KUSI Global Warming Meltdown.

John Coleman's second program on 'global warming'. (the very popular first program is available here)

pt1



pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5, pt6, pt7, pt8, pt9.


Bonus: From Finnish TV (with subtitles)



Pt2, pt3.

Bizzaro Copenhagen

Just a couple of things that happened at the summit in Copenhagen that leave me wondering.


How is it that Jack Layton, the guy rallying against the HST because the increase in taxes will harm families, can be in favour of the proposed fund of upwards of 200 billion dollars collected from the 'developed' countries (including about 30 billion from Canada) ? Wouldn't taking 30 billion dollars from Canadians and their families be a much greater burden than the HST would?


Was Al Gore trying to make sure that the "Gore effect" did not happen again when he called for the world leader to meet in Mexico in July rather than the proposed date in late fall? I mean what are the odds that it would snow in Mexico City in July?


Why did the PM get such a rough ride from the same media and lefty environmentalists who were falling all over themselves praising Obama? Hasn't the PM said on numerous occasions that our AGW policies would mirror those taken by the US? But in the press Obama = good and Harper = bad, even if they have the exact same goals for CO2 reductions.


Why is it that Canada who responsible for only 2% of the worlds total CO2 emissions gets all sorts of grief when China, currently responsible for 22% of those emissions, gets treated with kid gloves? Even more interesting is that in the last few years China has increased its emissions by about 10% a year, or in more simple terms they have increased their yearly output a total equal to our total output. Yup Canada is the problem. More fossil awards please.


And lastly where were Ignatieff and the Liberals? We know that if Dion was still leader he would have went to Copenhagen, so why didn't Ignatieff go?


Oh I almost forgot, what about the science?



pt2, pt3, pt4

ht SDA

A Simple solution.

My humble submission to the Nobel Prize Committee for consideration.

How to solve 2 of the greatest problems of our times with one simple fix.

Why don't we just feed the polar bears people* who refuse to tow the Anthropogenic global warming line.



If Al Gore can get a Nobel Prize for that crappy bit of propaganda of his, I should be a shoe-in with this idea for the 2010 awards.



*or the AGW scientists. I think that I can be bit flexible on this one.

It's Back!

It's back!


More of the same from the Liberals but this time at least Ignatieff is being up front with his big government tendencies. "The federal government is Canada's biggest employer, biggest landlord and biggest consumer of goods and services."

If that statement does not scare you as a taxpayer, nothing will.

Government does not create wealth Mr. Ignatieff, and if you have not yet figured that out you have no business in control of the money hardworking Canadians pay in taxes.



Update:
Speaking of cutting edge investment.

A Liberal speaks out on Ignatieff's bluster.

Liberal candidate Bob Friesen joins Martha Hall Findlay

Liberal candidate Bob Friesen joins Martha Hall Findlay and even leader Stephane Dion in admitting that the Liberals have no idea if the Green Shift will reduce CO2 emissions.

From the Winnipeg Sun: "It might not change behaviour," Friesen acknowledged during the debate.

Well, if it's not going to change behaviour, then it's just a straight tax grab."

Liberals inadvertently reveal more lies about the Green Shift

By now I am sure you have all read the latest news that Dion is going to try to modify his carbon tax proposal after his much ballyhooed summer tour trying to sell this bad piece of policy to Canadians failed miserably. While the story about how the Liberal sales job of the Green Shift has been a complete failure is damning enough in itself; hidden away in the latest Liberal rhetoric is something even more damning as it reveals just how Dion and the Liberals have been lying about the carbon tax from day 1.

Here is what Dion is now proposing: Dion will announce that part of the $1 billion contingency fund in his plan, designed for tax relief to address the unavoidable costs associated with the carbon tax, will be set aside for truckers, farmers and fishermen. "There's $1-billion wiggle room," said Montreal MP Marlene Jennings. "We've never said that the plan, in terms of the spending side, is complete, because it's not. There is money that we're setting aside in order to be able to assist sectors that are going to be particularly hard-hit."

