kEiThZ
Superstar
To be fair, the Liberals polled 49% in the last majority election from what I remember.
Wrong. Never more than 42% in the last 20 years.
To be fair, the Liberals polled 49% in the last majority election from what I remember.
Fair enough. Does not prove the point though about the Liberals having a strong national mandate. The Conservatives garnered 36% of the vote in 2006 and the Liberals about the same in 2004. Likewise, this would also challenge your assertion that the Conservatives didn't have a right to implement their agenda because they got 36% of the vote of 60% of eligible voters.....no different than the Liberals in 2004. You wouldn't argue that the Liberals had no right to implement their agenda because they did not get a strong plurality, would you? That's the nature of our first-past-the post system where a few percentage points translates into a large swing in the number of seats.
By 2006, government's take of the economy was 39.5%, a decrease of 13.8%, and is now less than the G7 average of 40.4%. It is also only 3.1% higher than the size of the U. S. government relative to its economy, which today stands at 36.4%. Back in 1992, government in Canada was 14.8% larger than government in the U. S. (The spread between all government revenues remains higher at 6.2% because Canada is running surpluses and the U. S. funds spending with massive budget deficits.)
Opposition leader Stephane Dion calls his plan revenue-neutral because "every dollar raised by the carbon tax will be returned to Canadians in tax cuts." But this is not accurate. A revenue-neutral tax plan matches a tax hike with a dollar for dollar reduction in other tax rates.
Mr. Dion will instead levy a $15-billion carbon tax on traditional energy sources. The revenue will be used to lower personal and business income taxes by $9.5-billion. Low-income families will receive payments totaling $4.5-billion and the remaining $1-billion spent on research and development. In other words, for every $2 in income tax relief there will be $3 in additional taxes and another $1 in spending. This plan will grow the size of government, drain more resources from the economy and make middle-class families poorer.
So what about the governing party? Unlike the Grits, they have yet to release a platform. The Conservatives' first campaign promise was a small, but agreeable $600-million reduction to the federal tax on diesel. Whatever else they offer on the campaign trail many taxpayers will evaluate the Conservatives on their tax and spending record. That review is decisively mixed.
The government reserved his boldest policy with a 32% cut to the corporate tax. The rate will tumble to 15% in 2012, down from 22.12% in 2007. The reduction will help Canada's competitive position and help ensure more good jobs are created here.
While in office, Mr. Martin grew Ottawa by 14% over two years. The first two Conservative budgets increased the size of the federal government by 14.8%. This makes the Conservatives even bigger spenders. While the 2008 budget promised to moderate spending growth to 3.4% this fiscal year, it seems bribing voters with their own money remains a higher calling. The department of finance reported last month that expenditure receipts swelled an eye-popping 8.4% in the first three months of the year. This is two-and-a-half times the 2008 budget plan.
For that to happen Ottawa will need to control expenditures and cut personal income taxes, which remain the highest of all G7 nations.
Climate change policy and the Conservative-NDP Axis of Dimwits
For reasons I'm going to explain shortly, the Conservatives and the NDP are unlikely allies in the debate on climate change policy. I'll be ripping into the idiocy of their positions pretty hard, so in order to balance what follows, I'm going to make a separate point as a sort of disclaimer. For more than a decade, the Liberal position was one of rank hypocrisy: sign the Kyoto Accord, scold people who questioned the wisdom of signing the Kyoto Accord, do absolutely nothing the meet the terms of the Kyoto Accord, and - after the 2006 election - harshly criticise the Conservative government for not being able to defuse the noxious stink-bomb that the Kyoto Accord had become. Right now, the Liberals have the most sensible climate change policy of the three major parties, but their record on this file up until the past few months is nothing at all to be proud of.
There are several levels at which this debate plays out:
1. The first-order question about the relative merits of a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade model isn't really much of a debate at all: as I've explained in the Econ 101 version of the problem, the two approaches are basically equivalent. In both systems, there will be higher prices for activities that generate greenhouse gases, and in both systems, quantities will be reduced.
