You have quite a few facts wrong.

The Green Shift would be implemented over four years, with the tax ramping up gradually, $10/tonne per year, ending at $40/tonne.

The Dion Green Shift tax cuts are across the board, and includes a corporate tax cut. There are tax credits for low incomes families with children, and for corporations which R&D emissions reducing technologies. Corporations can also write down emissions-reduction equipment faster.

Taxing carbon has to happen, and every political party has one plan or another for doing so. Harper himself has a carbon trading system announced this past March for which they are being written up as we speak. There are no tax cuts related to it, and it will also be passed down to the consumer. It targets a 20% reduction by 2020, same as the Green Shift.

Global warming is real, and we have to start doing something about it. We are already paying the costs of inaction.

I hope most Canadians are smart enough to realize this.

Corps will avoid the tax by reducing emissions. This will allow them to pay less tax, increasing profits.

This will not trash Canada’s economy. it’s really just about $15 billion being added to the wholesale cost of some products via a tax, and then that tax money being distributed to consumers (mostly — there’s a corporate tax cut) to keep the cost borne by the corporation. This creates an impetuous by the corps to find ways to reduce that cost. Swinging $15 billion around in a $1 trillion economy will not ruin Canada.

This has been done in other countries with success before, Sweden did it during an economic downturn, with success.

Stephen Harper’s plan is to introduce carbon trading, which will increase corps’ costs, and will not lessen the impact on consumers. Carbon will be necessary soon enough, and is in the Liberal’s policy book, but it is a laugh to see Harper essentially claiming that his own plan is “crazy.”

The extra that’s generated here won’t be coming from average Albertans, unless they drive 40 per cent more than everyone else. It will come from polluting corporations, owned by stockholders across Canada and the U.S. So it’s hard to argue average Albertans will be more out of pocket. And should these corporations, despite their own tax cuts, chose to pass costs on, it will be passed on to customers across the country, not just Albertans. So the criticisms seem to ring hollow.

Keep in mind, though, that the tax shift exempts exports. As most of the oil from AB is exported, it’s not clear how much AB will be affected.

See http://tinyurl.com/5c4ukl for more.