A 1 billion dollar contingency fund?

Now how exactly can a plan "that every dollar that is raised from carbon pollution will be returned to Canadians in tax" cuts." and a plan where "This shift will be done in a revenue neutral way –putting it in law that every dollar that is raised from carbon pollution will be returned to Canadians in tax cuts." possibly have a contingency fund if every penny collected will be going back to Canadian taxpayers?

It absolutely cannot be done, that is unless of course someone has been lying to Canadians since day 1.

A couple of other pertinent questions:

Just how did Dion and the Liberals plan to slip a billion dollar fund made up of money that was promised to go back to the taxpayer past the Auditor General, who the Liberal have promised would oversee the revenue neutrality of the carbon tax?

If the Green Shift was going over well with Canadians at this time, does anyone honestly believe that the money would go back to the taxpayers?

And perhaps the most important question of all: What did the Liberals really plan to do with this fund?

Update: Buried in Dion's carbon tax is a note on the creation of a special fund. "Contingency offset. We will set aside $1 billion over four years ($100 million in the first year growing to $400 million in the fourth year) which will be reserved for tax cuts designed to off-set the impact of the carbon tax on groups such as not-for-profit organizations and charities. This contingency offset will also be used to design tax relief to address unanticipated and unavoidable costs associated with the new price on carbon for the most vulnerable in society."

So are farmers and fisherman non profit organizations, charities, or part of the most vulnerable of our society? I am sure they would like to know and eagerly await an answer from Dion.

By the way, when did a subsidy become a tax cut?


ht Steve Jenke and the comments at Unambiguous.

McGuinty's Green Ontario

McGuinty's Green Ontario, where they do things greener and better than anyone else and where car pooling is illegal.

The province's Public Vehicles Act states, "No person shall arrange or offer to arrange transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person unless that other person is the holder of an operating licence authorizing that other person to perform the transportation."

Ontario, yours to discover. Just take your own car to do it.

Trust me. I am an economist.

John McCallum, Liberal MP and LPC finance critic, was in Guelph on Tuesday trying to sell Dion's green shift to the local voters for the upcoming by-election, but like many other Liberal MP's of late, his explanation left more questions than answers.

After reading off the usual prepared party lines; "The essence of the Green Shift is that you have higher taxes on what you burn and lower taxes on what you earn," he said. "So that you tax higher things that are bad, like pollution, and you tax lower things like your income." (is anyone else out there getting tired of hearing these same words from every Liberal who opens up their mouth about Dion's carbon tax?) McCallum goes off script adding ""the vast majority" of Canadians will find the tax breaks included in the plan will outweigh the extra costs incurred by higher energy prices." Vast majority? Just what percentage of Canadians will make up that vast majority, how has he calculated this, and more importantly who will not be included in that "vast majority"?

52%, 60%? Higher? Come on big John, give us a real number. ( hint to the press: please start to ask these types of questions. It is your damn job.) Your guess on the numbers will be as good as McCallum's because nobody really knows for sure what the actual costs will turn out to be after the carbon tax inevitably gets passed down on to the consumer. Prices are going to raise on most everything, and unless you know just how much, you cannot make wild claims about how far these tax breaks are going to go. As for those left out of that "vast majority", no matter what the number turns out to be, logic says that they are the ones who are going to be least able to afford it such as the elderly, students, low wage earners, and all of those on fixed incomes. The plan is going to punish the poor.

McCallum, not to be out done by the many other Liberal MP's who have contradicted Dion on his green shift, had the following to say: "the Conservative anti-carbon tax campaign is promoting "two myths" about the Green Shift -- first that it won't be revenue neutral, and the myth that the Green Shift will raise the price of gas at the pump." Directly contradicting Dion who has already grudgingly admitted that the price at the pumps is going to raise: "We know that they will pass on part of their costs to their consumers because they cannot eliminate the emissions overnight, with all the goodwill of the world. We know that."

