The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Prime Minister Stephen HarperÕs Conservatives have managed to exploit the vagueness of Liberal Leader Stphane DionÕs proposed carbon tax with attack ads that would have Canadians believe Dion wants to impoverish them with a new Òtax on everything.Ó Effective as they may be in scaring voters, the ads are a lousy substitute for a national debate on the efficacy of DionÕs plan for combatting climate change Ð an issue Canadians care deeply about. But that debate wonÕt happen until Dion lays out a detailed plan. So far all he has offered Canadians is an appealing rationale for shifting taxes away from income toward carbon, the source of global warming. That is a sound generalization for marrying CanadaÕs economic and environmental goals, but it hardly constitutes a plan that gives Canadians a clear sense of what the tax shift would mean to them. Dion needs to tell us how high his carbon tax would be initially, and how quickly it would rise. On the other side of the coin, his plan has to spell out what form the offsets would take. How, for example, would the income tax savings be split between personal and corporate taxes, and how would they be distributed among families at different income levels? How would the plan protect low-income Canadians who pay little or no income tax, and would that protection treat urban residents the same as rural Canadians who must rely more heavily on their cars? Then thereÕs the question of how a carbon tax would be levied. Would it be collected from fossil fuel producers or from the final user who actually burns the fuel? And what about the question of whether imports ought to be taxed. What is to be gained by taxing the carbon used in the production of Canadian-made goods Ð the ultimate purpose of which is to raise the price of those goods Ð if the tax doesnÕt also apply to, say, low-priced goods from China, which probably have a higher carbon content than comparable Canadian-made goods? Until Dion answers all of these questions, Canadians will have no way of knowing what his tax shift means for them or the prospects for reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions. Dion needs to flesh out his plan quickly because his vagueness only invites ridicule from opponents, not the healthy, productive debate voters need.
