A lone, honest Liberal crawls out of the woodwork…
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. […]
I invite and encourage everyone to visit thegreenshift.ca to see how this comprehensive plan will benefit low-income Canadians. I will continue to work collaboratively with my Liberal colleagues towards a fairer, richer, greener Canada.
Ken Boshcoff’s “Canada” would be the one with a new boundary drawn somewhere west of the Ontario/Manitoba border.
h/t Charles Adler
Update: Editorial response to the fallout from Boschcoff’s commentary at the Netnewsledger.
This is an important story but I see nothing at CTV, CBC online. Bourque has it up.
It will have an impact in the east only if the story makes the mainstream news.
I’m probably being a bore with this, but diesel fuel produces less C02 than gasoline.
So why is Dion going to raise the tax on diesel fuel but not on gasoline?
Good find. This has nothing to do with climate and evrything to do with tax and spend with the Liberal Party as middleman to take credit.
Same old same old.
Thought this would make good content for a Conservative ad. It is a good way to hive off the the blue liberals, and there are lots of them.
The end game is a two party system….either the Liberals or the NDP will disappear as a major force
The national post has it up.
I think it should be called exactly what Boshcoff called it: The Most Aggressive Anti-Poverty Plan in 40 Years Plan Or better, The Most Aggressive Wealth Transfer Plan in 40 Years Plan
Anybody remember the communist 5 year plans for economic success? Oh yeah, not really successful…
Besides, naming it after a fruit will only get it votes on Queen St.
stan – it’s a scam. If he raised the tax on gasoline, people would see it immediately at the pump and blame him.
The price of gas at the pump will rise astronomically because he’s taxing the industrial sources of gas production, he’s taxing the delivery of gas etc. These costs of production will all be passed on to the consumer. BUT, the consumer won’t see these increased costs, immediately, as due to Dion’s tax grab.
Dion can, of course, always blame The Americans.
The thing is, most people won’t read Dion’s Plan. I’d say that less than 1% of Canadians will read the plan and be stunned that there’s NOTHING in it about the environment! Nothing! No strategies for cleaning up the envt; no strategies for enabling our industries to reduce emissions. None.
The plan is all about what he’ll do with all that money (slurp, slurp). He’ll give money to families of four with before tax incomes of a total of 20,000 !? And to those up to about 40,000. Then..it tapers off to nothing.
He says he’ll decrease income taxes by 10 percent!!! Wow. He’s lying. A reduction from 15 to 13.5 is 1.5 percent. Not 10 percent. He says he’ll reduce corporate taxes to 14%! He doesn’t tell us that Harper has reduced them from 22 to 15%.
He’s got other ‘benefits’ such as a 350 child reduction. Big deal.
Oh- and if you live in the north and are faced with higher costs for fuel, you get 150 a year. That’s $150 a year. Heh. Dion doesn’t give a damn about their votes, does he?
Dion’s Scam is a blatant tax-and-run grab. It’s a political ploy to get him elected in Ontario, in the megacities and in quebec. He doesn’t give a damn about votes elsewhere. His scam is to present this money grab as an environmental issue.
But there’s nothing in it to clean up the envt. Nothing. Nothing.
He’s found a pool of money that he can grab. This pool is located in Canadian industry. He defines industry as Bad and Polluting. This sets him up as morally superior to industry.
He punishes them for being bad.
He then gives this money to the Poor.
The saint-like image is blinding. The problem is: there’s nothing pure or noble about his agenda.
It’s pure cynical manipulation and dishonesty. His plan won’t do a thing for the envt. Nothing.
His plan won’t do a thing about poverty.
His plan has only one goal. Getting him elected.
Andn since most people won’t READ his plan and see that the pretence about it being about The Environment is a TOTAL LIE – then, his talk, and the MSM talk..about it’s cleaning up the envt..well, people won’t know that it’s a massive Liberal scam.
Adscam is nothing compared to this Alscam. (Alberta scam).
Akin to what’s under the green scum on a pond, Dion’s shifty plan is a real hidden agenda.
It’s more about grabbing our money than cleaning the air.
Since when did Liberals ever operate their dependency industry/social programs without money grabbing schemes they tell us we can’t live without on moral/compassionate grounds?
ET:
“Andn since most people won’t READ his plan and see that the pretence about it being about The Environment is a TOTAL LIE – then, his talk, and the MSM talk..about it’s cleaning up the envt..well, people won’t know that it’s a massive Liberal scam.”
Therein lies the biggest problem: apathetic voters who have their ears tickled into believing there is a reason to act on the climate, and secondly to have the co-operation of the media feeding them with the Lib plan as ‘The Answer’.
