I caught this story over at Steve’s place last night about Liberal leader Stephane Dion talking to BC Premier Gordon Campbell about harmonizing the 2 carbon taxes in order to make sure they work together and don’t overlap.

I would also not be surprised if there wasn’t talk of harmonizing on another matter - that being to both BC and the federal Liberals to respond equally forcefully on attacks the federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper will lead on Dion’s “Green Shift”. Remember, when Campbell brought his version of a carbon tax in - John Baird made a statement saying more or less claiming that BC’s approach complimented the federal Conservatives approach; not a word about Westerners or BC’ers “screwing Canada” or how insane a policy this carbon tax was. That of course has changed now that the federal Official Opposition has proposed something almost exactly similar.

Combine that with the news that the Cons. are prepared to spend big money ads all summer attacking the Green Shift - a large portion of that in BC - and you can see why Premier Campbell would feel that an attack on the federal Liberals Green shift plan is also an attack on his plan. So, it makes sense politically for him to come to the federal Liberals defense in counterattacking publicly this continued campaign of fear and smear. Keep an eye out for that this summer.

With regards to the Green Shift, it’s interesting to me that there are some folks out there who describe this Green Shift plan the Liberals are advocating as the work of Marxists, all designed to enslave Western Canada and enrich the East, while paradoxically, Andrew Coyne, that famous socialist columnist at Macleans, describes the current state of affairs - at least with regards to environmental policy - as the Liberals becoming like the Conservatives and the Conservatives turning into the 1970’s version of the NDP:

This is simply extraordinary. Where the Liberals talk of using price signals and harnessing market forces, the Tories now boast of their commitment to top-down, command-and-control regulations. It’s all prohibit this and require that, as opposed to the Liberals, who would — gasp! — allow companies to pay more to pollute! The importance of this shift cannot be overstated. For fifty years or more, conservatives have preached that taxes affect people’s behaviour, that incentives matter, that “if you tax something, you get less of it.” But now, suddenly, they don’t matter — not when compared to the miracle of regulation. For fifty years or more, conservatives have also said that prices are the vital signalling device of a market economy, informing consumers, workers, investors and businesses as to the costs of different choices. But now, suddenly, they’re irrelevant. Subsidies — sorry, investments — are the new Tory orthodoxy.

Some other prominent people (and apparently socialist/Marxist folks, if they support this, if I were to believe the label some conservative and libertarian bloggers are painting on anyone who advocates this) that have commented on this include the President of the economic think-tank CD Howe Institute, who rejects the notion that the Green Shift is “NEP II” as some westerners claim; or how about that Trotskyite Tom D’Acquino, president of the radical left-wing group, The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, who has been on record before as supporting a carbon tax, and if you read between the lines, prefers the Liberal Green Shift plan to the Conservatives current facade of a plan on the environment.

So I guess that means either there are a lot more socialists out there in Canada then people think, or more likely, some people just don’t know what they’re talking about when they accuse Dion and the Federal Liberals of being socialists, and the Green Shift as being Marxist orthodoxy, when it’s using the very “market forces” that conservatives and libertarians so often cry is the best way to solve problems. In this case, that rule flies out the window, and the tactics of fear and smear are being used to try to convince the unsuspecting populace that this is just a trojan horse of a plan designed to instill environmental Marxism on us all. Fortunately, I don’t think a good majority of Canadians are going to believe that fear and smear stuff.

We now see the new strategy that will be employed by Harper and his Cons. crew in trying to defend their Green plan which has been derided for its very modest levels of GHG reduction and the ability of it to even meet those modest targets because of the intensity model it uses.

In short, it’s this: You might think our plan is inadequate, but even then, it’s going to hurt the Canadian economy next year. If we put actual caps or targets on ourselves and try to meet the cuts generally agreed upon that are required to slow or stop global warming, we’d cause a full-scale meltdown of the Canadian economy. So, the Harper government has switched or attempted to switch to fear mongering mode to get Canadians to stop this obsession with the environment.

This is a great opportunity for Stephane Dion and the Liberals to throw all that “not a leader” attack ads stuff by the Cons right back at them and in Harper’s face over the environment, because he’s certainly not leading Canada on the environmental file. He would rather cower and hide and try to scare Canadians away from being concerned over it.

For instance, why reduce the GST, which is universally panned, and instead turn that 1% reduction into a carbon tax, and use the funds from that to fund Green technologies? Canadians would be more then willing to accept that, I believe. Harper won’t do that, of course, but it’s stuff like this that Dion and the Liberals can advocate to show what they would do to get Canada back on track in the world.

Three cases of that statement that caught my eye this evening.

First, Harper’s statements on climate change and declaring that Kyoto was ” a mistake” earned him a unanimous disassociation of that statement in the Quebec legislature by all 3 parties. Regardless of what Chantal Hebert opines, I believe Dion should be hammering on that issue everywhere, but particularly in Quebec come next election.

Secondly, and on a related note, the UN issues about as unsubtle a diplomatic rebuke as you can do with regards to Harper and Canada’s position on Climate Change.

Thirdly, the decision by the NDP and Jack Layton to support the Cons. motion on prohibiting veiled voters from casting ballots has enraged traditional NDP supporting bloggers, and unaffiliated blogs on the progressive left who are normally sympathetic to the NDP today, although with the NDP’s view on blogging regarding it as  the black sheep of the family, one wonders what if any effect it will have, or if anyone in NDP HQ even notices the discomfiture this has caused amongst their normally very loyal supporters.

Liberal and Con. blogs and the netroots for those parties may have no more influence on their respective parties, but we do know they get read up on the Hill by the MP’s and staffers. I’m not sure the same can be said of the NDP MP’s and staffers for the NDP bloggers, whose party seems to treat the venue and those who use it as pariahs. Perhaps the better way to get their attention is to get the media notice their rumblings, like say, Kady O’Mally, who wrote today wondering who exactly came up with this strategy to vote for this in the NDP backroom. People like her and others in the media could make a few NDP’ers rather uncomfortable when its pointed out to them that their netroots/grassroots supporters aren’t too happy about this.

And I support their stance, by the way. How can we have a problem with MAYBE a few hundred veiled voters, when we have thousands of Canadians sending in absentee mail-in ballots who apparently are just fine and dandy and we have no problem trusting who they are? The appearance of fearmongering against Muslims is way too obvious here.