cost increases from all over.

His property taxes are going to go up, estimate another $200 as municipalities try to recover their own massive cost increases for both heat and power. Damn city; do we really need public transit, those street lights on all night, our pools and facility buildings heated, roads plowed in winter or even to have our police or sanitation workers driving around in those costly vehicles? It is insane I tell you.

Provincial taxes would go up for many of the same reasons outlined above as well as a few more as the schools, universities, and hospitals come running to them to cover their carbon tax related cost increases.

The costs on food and consumer goods will go up as their shipping and manufacturing costs increase and the stores themselves pass on their own utility increases on to the consumer. This is already a given, but there is another reason that we can expect to see the price of everything increase and for that look to what happens to Joe next.

So poor Joe, who believed Dion and voted Liberal is now so far into the hole on this that he has to go to his boss and ask for a raise, as do all those others who work beside him. Joe's boss gives him and his fellow employees that raise, but now has to pass on these new added wage costs along with the direct cost increases that he is already paying on carbon tax to his customers causing his prices to raise.

Out of control inflation anyone?

It is a good thing Joe has a job. Imagine what this will do to the real poor in this country who can least afford it.



Mr. Dion; the next time that you speak about how those mean Conservatives do not talk about your tax cuts, please be honest with Canadians and tell them the real lie that those tax cuts are not even going to cover the known cost increases caused by your carbon tax, and certainly will not be enough to cover the many yet unknown cost increases that are sure to follow.


Poor Joe, poor Canada; and all for an environment plan that will DO NOTHING to reduce our GHG emissions.





*By taking only the top 7 electric generation facilities in Alberta with their 2004 CO2 emission numbers and multiplying that by $40.00/tonne you get a low estimate of the real cost to Alberta facilities coming out at over 4 billion dollars. With a population of 3.5 million people that comes out to $1200 per Albertan! So I figure $250 is a reasonable and realistic number for calculating on a per home basis what the average power bill would raise under Dion's carbon tax. The Liberals haven't even bothered to try and figure this number out, or at least they are not telling us about it if they did.