I’ll be contacting my local MP and the local media…we should hear his ‘reaction’ to Boschoff’s analysis.
I’m Ontarian, and I find the plan to be deliberately and gratuitously harmful to the West. Dion and the Liberals know they are screwing Alberta and Saskatchewan; they’re proud of it to the point they are now bragging about it.
It’s intentionally divisive, and not only regionally. We know 39% of female tax filers pay zero income tax already; Dion’s income tax cut does nothing to help them, they will be stuck paying more for everything from heating to cat food. It eliminates my favourite tax credit, the $1000 working tax credit, and replaces it with one capped at $50000 income, thus taking from workers and giving to “collectors”. In many instances it actually favours the rich over the poor.
“Screw” is the perfect word for it, too, notwithstanding the faux outrage by the newly puritan Liberals.
There’s one interesting thing that came out of the proposal: their top rate 1% income tax cut is costed at only $600 million a year; that’s not very much. Even if it were really $750 million, Harper easily could have chopped it in his first year and would barely have noticed the lost revenue and I’m kinda mad that he didn’t. The GST cut, for comparison, was $12 billion, much of it flowing back to non-income tax payers.
The solution?
Population Shift.
Alberta still needs workers, Ontario is losing jobs.
Any Ontarians or Quebecers willing to work for a living, with a 10% provincial flat tax, is always welcome in Alberta.
Let Ontario figure out how to support the leeches they continue to breed … with their own money.
ET, I agree very few will actually read the plan; but, the Tories will be sure to expose its fraudulent hypocrisy.
The MSM has a real job ahead of them hiding this reality from Canadians. They won’t be able to do it. Those days are gone with the advent of the blogosphere, which gets far more readership than the Torstar, Globe and Ottawa Citizen.
Plus, Dion is relatively “popular” because Canadians simply don’t know he is some nerdy professor, fresh out of the classroom, with no idea about real life, bleating on about being polite. This from a guy who went negative from day one, mentioning that he wanted to get Harper back to Stornoway so he could “get rid of his overweights.”
The only thing this Watermelon Shift Shaft can accomplish is prevent a Harper majority. One the other hand, it could very well result in CPC majority, after Dion’s excoriation in an election, flushed out of Liberal friendly town hall meetings (he didn’t go the Calgary Stampede as some incompetent scribes say, he went to the Calgary Zoo and talked to Liberals in a totally controlled and contrived environment).
I have yet to meet a single person who thinks Dion’s plan is a good idea, not one. OK I’m in the far west, near the Pacific, but that does give a hint of how he will do in Vancouver.
Jack Layton, who has missed many opportunities to capitalize on Grit idiocy, seems to finally be getting it – that people don’t change their vote from Tory to NDP (except for 8 burnouts on Saltspring Island), his vote will come from soft Grits.
I hope Dion goes for broke on this one. Then he will likely go down as the one who finally killed the LPC as a political force. It couldn’t happen to a nicer political party.
It will be interesting to see if Nova Scotia and Newfoundland will be raising concerns about Stephane Dion’s “hidden agenda” remember – unlike 1980, the “oil patch” now includes NS and NL…
And, the other secret that Boshcoff let out of the bag – the Green Shaft has nothing to do with greenhouse gases – it may be a tax plan, it may be a poverty plan, but it’s clearly not an environmental plan.
The missing link (pun intended) to the Capuchin monkeys and Yale is probably here…
http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/keith.chen/articles/NYT%206_5_05.pdf
How can an MP brag of theft?
Oh, silly question, he’s a Liberal
Which Canadian poitician is quoted as saying”The federal government is ,essentially,a money-redistributing machine.”? Hints,he once owned a turtle he named ‘Trotsky’ and his wife says he can’t change a light bulb without messing up.
“ET, I agree very few will actually read the plan; but, the Tories will be sure to expose its fraudulent hypocrisy.”
And thereby continue to be viewed as a ‘mean-spirited’ gang of running dog capitalists.
It’s a hard one to win. Canadians are busy with petty pursuits and don’t pay attention. If they understood what economic devastation awaits them with a Liberal government, their heads would explode and they prefer to simply not know.
Ignorance is bliss.
PT Barnham understood humanity.
With growing unemployment in tOntario and labour shortages in Alberta, and soon Sasktchewan, I expect, Go WEST young man, woman and child, even the middle aged and old, would become a new phrase again
The only environment this plan will clean up is my wallet.
Libs SOP: Pander to Quebec and Ontario (Canada), the west can go F itself. Nothing will resurrect the western separation yearnings more that this.
