OK...I've just had the chance to listen to the interview between Mr.Gormley
and (Liberal MP) Ken Boshcoff about this "Green Shift" program. Wow...
The term "revenue neutral" is tossed out often, and I'm assuming it means
"revenue neutral" to the Federal government if the Liberals come into power.
For all of the tax collection, tax cuts, child benefit pay outs, and so on and
so forth...an estimate of a percentage of this 15.4 BILLION collected to be
used to administer this monstrosity to keep it "revenue neutral" to the Federal
government never seems to be mentioned. Lets assume 25% for the sake of
some grade school level math (I am not an Economist by any means).
15.40 billion collected in this tax (6 billion plus from Alberta & Saskatchewan)
- 3.85 billion in administration of this tax plan (assuming 25% collected)
- 9.00 billion in tax cuts
- 2.90 billion in a child tax benefit
= -0.35 billion to improve the environment, new investment in green technologies
So....where's the "green" part of this "Green Shift" plan suppose to come from?
Factoring in administration (again assuming 25% & yes I know what happens
when one ass/u/me's), the 3 billion that might have been left for the green part
of this tax grab becomes a NEGATIVE 1/3 billion dollars. How's my math???

The global warming theme is being used, and abused, by its most vociferous proponents to push a certain outdated and failed ideology: socialism/communism in its most extreme form. Disguised as arguments in favour of the environment, the messages coming from global warming gurus are nothing more than attempts to turn the world towards this failed ideology, without arousing any suspicion among the masses that this is what's been happening.

Socialists/communists have had to find a way to spread their gospel through the backdoor, as it were, because their ideology has been disgraced and defunct ever since the collapse of communist Europe. But they can't help themselves. They still cling to the flawed notion that wealth must be redistributed – like Robin Hood taking from the rich to give to the poor. What they fail to realize, though, is that no redistribution of wealth has ever resulted in a more egalitarian society. Quite the opposite is true. One only needs to look at the conditions in which people lived before Communism came crashing down across Eastern Europe: there was a tiny group of the privileged and filthy rich (the ruling communist elites), and the masses were kept dirt poor, uneducated and, essentially, left to die or kill each other. In a nutshell, the Gini coefficient in communist/socialist regimes is invariably near or at one.

There is no denying that taxing the rich at higher rates is not wrong, provided it remains within reason. Setting such rates isn't easy, because move them up a tad too high, and the incentive to generate wealth – and jobs – could disappear as quickly as former prime minister Paul Martin vanished from public view after losing the 2006 election.

Another crucial aspect is that simply handing the rich people's money to the poor is only a band-aid solution and will help them only for the short term. Instead, the poor must be given the tools to help themselves in a sustainable manner – through education, for example. Only if the poor and marginalized are empowered to help themselves and take responsibility for their own lives can they even begin to hope for lasting changes for the better.

The redistributors of wealth, however, don't understand this simple truth in life and thus wreck any economy and society they come in contact with. The disastrous effect becomes even worse when it is moved outside the boundaries of a limited group of people and applied to entire regions and countries. Canada's equalization payments come to mind in this context, or the European Union's transfer payments. Richer regions, or countries, are bled dry, while the lucky recipients of such largesse, for which they have not had to lift a single finger, accept the wealth thus showered upon them. As it is plain to see in both Canada and the EU, the end result is a hodgepodge of sorts where productivity suffers and everyone is dragged down to the same low level of living standards and income.

West Germany is grappling with the effects of its reunification with East Germany to this day. While the East was propped up quite considerably, primarily through the misguided one-to-one conversion of East Germany's currency, the West suffered tremendous economic and social harm, from which it still has not fully recovered yet. The East's standard of living has gone up from its former communist incarnation, but the West's standard is now generally lower than it was before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead of having one country with an extremely strong, healthy and prosperous West, and a gradually improving East, there is now one country that is sickly and ailing from East to West and, in total, much weaker than it could or should have been. Across Europe, the same pattern has been repeated with the intake of new member countries in Eastern Europe.