So why should anybody trust what McCallum has to say over his leader? Well, in response to comments made by the Executive Director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association, Peter A. Nelson, about the cost of lettuce going up to $8 a head, McCallum said "That's just crazy, totally out to lunch. And I'm an economist, so I know a little bit what I'm talking about. It doesn't make any sense."

Did the economist tell us just how much he thought the price of lettuce would go up, how much the rate of inflation would raise, or give us ANY real numbers at all about anything?

Well no, but not to worry because he is an economist after all; an economist who knows a "little bit" about what he is talking about.

Source story.

Anxiously Awaiting the Liberal Press Release Condemning Obama

Is anyone else anxiously awaiting the Liberal Party of Canada press release condemning Barrack Obama's proposed gasoline rebate of $1000 dollars per family?




I will be out for most of the day, but if anyone happens to see Dion and the Liberals condemnation of this $1000 gasoline rebate that will encourage Americans to consume even more gasoline and produce more CO2, please post a link in the comments.

Thank you in advance.

Al

For your viewing pleasure Paris Hilton proposes her own energy plan.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Contrasting environment visions. Dion vs. Liberal.ca

Stephane Dion purposes his carbon tax; the so called green shift.

The official LPC website Liberal.ca promotes something a little different.


Is it any wonder why these guys are having such a tough time selling their carbon tax grab to Canadians when their own party website is promoting a radically different policy that is now well over a year old.

Too funny. Over a month has now gone by since Dion went public with the details of his carbon tax and not 1 person over at Liberal.ca even noticed, and perhaps worse yet, not a single Liberal visiting their site bothered to tell them about it. Truly a great show of the true Liberal commitment to the environment vision and support for your own policy, or is that policies?


Blog note:

I am going to be taking a few days off from the blog and spend some time enjoying some of what our short summer has to offer.

Until then, thank you again for reading ,and for all of your comments.

Al

Ralph Goodale and the mystical Liberal money fairy.

Fighting for his political life in his home province, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale takes his attempt at selling the carbon tax to the people of Saskatchewan and invokes the mysterious Liberal money fairy in the process.

What Mystical Liberal Money Fairy am I talking about you ask. Well the one that is going to have to come up with the real money for the Liberal promises and claims of increased spending on, R&D both in private industry and universities, alternative energy, new green based business', public transit, an Office of Petroleum Price Information, emissions reducing technology, special funds, and other assorted promises made by Dion and his band of inept Liberals.

Just how big are these Liberal promises? Lets see what Ralph Goodale had to say on that.

"And those investments are going to bring literally billions of dollars in new business activity to these two provinces. While we had the initial problem of the largest bulk of emissions, we have ultimately the biggest benefit of the largest amount of the new investment that is going to be made to deal with those emissions and the order of magnitude could be about the size of building the St. Lawrence Seaway and that will come into Alberta and Saskatchewan over the course of the next 10-15 years".


Now that sure sounds big to me, but there remains an issue that the Liberals have seemed to overlook, or are purposely omitting in their efforts to deceive Canadians.

Just where is all of this money going to come from?

It cannot be from the taxes collected via the green shift because that is promised to be revenue neutral and "that every dollar that is raised from carbon pollution will be returned to Canadians in tax" cuts." and the Liberals are planning to write that into law and have it monitored by the Auditor General.

So if not even $1.00 of taxes collected by the green shift will be going into either directly reducing CO2 emissions or into ANY of the programs/spending promised by the numerous Liberals out trying to sell this fraud of an environment program to Canadians; where will those big promises of investment money come from?

You guessed it; the mystical Liberal money fairy.


All of this talk about the money that will be flowing into the economy are nothing but empty promises and very wishful thinking on the part of Dion and the Liberals. There is no basis in reality for these claims and again the Liberal Party of Canada are showing us their arrogance and contempt by taking the voters and taxpayers of this country for idiots by trying to convince us otherwise. Nobody is buying it, the plan is a dud and the Liberals will be rewarded for their contempt at the ballot box.


That is unless they happen to have a Mystical Liberal Vote Fairy on standby as well.