One of my objections is the mixing of objectives.
So, lets accept the premise for a moment, that Carbon Dioxide created in excess is a bad thing. Then taxing it is appropriate, tax something you want less of. It changes its relative price to other options.
So if the original plan was that then turn around a cut taxes by the equivalent amount….don’t play freaking robin hood. Carbon Dioxide emitted by the poor is just as harmful as CO2 emitted by the rich, assuming you accept the premise.
Using it as income redistribution allows the “poor” to buy more CO2 emitting stuff. It is self defeating. Sorry I am purist when it comes to matters like this.
So once you see the bastardization you ask why. And the answer is that they want to meet traditional political goals, those of placing the party back at the centre of the handout scheme. I would have had more respect for them if they had done the intellectually consistent thing. They have tainted it as they always do.
They can’t help themselves.
The despot cares not that they love him only that they hate each other.
Liebrals a bunch of despots.
There really is nothing new here…the Dion plan really does nothing for the environment, it is simply a tax grab at the expense of the middle class and the oil producing provinces. The liberals pretend as do some of the pollsters that this will not effect gas prices when in fact the Carbon Tax will be passed through on all products. In addition, higher transportation costs will increase the cost of everything we but.
Then as the liberals have always done, this policy creates further division within our confederation. The Liberals in the past have encouraged this division in an effort to win votes elswhere.
As I said…same ol…same ol…just another tax grab and a kick in the you know what for the middle class.
Maybe Ken Boschoff can explain one thing – if high taxes are the way to “benefit low-income Canadians”, why do we still have low-income Canadians who need benefiting?
“Maybe Ken Boschoff can explain one thing – if high taxes are the way to “benefit low-income Canadians”, why do we still have low-income Canadians who need benefiting?”
A good question to ask any Liberal, since they had 13 years to reduce(end) poverty in Canada, and to quote one of the party’s emminent leaders: “Stephane, we didn’t get it done.”
What has changed that will get it done another time? and why should they be given another period of people’s lives to waste?
Red, green, yellow, brown, and a pot of gold for Quetario, why not call it the Rainbow Shift?
Ontarians would do well to remember that they are a manufacturing province.
Their auto industry is on the skids. Do they really want to do the same to the manufacturers of pipe, pumps, valves, cable and a thousand other manufactured items that they now provide to the oil patch?
I emailed idiot boy and thanked him for being dumb enough to brag about the greenshift scam. I urge you to do the same
Morgan, I did just that. It felt great too!
The greatest anti-poverty program of the past 40 years? It’s called the “Alberta oil sands”. It’s been a real Godsend to Newfoundland.
Probably to depressed places all across Canada.
And Stephane Dion wants to tax it out of existence.
ET, do look at the ‘Green Investment Account’… the GIA.
Guess where much of the GIAs will be on deposit? Huge amounts of capital moved into FI’s. No GHG reduced, because, heh, we don’t trust him. Big wadges of carbony cash, ready to leverage and lend.
This is a huge, huge scam, I agree 100% ET. It’s so audacious a scam that many are reluctant to admit it is a but a scam.
Canadians do not trust him. Correct. And they do not trust the party of Shawiniscam, Adscam, RegistryScam, Reloscam, HRScam, and now this, CO2Scam.
Skip: They could have had 13 billion years to end poverty and it wouldn’t have worked.
People always have and always will make stupid decisions about their lives that will, if not guarantee life-long poverty, sure make it more likely. Throwing more benefits their way won’t end anything except personal responsibility and consequences, the two things that will reduce poverty.
This is a ploy to buy votes from those who reject the very things that will better their lives in favour of Canadian-style Hope! and Change!.
Politicians the Western world over have been “fighting poverty” for 50 years. Time to call the end of the experiment and admit failure.
Kathryn, GHope and change in deed. Yes, my change out of my pockets.
John Tory, the Ontario Conservative leader, committed political suicide with his idiotic idea to fund religious schools. Ontarians saw this as funding muslim schools and killed him at the poles. McSquinty didn’t have to do anything just hammer away on this one thing. Conservative voters stayed away and the strong Liberal vote normally present here carried the day for these lying crooks.
If Harper, who is a really sharp guy, focuses on just the heavy personal cost to all Canadians of De Yawn’s tax even all but the hard core Liberal voter will vote with their wallet. People are seeing the ever-faster US slide and are getting frightened and I believe will side with Harper’s solid economic plan rather than another socialist bait and switch as ET eloquently wrote.
If not I am moving west to the new Republic.
Kathryn, People always have — an excellent comment and something I have harped about for years, well said.