That the global warming movement has been taken over by socialists/communists as a way to reintroduce their failed and flawed ideology in the West, without anyone noticing, has been demonstrated again by the recent "Green Shift saga". Liberal leader Stéphane Dion presented his Green Shift plan to the Canadian public. He sold it as a carbon tax with matching cuts to income taxes, but even many environmentalists were not fooled by this. They, too, noticed right from the start that Mr. Dion's carbon-tax plan did not produce any verifiable environmental benefits. Instead, the program soon became known as the Green Shaft, or the next cash-grab for which Liberals have been known for ages.

Ken Boshcoff, himself a Liberal member of Parliament, wrote an article that confirms that the Green Shift program is only about the redistribution of wealth and that the environment itself doesn't figure in it all. In fact, Mr. Boshcoff calls it the "most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years". Nowhere does he mention emissions or global warming. Worse still, in follow-up interviews Mr. Boshcoff defends his views indulging in the usual language typical of old commies and socialists ("As the (economic) tide rises, all ships should sail higher").

Mr. Dion must be quite "pleased" with the performance of his caucus: first, Garth Turner torpedoes his attempts at getting Western Canadians to listen, stoking sentiments of Western separatism in the process, and now another MP reveals the ugly – socialist/communist – truth behind the Green Shift plan.

What this sorry episode illustrates too is that the movement has managed to plant its socialists/communists right smack in the middle of mainstream political parties, such as the Liberal Party. What a perfect cover. No one would suspect a Liberal of being a communist. Then again, the time when Liberal still meant "sort-of Conservative" in Canada has long passed. Today, the party is liberal in name only. And if the current leader is anything to go by, it is gradually turning into a Marxist party (Karl Marx has been Mr. Dion's favourite subject of scholarly research throughout his entire academic career).

The objections raised to this approach are not based on some antipathy to communism/socialism, but on the fact that this flawed ideology has failed whenever and wherever it has been applied in the past, invariably leaving a wasteland in its wake. It must therefore be rejected as wrong. It also discredits any legitimate concerns that stem from the debate on climate change.

Socialism/communism is an "ideology of convenience", used by those who don't want to work while enjoying the fruits of other people's hard labour. One would think that our civilization had evolved beyond such base and corrupt thinking, but, sadly, Mr. Dion has proved us wrong.

The Green Shift has absolutely nothing to do with the environment. The "Green" is used to refer to money, and we all know where Dion intends to shift it. Maybe Murray Wood should have listened to this interview before he went and spouted his tripe on the "equalization" rant that he can't seem to get over.

Frank in Saskatoon

I'm still waiting for the Libranos to return the money they stole from taxpayers during the Sponsorship Scandal. This new tax grab will mean higher prices for everything. Only an idiot would support such nonsense.

I'm not even going to try to get into the math of either Dion's or Boschoff's statements, because trying to follow Liberal economic theory is probably a cause of anuerisms, and certainly a cause of migraines. Actually I'm getting a headache just trying to follow some of the generic, non-costed logic of their arguments.
First off, he tried saying there would have been benefits to the environment from new technology had the oil refineries actually been built. So he would tax the snot out of these refineries, then give back a pittance to improve efficiency, then tax them some more. Anybody want to guess why they weren't built? The Liberals aren't even close to power and they're already putting thousands of Canadians out of work. Ironically, in Ontario no less.
Second, he seems to think that tax credits is a more efficient method of encouraging r&d than normal economics. In other words, tax industry punitively then give a small percentage back to "foster" research, as opposed to not taxing as heavily and let them fund it from their profits, which is what they do as a means to increase their profits. (This is typical Liberal thinking, we, the unwashed, are unable to maintain our own hygiene without their help.)
I could continue, but I need to find the Tylenol.

Diesel fuel produces less C02 per mile than gasoline.
If the whole point of this plan is to change behavior by changing tax rates, then increasing the tax on diesel while not increasing the tax on gasoline will result in increased C02 emissions, not less.
Now this might not be relevant, but oddly enough the liberal voting east uses proportionately less diesel and more gasoline than the non liberal voting West.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm.