Well, maybe…
It is time Canadians became aware of the giant trap being set in Washington over Keystone. The short version is this: The president approves Keystone, greatly expanding the flow of Canadian oil sands production into the United States. In return, however, Canada has no choice but to accept a carbon tax at home as part of a grand bargain.
….but it would make more sense to buy off BC. Or wait four years.
Now why would WE pay a tax on oil so Americans can use our oil?
To feel good, Robert. You know, because we love government hands in our pockets.
Screw ’em. Get the Northern Gateway built and sell it to China.
Also, see here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/12/breaking-carbon-tax-bill-coming-thursday/#more-79513
This puts me in a very tight spot. Many folks have a single issue that tips their voting preference one way or the other and the “carbon” tax is mine. I stopped voting for the BC Liberals when they introduced one of these taxes and should the federal Tories do it I will be forced to do the same. My hope is that the gov’t can see that even if they went nuts and enacted every eco law the eco-loons want they would still be called evil. You cannot appease the environmentalists as they always seek more. Everything is not enough, short of wiping out 9/10ths of the worlds population and even then they would protest the few remaining. You cannot do deals with insane people and expect sane results. I will not vote for any party that enacts or maintains a carbon tax. That is my line in the sand that I will not cross.
Wait four years? With half the population in the US firmly attached to govt tit, the media, Hollywood, and no shortage of other electable idiots, Why would we expect anything to change.
Even with a CT on the table I doubt it will happen. First the dems I congress would get annihilated for passing a CT (Obamacare redux). Second I think it has been obamas goal all along to be the hero of the Eco-left, the limousine liberals – by ending his eight years having not allowing a single new exploratory lease to happen and to not let any more oil supply into the country.
It is also worth noting that the refineries around Chicago are the single greatest beneficiaries of not letting the pipeline be built.
I’m American and want to buy Canadian oil. If I were Canada, I’d tell this jug eared twit to GFH.
I must agree with much of what TrueNorthist says, you can’t deal with the evil or the insane and Obama is certainly the former.
Interesting comment in the article,’better a tax on the consumer then a tax on industry’. I beg to differ, better no tax at all and especially the consumer who always bears the brunt whenever stupidity raises its head.
As for the comment that TrueNorthist won’t vote for any government that introduces a carbon tax, if the Harper gov’t brought one in there would be little difference between it and a lefty government so I suspect that there would be a lot of us here in the west looking for a new place to park our votes. As for Redford supporting one, Alberta needs to wake up and realize that they elected a Socialist as premier.
I’d sooner we (Saskatchewan) keep our oil in the ground and go back to being a have-not province then start on the merry-go-round of ever increasing carbon taxes.
I agree with both robw and TrueNorthist. A carbon tax would also be a line in the sand for me. I am getting a little tired of progressives masquerading as conservatives.
Hayek warned about this creeping Marxist collectivism.
If Harper goes for a carbon tax … we might as well of had Dion or Iggy.
There are lots of outlets to tidewater. Harper better be man enough to make one or two of them happen or he has failed his moment in our national life. As said above, if he won’t do it, leave it in the ground until we have a PM who will do it.
Commenting on Mark’s post on January 21, 2013 @ 1:33 p.m. (Obama “No” for Keystone XL), I wrote (just in reaction to the Inaugural Address, not knowing about Corcoran’s previous comments):
“I’m very concerned that Obama will tie approval of the pipeline to Canada’s acquiescence in some costly North American-wide crony-capitalist carbon-abatement scheme that would damage the Canadian economy, benefit only a small number of former Democratic politicians, and be greeted with Tom Foreman-style salivating adulation by the opposition parties and the Canadian media.”
Corcoran’s column is, on balance, somewhat encouraging, IMO: it makes the most positive case I’ve read in months that Keystone XL will actually make it through the sausage-maker, and a carbon tax presents much less of a problem for Canada than would a boondoggle like cap-and-trade, since we already have a de facto carbon tax — the GST — in place.
At a very minimum, the GST provides the mechanism to collect a more product-specific tax (say on transportation and heating fuels, and fossil-fuel generated electricity) where a rate increase on certain items were required as part of the deal; such a rate increase would need to be offset, clearly, by reductions in income taxes or the standard level of the GST to ensure revenue neutrality (and not the transfer program gimmick that Dion was advocating).
Ideally, however, Canada would be successful in making the case that the GST as it stands achieves what a carbon tax would otherwise achieve (which is true), and that the problem of the absence of a national consumption tax is an American one alone (which is really the tone and tenor of the comments from WAPO, Nature, etc. to which Corcoran refers).
Why, you might ask, is even Edmonton mad about ramming the plan through at any cost, including but not limited to a carbon tax that’ll make the oil uncompetitive in the first place? Surely Alberta has most to lose?