I heard Boshkoff’s exchange with Adler. It must have been hubris that prompted him to accept the interview? The dialogue was almost over before Boshkoff realized Adler had picked his lock. He was completely over matched. He stammered and stuttered in an attempt to make his point but….without results. I think he is just another light weight MP with the inability to understand basic economics. All of Canada benefits directly from oil activity in AB. Where do you think all the support industry comes from? We have no steel plants in the west. That stuff and all the valves not to mention the labour force comes from the east. If you want to choke the chicken that lays those eggs, go ahead. Don’t be too tough on Boshkoff, its beyond him.
I heard Boshkoff’s exchange with Adler. It must have been hubris that prompted him to accept the interview? The dialogue was almost over before Boshkoff realized Adler had picked his lock. He was completely over matched. He stammered and stuttered in an attempt to make his point but….without results. I think he is just another light weight MP with the inability to understand basic economics. All of Canada benefits directly from oil activity in AB. Where do you think all the support industry comes from? We have no steel plants in the west. That stuff and all the valves not to mention the labour force comes from the east. If you want to choke the chicken that lays those eggs, go ahead. Don’t be too tough on Boshkoff, its beyond him.
There will be no plan because the second he tries it Alberta will be gone for good. Wave goodbye to the 15 billion. I think both B.C. with Saskatchewan would be following fast. So no money there either.
Any Alberta government who accepted this cuckoo’s egg of Marxism would be hounded out of here . Its happen several times in our history. From affairs in a more puritanical time ,to gag laws imposed on the provincial media.
The Weird ones lost every time. I think its about culling time again. Harry..er Ed will find this out, as soon as a real Albertan patriot steps up to the plate with a viable platform.
I personally would rather have 2 elected American senators looking after our business. Ours of course except one are not. Than the Ottawa gang who never shoots straight. Who needs just only representation by population, creating the power of one Province over ALL the others. As soon as they end up in that town they become the embodiment of the very slime they had despised with all its hypocrisy.
They adopt the culture of vultures.
It would have been nice to do it Texas style. Have our own Republic for a few years than come into the Union with some punch, but hey better to start fast than be mugged. By the way Strong & Free should be the motto on our licenses. Its was ours by choice when we became a Province. Screw the leftists & other tards who live in fairyland. The whole lot of em are nuts to even argue about it.
The Red Shift?
Posted by: Vitruvius
Too funny & clever at that.
P.S. Anyone refering to me please use RD. I am not into typing torture. Glad I remembered this time, been meaning to say this for a while now.
Just listened to Boshcoff’s interview with Adler. He argued that oil patch must do its fair share, ie, pay for pollution and emissions it causes. Hmm, what about cars in Toronto spewing CO and CO2? When will they do their fair share (over and above existing taxes because, well, our emissions, gasp, are still rising)? Who is he trying to kid here?
The days when Liberals could say the stupidest things and get away with it (I put salt on my steak) are long gone, though the MSM will surely give him and Dion a pass on this one.
It doesn’t matter. Dion’s harebrained vote buying scheme will never see the light of day. This dog won’t hunt, and will be euthanized during next election campaign
One thing is certian, this Dion fellow sure makes Mrs. Cretien look stupid because it was her that prompted old theiving Jean to recruit this limp wristed poopsie after seeing him lose on French Canadas weakest link or some such show. Mrs. Cretin was impressed with Stephan, but then her standards were not that high as evidenced in crooked Jeans selection as husband.
Adler calmly nails KB to the cross in the interview. And apparently Dion hasn’t disagreed with KB according to KB – as he hasn’t done with GT.
oops – hit post by mistake.
Listening to KB in the adler interview makes my blood boil. talking about how the oilpatch has the capacity to give money to other areas etc.
and one word sums up KB – Naive
Perhaps it also describes a large percentage of LP and NDP supporters…
In addition to throwing out Western Canada for the impoverished Easterners, Mr. Boshcoff and the Green Shift also kills the economy of his local constituents. Thunder Bay survives on the holy trinity of Western wheat (shipped from Prairie farmers under the control of Wheat Marketing Boards to ensure Paul Martin’s Canada Steamship Lines remain fully laden and profitable), the timber industry (already reeling from usury power costs caused by poor central planning from Ontario and dwindling markets)and mining (suffering from restricted access, environmental zealotry, government pandering to aboriginal greed).
Higher energy costs driven up even further by the Green Shift will be the final blow to the natural resource industry, the financial backbone of Thunder Bay’s and our country’s economy and the funder of Canada’s vaunted social programs.
So don’t feel so alone Western Canada, some of us see the big picture.
