Carbon tax meltdown: Dion increasingly isolated; consensus building around Layton's cap-and-trade plan

No one makes things more difficult on Stéphane Dion than Stéphane Dion.

Imagine this: a politician deciding to champion a proposal that will increase taxes, won’t cap pollution, will disproportionately impact the poor, is favoured by big polluters, has been a demonstrable failure in other countries, and upon which he has launched a scathing critique not 24 months ago. It would be a tall order for a popular politician – and an impossibility for someone lagging at 10 percent approval.

Clearly in a charitable mood in view of the unfolding train wreck, pollster Nik Nanos has some free advice for Stephane Dion – get help!

“For him to have a chance to succeed, he needs the third party validators to come forward and say that it is reasonable, that it is achievable, and that it is desirable. If he's just left out there by himself, it's going to be a very difficult sell”

So, in that same spirit of charity, Canada’s number one equine themed politics blog is offering to identify people who say a carbon tax is reasonable, achievable, and desirable. Let’s see:

How about presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton? No luck there. She agrees with Jack Layton on a cap-and-trade system.

What about Barack Obama? Not a chance. He slams carbon taxes and agrees with Jack Layton on a cap-and-trade system.

John McCain must agree with Dion. Nope. Even he agrees with Jack Layton on a cap-and-trade system.

What about US-based envitronmental groups like Environmental Defence? No luck there. They see cap and trade as the way forward, just like Jack Layton.

What about other Liberals like Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty? Forget about it. Even the brother of Dion’s environment critic has broken with Dion on carbon tax and agrees with Jack Layton on a cap-and-trade system.

North America is moving towards a consensus on the need for a cap-and-trade market on carbon. Why aren’t Dion’s Liberals?

More crass political gamesmanship, it would appear. Liberals have decided that the NDP already “owns” cap-and-trade and didn’t want to share it with them. Spoiling for a fight that might help their leader's lagging approval numbers, they have put all their eggs in the carbon tax basket because they know Harper is vehemently opposed to it. Too bad for them, there aren’t many people who think carbon tax is the answer.

Sorry Stéphane Dion. When it comes to a carbon tax, you are pretty much on your own.

Why didn’t the Liberals help the NDP get rid of Bernier weeks ago?

Astonishing to see Liberals bleating today over the long-awaited departure of foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier – when those very same Liberals helped Harper keep the Bungler from Beauce in cabinet that much longer.

Why it was over two weeks ago that the NDP’s Paul Dewar put precisely that motion in front of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee.

But while Liberals were happy to complain about Bernier, incredibly, they couldn't be counted on to vote for the NDP motion to actually get rid of him.

Ask Today’s Bob Rae to explain why he helped Harper keep Bernier on the world stage:

Hon. Bob Rae: Mr. Chair, I'm going to indicate to you my opposition to Mr. Dewar's motion, and I'll tell you why. I'm not interested in seeing this committee get paralyzed by a procedural matter. We know very well that we could use our majority in the committee to vote non-confidence in the minister. We also know what the impact of that would be on the business of the committee and the business of the House. I'm not interested in doing that.

While the NDP were packing Bernier’s bags, the Liberals were freshening his bed clothes. "Because without you, Maxime, we are nothing!"

Just more limp gamesmanship from Her Majesty’s Artificial Opposition.

Why did he jump …

… when he should have been pushed?

First there were his flights of fancy.

Then his speaking of the unspoken corruption in Kandahar.

Then the “Hey Dude, where’s my C-17” gaffe

Then the still unexplained leak of a confidental diplomatic brief that put Canada in the eye of the US presidential election.

It was to the point that there were so many straws, one could barely see the camel.

Yet Bernier was amazingly allowed to collect his remaining dignity in a teaspoon by resigning over a “how did that get there?” revelation of more misplaced documents (or were they ones we’ve already heard of? Good question.)

A Prime Minister worthy of trust would have ended this farce long ago.

This would at least bring a gracious end to what will likely enter text books as the Frat Boy Era in Canadian foreign policy ... were it not for this guy.

