Dion Advisor Confirms: Carbon Tax Risky for Economy

June 27, 2008

Liberals from coast-to-coast are continuing to trip over each other as they desperately look for new ways to trick Canadians into supporting Stéphane Dion’s permanent new tax on everything.

Already this week, MP Scott Brison, senior Dion advisor and co-author of the Liberal platform, was forced to confirm that special side deals were necessary to prevent a carbon tax from punishing vulnerable Canadian families. In doing so, Mr. Dion’s policy architect ended up debunking the myth that a carbon tax is, in any way, revenue neutral.

Now MP Garth Turner, Stéphane Dion’s communications guru, has added to Mr. Dion’s woes by writing an alarmist blog post predicting that higher gas prices would drive Canada to its economic doom.

“Oil at $130 and gas at $1.40 will have a serious effect on everything over the coming months. The new cost of energy saps cash flow and consumer confidence. It is a death knell to the sale of suburban houses on distant crescents and cul-de-sacs. It is killing off export, tourist, automotive and manufacturing jobs,” Mr. Turner wrote. ( http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2008/06/25)

Sadly, Mr. Dion’s communications guru apparently failed to pay attention to his own leader’s comments to members of the national media.

At a recent editorial board meeting Stéphane Dion was forced to finally admit that his permanent new carbon tax will end up punishing consumers at the gas pump.

“We know that they will pass on part of their costs to their consumers because they cannot eliminate the emissions overnight, with all the goodwill of the world. We know that." Mr. Dion said of the big oil and gas companies. (Ottawa Sun, June 26, 2008).

Garth Turner’s own leader has admitted that a carbon tax will drive gas and energy prices ever higher. Mr. Turner must therefore try and explain why he is trying to trick Canadians into paying a new tax that will, in his own words, “sap cash flow and consumer confidence,” provide a “death knell” to the sale of new homes and end up “killing off export, tourist, automotive and manufacturing jobs.”

When Mr. Dion’s own policy advisor is forced to debunk the myth that the Dion Tax Trick will be revenue neutral, and Mr. Dion’s own communications guru concedes that a carbon tax will lead to devastating economic consequences, you have to wonder: what was the Liberal brain trust thinking?

With allies like this, Mr. Dion doesn’t even need opponents. No wonder everybody sees through the Dion Tax Trick.

The Dion Tax Trick. Everybody sees through it.