------

A quick afterthought: If PM Harper made the very same dubious claims about alleged billions of dollars of investment money that would magically come rolling into Canada as a result of his governments environment plan (and he could because the claims are nothing but pie in the sky wishful thinking not based on reality); how long do you thing it would take for those claims to be chewed up and ripped apart on the front pages of every news paper in the country?

So why the silence from the MSM?

Another day, and more green shift lies revealed

Stephane Dion, July 2,2008: "I won't have to hire a single civil servant" to implement the carbon tax formally known as the green shift.

July 23, 2008 Dion says he will create an"Office of Petroleum Price Information" as part of his green shift proposal.

In other words, Dion is going to hire a civil servant, or more accurately, civil servants. Sigh; why am I not surprised.

And what will this proposed office be doing exactly?

Well according to Gerrard Kennedy:Part of their job will be to see that oil refiners will not pass those new taxes on to the consumer and if they try, part of the money generated from carbon taxes will go to creating a new 'energy ombudsman' to stop 'em in their tracks.

This is interesting considering that Dion himself has already admitted that industry WILL pass on these added costs from the carbon tax onto consumers, and unless the Liberals are planning to introduce a set of draconian laws that would limit what industry can charge for their own products; what Kennedy stated above would not only be completely impossible to do, it would also be illegal.

So unless Kennedy has just accidentally exposed the LPC hidden agenda for us all to see, which I really doubt; he has just proven himself to be just another Liberal spokesman playing fast and loose with the truth in their efforts to con Canadians into believing the green shift is good policy.

Another day, another lie exposed.

Bob Rae confirms that Dion's carbon tax is not an environment policy.

Bob Rae doing his best Ken Boshcoff impersonation: "Mr. Rae said the plan makes the tax system more progressive and could reduce poverty by 30 per cent and child poverty by 50 per cent with a child tax credit."

There you have it again folks; the green shift is not an environment plan but rather just a tax grab to pay for another in a long line of failed Liberal social programs.

I wonder what Garth Turner will have to say now since it was only a few days ago that Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff faced a firestorm of criticism when he let the cat out of the bag with his now famous statement, The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians." This admission was vehemently denied by Garth Turner who had the audacity to try to translate what Mr. Boshcoff really meant to say and claim to us all "the goal of the Dion plan, which is to tackle climate change, not to redistribute wealth".


What a mess these guys are. One Liberal MP tells the truth about the carbon tax, whether he intended to or not is another question, another Liberal MP jumps in to spin and translate what the first guy meant, and now a third Liberal MP confirms as correct what the first MP said and in the process discredits the second MP and exposes his Liberal spin.

With friends like these....

Not for the faint of heart.

As much as I am trying not to sound like side show barker, I would not be good citizen if I did not offer the following warning to all of my readers.

I must warn everyone now that what you are about to hear is not for the faint of heart. If you are hypertensive, have a heart condition, have a weak stomach, are a Liberal, or have any other serious medical issues, we cannot be held responsible for what happens if you choose to listen to the following radio interview. You have been warned!

John Gormley interviews Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff, of The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians." and Dion's carbon tax is "a green anti poverty plan" fame.


Listen to the interview HERE.



Calling that performance by Ken Boshcoff a train wreck would be putting it mildly; it was a total disaster.

Right from the beginning of the interview Boshcoff is pushing the 'Green Shift is an environmental policy' spin, I guess someone from Liberal HQ has had a little chat with him on this point since his last fiasco, and sounds as if he is reading from a list of talking points mumbling and stumbling around with his spin about how this is a national plan, increased benefits for the country, and about refineries that were NOT built. Listen carefully from around the 7 minute mark as Boshcoff gets knocked of script and falls flat when Gormley asks him the simplest of questions. Ugly; I do not think we will be hearing Mr. Boshcoff do many more interviews in the future.

BTW, to answer Mr. Gormley's question, since Ken Boshcoff had no clue.