Once more—Redford owes the Calgary Muslims big. They have their orders from the House of Saud (who, of course, charge no carbon tax or any other to their subjects, but pay them a fat national dividend paid with oil revenues from the Christian world) to see the fossil fuel industries of the Christian world (including Alberta) destroyed.
The Muslims want more tribute from collaborators in Christian governments, including Alberta. That was the quid pro quo for PC victory. Redford knows a PST to finance grants for Calgary and Edmonton bomb factories won’t fly in the polls, so she’ll acquiesce to a huge carbon tax that’ll raise the cost of oil and send more money flowing to Saudi charities.
Was it that long ago that British subjects hanged for this sort of thing?
original rick…. why not we will be getting american money for the oil anyway.
Sell it to China, that’s where Obama is sending the rest of the US economy.
I think David Southam is on the right track here. If this comes to pass, I’d expect some sort of “Potemkin” carbon tax, like perhaps a 5% carbon tax on fuels, and then make fuels (and lube oil) exempt from GST.
Stephen Harper is certainly more than smart enough to accomplish this, and is certainly smart enough to know that invoking a real carbon tax would be a huge blow to his base.
Have oil companies shipping through the pipeline pay the complete cost of the carbon tax mandated by Ottawa.
The amount of the new carbon tax will be set at exactly the same amount generated by what the US currently pays for Canadian crude, compared to the world pricing we will demand in conjunction with the new tax and pipeline.
C’mon Harper, you magnificent bastard!
Could be a gift to the Canadian Government.
Blackmail by the US, combined with the blatant funding of fake environmentalist opponents(also funded from USA) to our energy needs, will allow National Interest to be invoked.
The pipe line to the west coast could become a national priority and screw the phoney opponents.
Harper seems a more consummate politician every year.
If the Canadian government would launch inquiries into the UN,IPCC non-science, activists inside government and foreign funding of kneecapping our economy.
One way to tell the Zero to take a jump, would be to investigate how Canada has wasted $ billions on a nonexistent problem, how did this IPCC nonsense get accepted as policy grade science?
Who failed to do their jobs? And why? Incompetence or malice?
Is the UN a force for good or evil from Canada’s perspective?
No One Should Defend Themselves, seems very UN to me.
When does gnawing at the foundation of our society, become treason?
Greece and now Germany have already experienced increases in environmentally damaging deforestation as citizens enter forests to cut trees for heating. Wood stove manufacturers and sellers in both countries are doing a booming business (sales up 100%). Austerity taxes, one-time fuel taxes and other tax increases are furthering the wood grabbing. Here in rural Ontario a great many already have wood stoves to supplement their furnaces… too bad, so sad, city folk don’t have seem to have the same opportunity… their loss!
Ahhhh the Law of Unintended Consequences!
If the Americans want a carbon tax, let THEM pay it. Otherwise they can shiver in the dark, for all I care.
If it includes the word tax Obama will love it. Sadly the CPC likely will as well. When is our “conservative” government going to cut some spending and balance the books?
30 K’s from where I sit is one of the top ten refineries in North America. It can refine anything and produce any product. They even make fuel for delicate California. It’s the Irving Refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. It needs a line from Montreal and a conversion from Alberta to Montreal. Voila, Canada keeps all the construction jobs in Canada, its oil is refined in Canada and sold as a final product from Canada and available to the world from a port open year round. Sounds like a win/win/win situation. I’m all for President Bark Ogabes block and blackmail.
It is essential that Mr. Harper fight falsehoods with the truth. The recent example of Chief Spence’s hunger strike comes to mind. When Canadians finally learnt that $80 million were spent without adequate documentation, the game was over for the Chief. Similarly Rob Ford won an election victory by continuously shining a light on the ongoing gravy train.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Once the people of Canada learn the impact to their monthly budgets of the Carbon Tax it will be a different ballgame.
Buying off BC is kind of moot as the north pacific tribes have been bought off by american trust fund ENGOs.
Read Vivian Krause for a good understanding of the millions of dollars paid to local Chiefs. Tides even supported an NDP trainee mayoral candidate in Vancouver, the same one blocking expansion of the existing Kinder-Morgan pipeline.
We also have a 5 cent /litre carbon tax here that goes directly into general revenues. Anyone still believe a Government will give up a rich new source of “sin taxes”?
You’re right, of course — that pipeline needs to be built as well, just as Conrad Black explains in his most recent column at NP.
I don’t see any of the three projects as substitutes to one another — all three pipelines (Keystone XL, Northern Gateway and east coast) are needed as instruments of national policy and wealth. Assuming Keystone XL gets approved, it’s probably quickest in service, followed by the east coast line, with Northern Gateway being the longest until in-service. Regardless, over and above your points and the one Black makes, the three projects present probably fifteen years or so of private-sector infrastructure investment and job creation.