It is clear that what Dion is wont to do, is to destroy Alberta, and in the process nationalize the economic engine of the country.
Canadians should be weary of the narrative that Dion is spreading like manure.
An interesting exercise would be to see what the welfare conditions in Boshcoff’s riding are.
If there are a lot of people that collect welfare and other such largesse, he clearly is playing to them and wants to freeload on the back of actual working people of this country.
Can’t tell, the statistics Canada is in maintenance mode at this time.
The real solution to the welfare or unemployment would be to move to Alberta or Saskatchewan to get a real and well paying job. Of course it requires people to get off their ass and actually do something about their current situation. Though if you have an MP that promises you free money, you may not be all that eager to get up and go.
Ken Boshcoff’s, in this situation is a bloody low life and does not qualify to be nowhere near the parliament of Canada.
Kin knowed da grinchiff. Da moneys going to liprl bankings haccount, han doze wisterbee pipples ploluting nod so mush. Da grenshaf hiz peeair ant jenes dream come true.
The Dion Liberal Green Shift is a declaration of ECONOMIC WAR on Western Canada … plain and simple.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v714/stevekog/LibranosBack.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQGb2adHCd8
Pork
The Liberal party is broke and owes a lot of money without a lot of donations coming in. It couldn’t fund an election if it had to. It couldn’t win an election if one was called today.
So why is Dion pushing a suicide plan that even “some” of the peons are calling a scam?
So his buddies can make some money.
By trading Carbon futures.
In a regulated market that is government controlled.
“Montreal’s Climate Exchange waits for the feds before it starts trading carbon emissions”
http://www.montrealmirror.com/2006/080306/news_climate.html
“Montreal Climate Exchange, a market for large polluters to buy and sell emission credits.
…
One problem is the federal government. Like the Bush administration in the U.S., the Harper government is no fan of the Kyoto Protocol. With a “made in Canada” approach to climate change expected to be unveiled in the fall, the Montreal Climate Exchange’s guidelines are as yet unknown. Will membership be mandatory, like in Europe, or will it be voluntary, like in the U.S.? That central question can affect the Exchange’s entire make-up and effectiveness.
…
“In the absence of strict government regulations requiring carbon emissions limits, this will never become anything more than a pilot project,” says Matthew Bramley of the Ottawa-based Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank. “If you look at the EU, it’s a thriving market: in 2005 the volume of trading there was over $8-billion (U.S.). But the Chicago Climate Exchange, which isn’t government-enforced, the volume was only $2.8-million (U.S.).
…
In May, the World Bank reported that the trade in carbon dioxide emissions grew in 2005 to $10-billion (U.S.), a 10-fold increase over 2004, with the EU accounting for 75 per cent of the market, although almost half of the total amount of emissions reductions came from the developing world. The biggest buyers of the 453.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits sold in 2005 were Japan, Britain and Italy. The biggest seller by far was China.
…
Other big sellers are Brazil, the rest of Latin America and India.”
The “green shift” is all steam and mirrors to distract the public from following the money.
Dion if the front man for this scam and it will be worth big bucks to Power corp, Desmairis, Chretien and a whack of other big playing Liebranos if Canada “officially” signs on to this “cap and trade” snake-oil.
The Lieberal back room boy’s are hungry for their entitled pork. Push the Kyoto crap now so any party dealing in election mode will have to include it. (thanks to the MSM)
Dion can’t pull off an election, but he can still be a bagman.
“Let Ontario figure out how to support the leeches they continue to breed … with their own money.”
Charming sentiment.
You must be very proud.
JJM:
I’m extremely proud to be a hard-working Canadian who pays his taxes, wishes nobody any harm and is part of the most dynamic economy in this country.
If you share those sentiments, you would be welcome to come help build the new economy in Alberta.
Hurry, before you need a passport.
let me see now
manitoba=====a bunch of pinkos
saskabush===just kicked their pinkos out, not that long ago
BC====more pinkos, with vancouver worst than TO for being welfare oriented
newfberta,===== has only in resent years been self sustaining
ontario===uptill present has been a very large contributor to the ottawa tax pocket
SO WHY DO SOME FOOLS IN HERE KEEP HARPING ABOUT ONTARIO’S WELFARE SITUATION WHEN TALKING TAX DOLLARS
it’s us ontario tax payers who have been gitting skrewed by the welfare scam in the GTA
If every province and every territory had to go it on their own to survive financially, and not have to send their surplus to Ottawa to disperse, we would all be better off. It is about time some provinces and a territory started pulling their own weight…..nothing like starvation to motivate those with their hands out to start carrying their own weight.