Of the 15.4 billion dollars that is expected to be collected with the Dion's carbon tax, the amount that is supposed to go back directly into the environment is zero dollars. Yes that is right, zero. None of the money collected will go directly to environmental measures or technology to reduce CO2. Dion and the rest of the green shift pushers all like to talk about all the money that will flow in to the provinces, universities and business for environmental tech research etc, but Dion's plan provides NO money for this, and the Liberals never say just where that money will come from. They can't say; because the money does not exist other than in the minds of the Liberals trying to spin this pie in the sky nonsense to Canadians and looking like fools in the process.


The facts are the facts and no amount of Liberal spin will change this; the green shift is not an environment plan.

Truth in Liberal Advertising.

Boom! The words of Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff:

"The Liberal Party’s Green Shift announced on June 19th marked the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians."

The Green Shift is not an environment plan.

---

Boom! The words of Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay

"Findlay said it's impossible to calculate the emission reduction numbers at this point, "because energy prices have gone up so much, we don't know how the shift will affect consumption," she said."

And even if it was an environment plan; the Liberals have no idea if it will even work.

---

Finally some truth in Liberal advertising! I wonder if the dynamic duo authorized those comments?

It has been a little over 3 weeks since the big roll out of Dion's carbon tax and it is becoming more and more difficult for the Liberals to 'sell it' to Canadians. Most are already not buying it and it is only going to get worse from here on out for Dion's plan as the numbers start rolling in that will show the taxpayer just how much this little scheme is actually going to cost them, and how much damage it will do to the Canadian economy.

What will the Liberals be saying a few weeks from now? I think the following taken from this article and attributed Martha Hall Findlay, will be fairly close.

"Findlay, who is also the associate finance critic, commended Dion for putting himself so fully on the line with the sink or swim 'Green Shift' plan."



Update: Garth rides to the rescue and interprets for us stupid Canadians what Ken Boshcoff's words really meant. No interpretation of Findlay's comments yet, but remember spin takes time and even more so when trying to defend a poor plan.

Garth Gets called out

Hey Garth, Jennifer Wright has something to say to you.

The offending Blog post posted June 23 2008. You can see that the Liberals are still trying to use the same spin today as Garth did back in June. Aside from the smear against Ms. Wright, the following part of Garth's post looks to be very interesting and I am sure her lawyers have it all typed up waiting for the court date.

"Actually, here’s the story: Over the months that we worked on this concept of tax shifting, various names were used for the project, the “Green Shift” being decided upon relatively late in the process. Once that happened, a lot of branding quickly took place. One obvious key element was the URL.Within minutes, the existing greenshift.ca site was located, and a strategy discussed for dealing with the commercial company operating it. They would be contacted in advance (which happened)."

Let's see if I have this correct. The Liberals were fully aware that a private company was using the name and the "strategy' worked out was to just call them? (which they did on the night before the plan was rolled out, but after it was all printed up and ready to go) How about checking if anyone owned a trade mark you fools? Did any of the superior minds in that meeting even think of that? Obviously not. Please take a look at this other quote of interest regarding knowledge and timing: Joseph Mayer, the Liberal Party's director of communications, said that although the party realized prior to the plan's launch there was another entity with the Green Shift name he believes "it was too close to shift back."

Got that. It was too late to change the name once the Liberals had found out!



The PR on this is terrible. Maybe someone should have explained to Dion that having a major political party being sued for trademark infringement is not good public relations before having him go out in public and call this woman's defense of her trademark(required by law FYI) as deplorable. Bullying and trying to smear woman entrepreneurs is textbook stupid on so many levels it makes you wonder just who is running the show over there. She told them no when they called, she even sent them a cease and desist order, but the arrogance of the Liberals know no bounds and now she is forced to sue. Maybe the LPC woman's caucus can discuss such examples of courage and leadership at their next meeting. Not Dion's, Jennifer Wright's.


Dion is already failing badly in selling his carbon tax plan to the country, and he is still in the honeymoon period as the real costing to the taxpayer has not yet been completed and exposed to the public. Once that happens his carbon tax will be history, and so will he. It is getting so bad that Dion's own party are leaving him to dangle in the wind on the "tax formally known as green shift". Has anyone seen much of those normally high profile Liberal MP's out there shilling this plan?