To call it a ‘carbon’ tax is a joke and a fraud. Carbon is black and dirty like the other ingredient these people love to hate – tar.
What they really want to tax is carbon dioxide, but cannot come around to saying it because it is clean and harmless.
And since the dioxide portion is greater than the carbon portion, what they really end up taxing is oxygen.
I have been saying this for over four years, when Harper said that whatever the USA does on Climate Change/Global Warming, Canada will do the same.
The Canadian Government still has not said or suggested that Climate Change/Global Warming is a fraud. So far only two MP’s said that it was a false science …. until I hear the PM and EnviroMENTAL Minister say it is a myth and money grab, we will have a Carbon Tax.
Until then, I will still stand that Canada will have a form of Carbon tax like BC.
Sad that the PM does not stand up for the truth in this matter.
gordinkneehill on February 13, 2013 10:35 AM
You and Mr Southam are deluding yourselves. And there is no such thing as a Potemkin tax. It will be a tax and revenues will be collected. Saying that other taxes will be “adjusted” to compensate is a shell game that makes sense only to fools, liars and tax accountants. See: BC Carbon Tax. But all that aside, I will still NOT vote for ANY party or politician that is stupid enough to accept such a tax for whatever reason as doing so will inexorably lead to disaster both economically, politically and socially. See: Europe.
The BC Liberals apparently are going to axe the carbon tax in a desperate move to gain some favorable publicity. The CT here in BC is 6.8 cents/liter.
Companies don’t pay taxes, their customers do. We Conservatives have to lobby the hell out of the PM or we WILL be stuck with a federal carbon tax to appease the Bat-eared Kenyan.
The elites in Washington and Ottawa need to have a blast of icy water thrown in their faces,figuratively,by us peasants who are being taxed and fee’d to death. We’ve just had a huge increase in electricity rates in BC due to the installation of “smart” meters, my bill went from $75/month to $115/month.We can’t stand another tax,our bank accounts are not bottomless.
Maybe it’s time the rest of us jumped on the “occupy” bandwagon and held some demonstrations of our own.
The so-called leader of the failed American empire can’t tell Canada what to do about anything.
We already have a ‘carbon tax’, carbon is in almost everything we buy and we pay GST. The rest is nothing more than semantics.
This whole issue is nothing more than lame political posturing from a failed empire.
I don’t know what to tell ya’ll, in 4 more years Obama will have 15 million illegals legalized and we are gona be stuck with Democrats for a long long long time. ;-(
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I have a feeling we’re gonna get the green shaft whether we like it or not.
Stupid environazis.
Big Zero: “Harper – I’ll approve Keystone in return for you implementing a carbon tax in Canada”.
Harper: “Up yours Jughead, I’m selling the oil to China. Your move.”
End of story.
I have a feeling we’re gonna get the green shaft whether we like it or not.Stupid environazis.Posted by: Soccermom
In a democracy people get the government they deserve.
Don’t vote in leftards and you won’t get the ‘green shaft’.
I highly doubt that Prime Minister Harper will throw away all he has built like that, he is neither that liberal or that stupid.
“better a tax on the consumer then a tax on industry”
All taxes are a tax on the consumer. Liberals seem to harbor this fantasy wherein they can strategically target corporate profit margins. It’s further evidence of their basically static view of the world. They tinker with this thing and that thing, then seem genuinely astonished that it has produced some unintended consequence a few degrees removed.
As an American I welcome the prospect of Canadian oil. It’s such a no-brainer that the fact it hasn’t already had a champagne bottle broken over the last section of pipe is proof that present American leadership is not merely incompetent, but actively harming the country.
Canada would be wise to focus on the wider global market. America is finished, don’t waste your time or money here.
The day I hear PM Harper say “The science is not settled” is the day I will believe he will not implement some form of carbon tax …. I’m not sure he has the cojones to say hell no if Obama tries to force the issue. I haven’t heard that from him yet and it makes me uneasy.
There are many preceeding comments I agree with, so not to list my thanks, but mention conversation just completed with several American friends here in Florida.
Thank you for re-electing President Obama, this has provided all the impetus needed to overcome the damage PMPT did in the 1970’s by not supporting a complete pipeline from Western Canada to the East Coast and if B.C. gets it’s finger out of it’s $ear, to the West Coast.