Imagine! Environmentalist calls Dion’s carbon tax “ridiculous”

Turns out you don't have to be a Liberal MP to know that Stephane Dion’s carbon tax plan - the plan that puts the rest of us on the tab for a “polluters right to pollute" - is the worst idea to come out of Ottawa since the garlic Beaver Tail.

A host of critics (including Dion) are already on record saying Dion's carbon tax would push people into poverty. Now more environmentalists are saying it's a bad idea.

A spokesperson for New Brunswick’s leading environmental group has taken dead aim at Dion’s pledge that his carbon tax would be "revenue neutral". Then what's the point? asks David Coon:

But David Coon, policy director of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, says a "revenue neutral" carbon tax will not help the environment or reduce carbon emissions.

He says the only way a carbon tax can have a positive effect on the environment is if the resulting revenues are invested into environmental initiatives like renewable energy sources, construction efficiency programs, and public transportation.

"Neutrality is ridiculous. The point is that if you want to do something, we actually need to make some investments in things like converting our energy system over to one that is more environmentally sustainable."

A truly revenue-neutral tax could not theoretically accomplish any of those goals because government would not be accumulating any new revenues, said Coon.

He ridicules the idea that a carbon tax could somehow reduce energy consumption but won't be accomplished by skyrocketing gas and energy prices.

"If the expectation is that somehow that tax by itself is going to have any impact whatsoever on households, it will not. It will not have one bit of impact on households' consumption of energy," he said, noting that Efficiency New Brunswick's programs are already running on all cylinders.

Coon's is a good point. If Dion’s plan means taxing you more for home heating and gasoline, only to pump that same amount of money back into tax cuts, precisely where on earth is the money going to come from if we are ever going to retrofit homes or build new transit? Municpal property taxes? Thin air?

Dion used to agree with Jack Layton and the NDP that a cap-and-trade carbon market where big polluters pay for the right to pollute was the right way to go. Now Dion is in favour of the same carbon tax scheme he opposed less than two years ago!

They don’t mind punishing the poor and they don’t know where the money will come from. The half-baked ideas they used to deride, they are now the champions of.

The Liberals are just making it up as they go along. Imagine.

The political rehabilitation of John Turner continues apace

It’s bad enough when they are comparing you to the least successful leader in your party’s history. It’s something worse when you come out unfavourably.

Another bad poll for Her Majesty’s Artificial Opposition from Angus Reid today.

For the Cons and New Democrats, the global numbers are too close to 2006 election results to be notable, but for the Liberals, 27 percent puts them three points down from the drubbing they got in 2006 and even one percentage point below their disastrous result in the 1984 election.

Add to this that a monumental 90 percent of Canadians now do not approve of his performance, and you find Dion being compared in the Toronto Star to John Turner -- the Liberal captain through their worst years.

“Not since former Liberal leader John Turner bottomed out with a 14 per cent approval rating shortly after losing the 1988 election have things been so bad for the head of Canada's most successful political party. Just 10 per cent of those surveyed stand behind Dion's leadership, the poll shows, compared to 32 per cent for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

What's worse is that the number of people who said they were unsure about Dion's performance has dropped from 46 per cent at the end of last summer to 30 per cent this month, meaning that Canadians are making up their minds about a leader who has had difficulties rallying his party behind him as well as communicating his party's positions to potential voters.”

The second paragraph really is the kicker: people who were heretofore undecided about Dion have moved to the decided column to join the swelling ranks of those who disapprove of the flip-flops, the abstaining and the insincere haranguing of a government Liberals dare not defeat.

What can’t be helping any of this is the latest political disaster of Dion now saying he wants to force on Canadians a regressive carbon tax that will hurt the poor and which he called “bad policy” not even two years ago.

Ken Boshcoff’s Ti Quan-DOH!!

Along with helping keep Harper comfortably ensconced in 24 Sussex as long as possible, another side effect of Liberal MPs abstaining on vote after vote appears to be that they have completely forgotten what they are supposed to do when the Speaker calls on them.

Harper cries havoc and lets slip the typos of war

Secret agenda? Pffthh. It's no secret.

“The Government of Canada delivers support to combat homeless in Québec City”

One can already imagine the slavish flourish of Tory speech writers: “We shall fight them at the soup kitchens. We shall fight them on the subway grates …”