2. The next issue is how to handle the redistributive effects of these higher prices. It's pretty clear that low-income households will be hit (relatively) harder by the increase in the prices of such basic goods as gasoline, natural gas, heating oil and electricity. The more concerned you are with income inequality, the harder you will argue the case for using the revenues generated - either from the carbon tax or the sale of emission permits - to offset the hardships that climate change policy will impose on low-income households.
3. Adding uncertainty to the Econ 101 model provides another source of genuine debate. If we don't know for certain just how sensitive demand is to changes in prices, then a case can be made for preferring one policy over the other. If you're less concerned about the effects on prices, then a cap-and-trade system will provide an assurance that the target for quantities will be met. If you're more concerned about the economic disruption associated with uncertainties about prices, then a carbon tax would provide more certainty on that front.
If the debate on climate change policy revolved around those last two points - that is, around differences of opinion on the importance of inequality and on whether or not we wanted to live with uncertainty about prices or about levels of emissions - then I would be proud to be living in a country where grown-ups discussed important issues in a sensible manner.
But I don't. And the reason why I don't is that significant elements in the electoral bases of both the Conservatives and the NDP have certain knee-jerk reactions that make it almost impossible to conduct a sensible dialogue:
* Those who have a visceral hatred of taxes will reject the carbon tax model, simply because the word 'tax' appears in it.
* Those who have a visceral hatred of corporations will jump at the chance of imposing caps as a way of 'Sticking It to The Man'.
Now, everyone has their irrational biases and blind spots: Liberal supporters have a tendency to be unable to recognise hypocrisy. But the problem here is that the Conservatives and the NDP are not even able to get to the point where they understand point 1) above, let alone engage in a serious discussion of points 2) and 3).
It's important to understand just how goofy the Conservative and NDP positions are. Both of them seem to think that their preferred variation of the cap-and-trade model will not inconvenience consumers, for really no better reason than the fact that they cannot - or will not - understand the basic economics of climate change policy.
The final $1 billion is something I'm less pleased with, but isn't quite so bad as it sounds. It will largely be dedicated to tax incentives and rebates on capital expenditure for farmers, fisheries, forestry and transportation. It seems like it was a bone they had to throw to the usual rent-seekers and for some of the more command-and-control lefties for whom this plan might seem too right-wing.
Puzzling. The Conservatives have committed to installing a cap-and-trade system that would force emissions reductions of 20% from 2006 levels by 2020. If they are sincere about this policy, I think it has the potential to cause more economic disruption than the carbon tax. Such a plan would likely see highly volatile prices for emissions credits...
This is probably my favourite policy of the Conservative government. I am pleased the Liberals pledged to adhere to it as well.
Yet given the political discourse in this country, you'd hardly know it.
"A 12 year time frame to achieve that much of a reduction is not overly steep I would think. If the Green Shift promise that gradual a reduction, I'd be sold. Other than the issue of implementation, I am concerned by the lack of projected data on how much the Green Shift will actually reduce GHGs."
See, this is what I don't understand: as Stephen aptly explained in his blog, people who want a predictable effect on the economy tend to prefer carbon taxes while those who are more concerned with meeting hard caps prefer cap and trade. I think you may be underestimating how disruptive a hard cap would be in terms of predictability of costs in the economy. Fossil fuel consumption is pretty inelastic in the scale of a couple months, so there is potential for enormous spikes in prices during periods of economic expansion (think prices for hydro on hot summer days, when the marginal cost is in dollars per kWh, not cents). Unpredictable prices also make it hard to create offsets for low income Canadians that are fair and reasonable.
Don't let BrandonTO416 catch you saying that.... I wish Canadians got out more.... then they would understand how tough the outside world is. We'll have to compete with the likes of China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, the UAE, Ireland, etc. in this new era of freer trade. Lowering corporate tax rates should be priority 1 so that we can keep the jobs in Canada.
He ignores the plight of cities and most of Eastern Canada in fact. He kisses Quebec's ass because without it, he wouldn't get elected.
Harper would try to form government but the coalition on the Left would defeat it and form a majority government itself. We could get some exciting politics in Canada... finally.
^ How about if the Liberals + NDP have more seats than the Conservatives? Wouldn't that allow the coalition an attempt to form government?