Imagine if Canada had not loss self sustainment of oil needs over the last four decades the benefit this would have been. I find it difficult to think PMSH will succumb to providing black mail money to the creatures who have done everything possible to stick a large bill on the Canadian taxpayer to benefit this lot. Cheers;
Rather than tarring and feathering all Americans by lumping them together with that stranger and his thug pals lolling around in the Whitehouse; Canadians who value the limited Liberty we enjoy (we do not have a Constitution here to define our God Given Rights – we have PMSH), we should work with American Patriots and undermine the Oh! guy some Americans maybe voted for and to drop in their stupid Agenda21 tracks the nasty gals that some people in BC and Alta maybe voted for…. The American Patriots are in the same place we were when Turdo bulldozed the economy of Alta. with NEP. I was in Alberta in 1979/1980 – it was the scene of suicides, fury, desperation, sorrow – we are one election away from a National NEP should our ‘bami pals’ in the dipper/Liberano/blocista steal power at the Fed level. Canadians should gang up with like minded people in the USA to defeat the political thugs following the Agenda 21 playbook.
Our Prime Minister is up against all provincial Premiers except Brad Wall and all Territorial Premiers except Darrell Pasloski (Yukon) plus he has the Oh! stranger who took over in USA in full Leninistque mode to to battle. We are not helpless, we must help our PM in order to save ourselves.
SDA is and always has been, a great place to start. Ken (kulak) has stated the problem. I will do everything I can to help Canadian and American Patriots regain our God given rights and Freedoms before we allow divisive, evil, human haters to flush all that matters down the drain.
There are very few people to the right of me but I like the idea of a carbon tax. It is a consumption tax and that is the best kind of tax. Put on a carbon tax and cut income tax.
Obama can offer a carbon tax to the greenies all he wants, but it will never pass Congress, therefor Canada will not have one either.
The media in Canada are dreaming in technicolor.
Ken’s comment did not get pasted when I posted :
‘I agree with both robw and TrueNorthist. A carbon tax would also be a line in the sand for me. I am getting a little tired of progressives masquerading as conservatives.
Hayek warned about this creeping Marxist collectivism.’
Posted by: Ken (Kulak) replied to comment from robw on February 13, 2013 10:03 AM
“The Road to Serfdom” by Hayek, can be found and read, free of charge, at the Gutenberg Project:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c
“jug eared twit” that is good. My 89 years old mother refers to him as “Bugger lugs” has since day one.
Obama can be forgiven for his ego inflamed ignorance but Terence Corcoran should know better. Obama doesn’t have the votes in Congress to get a CT in place. What’s more we won’t have to put up with that ‘jug eared twit’ forever so in the meantime move the oil west, east and north. There are lots of customers we just have to figure out how to get the oil out to them.
Obama has demonstrated time and again that he isn’t particularly concerned about what Congress does or doesn’t. Once upon a time we called such politicians “dictators”.
Joe is entirely right here. Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass a CT in Congress. But there’s an even bigger element of bluff here.
Imagine for a moment that the US does put in place a CT and Canada does not. Suddenly, all US manufacturers all have much higher production costs for everything. If there’s no such CT in Canada, our costs of production shrink relative to theirs. Instead of flooding south, there’d be an increase in production in Canada by companies operating production plants in both.
Obama can’t allow that to happen of course, which means he has to bludgeon Canada into putting its own CT in place.
So it will be interesting to see if anyone in Ottawa is interested in calling the little weasel’s bluff.
I’m surprised at you — they already have.
We’ve got all sorts of leverage, because the oil can only be sold to Americans, right? Who else would buy Canadian oil.
/sarc – By the time Obama gets done with our economy, we’ll have plenty of oil for our domestic needs. Nobody will be able to afford a car.
Many commenters here seem to think this article is about a carbon tax in Canada. It’s not, it’s about a carbon tax in the US.
And, Kate’s wrong — we can’t wait four years. Alberta needs to get oil flowing now or they will be in bigger trouble then they already will be with the rise of shale oil and lower global oil prices (w/o doubt, this is coming). To get costs down, the Achilles heel of the oil sands, they need production as high as possible ahead of shale oil plays ramping production. Increased oil sands production NOW means a lot of sunk costs in assets in Alberta and less cost/barrel. Keystone desperately needs to get done ASAP.
While the BC KM pipe will get done, its volume will be a comparative pittance. Northern Gateway, good luck. Besides the environmental and the native issues, the other factor here is that BC thinks LNG will make them as big an energy superpower as Alberta — and they may be right.
*Note, I’m based in BC but quite dependent on the oil industry in my business. Hoping Keystone gets done, even with a carbon tax down there.
Sorry, my first point is wrong. Corcoran does suggest Canada will have to take a Carbon Tax — kind of speculative, IMO.
My other points stand.
Your first post is entirely correct and stands alone, IMO.
One of the things I found somewhat ironic and amusing about Corcoran’s column (not that he was misreporting or anything) was the positioning among the pro-Obama commentariat cited that Keystone XL would provide “cover” for other things — now there’s something completely different!
As to your second post, I’m guessing that Mr. Corcoran is as astounded as I am (and can’t quite believe his ears) that this thing could well sail right through — I completely forgive him — and you — for looking for boogeymen on this one, which we all have been conditioned to do.