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.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Canada's leading newsmagazine is panning northern Saskatchewan MP Rob Clarke over statements he made in The Reminder. Maclean's published a piece entitled 'The farce reaches Flin Flon' on its website Tuesday morning, referencing the MP Report that Clarke submitted to this newspaper the previous day. In the report, Clarke, a Conservative, slams the opposition NDP for proposing a 'carbon tax' he called 'crippling' and which would 'drastically raise heating and fuel prices for Canadians.' But in his piece, Maclean's journalist Aaron Wherry provides a link to one of his own earlier articles called 'A rough guide to the Conservatives' carbon tax farce.' In that article, Wherry explains that a price can be placed on carbon in one of two ways: a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. A carbon tax, he writes, involves directly taxing major emitters for carbon they release into the atmosphere. Cap-and-trade has the government limit how much carbon a company can release and then issue permits to exceed that limit, which companies then sell amongst each other. In its last two election platforms, Wherry notes, the NDP proposed cap-and-trade _ not a carbon tax. Leader Thomas Mulcair also advocated cap-and-trade when he took the helm of the party earlier this year. But Wherry says the Conservatives have also backed cap-and-trade 'repeatedly and over a number of years.' He writes that the Tories began opposing cap-and-trade during the 2011 election and have taken to calling cap-and-trade and a carbon tax 'the same thing' in attacking the NDP. Yet Wherry says the Conservative government to this day 'remains unwilling to definitively rule out pursuing cap-and-trade if the United States decides to pursue cap-and-trade.' He writes that there will be a cost to any government approach that cuts greenhouse gas emissions, including the one being implemented by the Tories. Wherry told The Reminder he discovered the MP Report when he searched for 'carbon tax' on Infomart, a website that monitors all forms of Canadian media. 'The farce reaches Flin Flon' will not appear in the Maclean's print edition, he said. Clarke has been MP of the Desneth_-Missinippi-Churchill River riding, which includes Creighton and Denare Beach, since 2008.