Even those that are supposed to be on point for Dion on this are doing him more harm than good by lighting more and more fires. The Garth Turner & David McGuinty show has been a total disaster and if it was Dion who hand picked these 2 to run point on this for him; he deserves all of the consequences that such a poor leadership decision brings.

3 from the news.

Lots going on and not enough free time to hit everything in separate posts, but here are a few things of note.

Stelmach commits 4 billion dollars to make Alberta #1 in the battle for CO2 reduction. Commit; now there is a word you can't get Dion to say very often when he is talking about his inflation causing carbon tax. Hunter has the story up here.


The G8 wraps up and it looks like Russia and the US have for the very first time committed to the reduction of CO2. The moonbats will howl because for them there can never be enough, but anyone with a mind knows that if the goal is real reductions in CO2 than the US, Russia, China and India HAVE to be on board. If the real goal is not CO2 reductions but rather punishing Canadians and destroying our economy to redistribute wealth, vote Liberal.


More from Alberta as 8 of the highest paid public health executives get the axe. Normally when you here of layoffs in the health care system it is the nurses or other front line workers who are the ones getting cut, you know the ones that actually do the job of patient care, so you can expect no negative impact from this announcement. In fact you might even see the opposite as moral among the front line staff increases. Trust me, the system is full of very costly dead wood.

That Was Then This is Now.

(cue host) Hello, and welcome once again to That Was Then This is now. The show where we look at the Liberal Party of Canada and their much varied positions over the years.

You may remember past episodes such as our top rated show on the GST.

Then: Abolish "We have put in writing that the GST will not be there and will be replaced by a system that will be a better one." Jean Cretien

Now: Increase "We will consider if in our plan we need to revisit the decision of the government about the GST. We'll consider it." Stephane Dion

Ha, ha, ha, it was one of our favorite shows as well, but tonight this episode will deal with a topic on many of your minds lately; the environment.

Who here can remember back just a short time ago to December 2007 in Bali?

Well, that was..

Then: Liberals of all shapes and sizes as well as various other lefties were screaming at the top of their lungs that Canada's position in Bali, to get China and India to commit to reducing CO2, was wrong & would be hardship on those "developing" countries.

This is Now: Punishing China, India, and all of the other developing countries with a carbon tariff on their goods. "We will build carbon pricing into our strategy for international trade, endeavouring where possible to ensure that goods from countries that are not pricing carbon will face a tariff reflective of carbon content."

I guess that this confirms that Mr.Bairds position, that China and India must be on board for any meaningful reductions to happen, was right from the beginning. I wonder how China now feels after their Bali buddy Dion went out of his way to let them off of the hook of carbon reductions and now sideswipes them with a punishing tariff for not having a plan for those very same reductions. I hope they don't get mad.


Still on the environment we have this little contradiction in logic for you.

Then: Liberals claiming that the conservative $100/month per child universal child care benefit would not do anything to help with childcare and the money would be wasted.

Some quotes: "Don't give people $25 a day to blow on beer and popcorn."

“The Conservative approach is one-dimensional, lacks vision, and fails to address the tax system’s bias against single-earner families with one parent at home,” & "‘little more than a symbolic gesture’ toward stay-at-home parents. Let’s be honest, the Conservative approach is just your basic tax cut in disguise and is one that undermines families who use organized day care for their children.”

Well it certainly uh uh, the approach to child care is just spiteful its its its canceling the supplement for our most vulnerable uh children. There is actually no plan for early learning and childhood education. So its a good job there putting more money for prisons in the budget because we're gonna need them if we don't get this early childhood right.

"My understanding of what he's talking about is a program that will probably give you roughly $25 a week. What are low- and middle-income Canadians going to do for the rest of the week?"

Well right back at ya Liberals because

Now: The Liberal are claiming that the small cheque from Greenshift tax cuts will not only pay for and solve climate change, but cure poverty, provide social justice, and will somehow cover the increased costs on EVERYTHING from Dion's carbon tax.

It seems that the Liberal Party of Canada change their policies and ideas more often than they change their clothes; as is shown in this last example we have for you today.

On a carbon tax.

Then: Against (Dion isn't the only one either) "I've always been against it. I will have other ways to get there." and "A carbon tax is less effective than a carbon market at reducing emissions. Some of my opponents for the Liberal leadership have suggested that a carbon tax would be the most effective measure to curb climate pollution. This is simply bad policy...." More of the same here.

Now: For "More precisely, we will tax fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, according to the amount of carbon dioxide they emit when they are burned. This carbon tax will be....."



It looks like our time is up for today, but we will be sure to return in the near future with another episode of That Was Then This is Now.

Good night everybody, and a big thank you to our sponsor, the Liberal Party of Canada. Who without their constant changing of positions this show would not be possible. (wave to audience)


(Cue theme music, fade out.)

Does anyone else find it odd...

Does anyone else find it odd that not one single reporter has of yet managed to stick a microphone in the face of Danny Williams, Gary Doer, Shaun Graham, Robert Ghiz, David Miller or any mayor from one of Canada's major cities, to ask them their opinions of Dion's carbon tax or how much they figure it will cost those they represent?

Considering that those on this list seem more than happy to voice their thoughts on almost anything and everything, even when not asked, their silence on the carbon tax has me a bit confused.

Maybe all of the above listed have been too busy to bother with reporters, out of the spot light, or perhaps the media itself might have figured that the multi million dollar increases, as a result of Dion's tax scheme, to the cost of running their respective levels of government would not be of any interest to the public.

Whatever the reasons I just do not know, but today we have a golden opportunity to find out for ourselves what the media can't seem to do for us. Because today they all will be out and about doing what countless other Canadians will be doing; celebrating Canada Day.

So while you are out celebrating Canada Day today and you happen to see any of the above mentioned politicians out schmoozing the public, or perhaps even others like Buzz Hargrove or any other union boss, do yourself and your country a big favour and take the opportunity to ask them for their thoughts on Dion's carbon tax and the subsequent costs.

You will be glad you did.

What Global Pressures was Dion talking about?

After being bombarded with reality Stephane Dion is finally admitting that the price of gas at the pumps would go up with his proposed carbon tax. This after claiming for so long that this would not happen.

What I find interesting though is that with the admission that gas prices will rise, comes this little caveat saying why they will not go up much. (highlighted area below)

Source: "Dion held firm on his pledge not to hit consumers with a new gas tax, but conceded yesterday his the carbon tax might indirectly lead to higher prices at the pumps.

"We know that they will pass on part of their costs to their consumers because they cannot eliminate the emissions overnight, with all the goodwill of the world. We know that," he said.

Big polluting oil companies would pay a hefty price for emissions, but the Liberal carbon tax plan projects any costs passed on to consumers at the pump would be minimal as global pressures would keep prices from Canadian companies competitive."

Ok Liberal spin meisters, what exactly are those global pressures that Dion spoke about, and how will they keep that evil big oil from passing their increased costs for the production and sale gasoline onto us consumers?


Perhaps the global pressures that Dion was speaking about were comparisons of the price of gasoline in other countries. Maybe the fact that Venezuela, Iran, Kuwait, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even Turkmenistan pay less than 25 cents a litre for gas at the pumps would put the pressure on big oil to stop them from passing on those costs in Canada. Or maybe it is the other end of the spectrum he was speaking about such as in most EU countries where the price of gas is well over $2.00/Litre that would keep our pump prices from going up.

Ether way, I do not really see how the price of gas in another country would cause much pressure on big oil to keep the price down in Canada, but I am not an academic like Dion. SO please dear Liberal friends, I would really like to understand what "pressures" Dion was talking about.

It should be an easy one to answer, so lets hear some examples to back up your fearless leaders BS words.

Thank you in advance.