Thursday, January 14, 2010

Quebec,"the dumbest jurisdiction on the continent"

Peter Foster on the race to wreck the auto industry and the economy:

The Quebec government is this week to impose its own automobile emissions standards. It will thus leap past bankrupt California in the race for the title of the dumbest jurisdiction on the continent.

... the move ... will impose penalties of $5,000 per car on large manufacturers for new vehicles not meeting the required standards. It will also thus inevitably punish Quebec car buyers and auto dealers.

... Premier Jean Charest already embarrassed both himself and Canada by turning up at last month’s Copenhagen fiasco to harass Prime Minister Stephen Harper over climate policy. Mr. Charest thinks Mr. Harper should be doing more to cripple the Canadian economy with pointless environmental gestures.

... Before he was given the heave-ho last year, GM CEO Fritz Henderson suggested that the Volt was a “game-changer.” It is ... only the game is economic Russian roulette, and the Volt changes the game by putting more bullets in the chambers. Quebec meanwhile badly wants to rock down to Electric Avenue, and, in the words of the song, “take it higher.”

Assuming that “it” is unemployment.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was a sales manager for Ford for 10 years up til 2000.

Canada represents roughly 6% of the North American market, so you can figure out from there that Quebec represents less than 1%.

Major auto manufacturers will not waste a lot of time fretting about 1% of the market in N.A...if any at all.

So, basically the price of lot of vehicles will go up $5000 in Quebec.

Which could be enough to crush smaller dealerships and toss a lot of good people out of jobs.

Brilliant, eh?

And so typical of the Liberal mindset.

Anonymous said...

Quebec wont be happy about this either then-
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100114/senate_reform_100114/20100114?hub=QPeriod

Joshua

Canada Goose said...

As I have mentioned on another blog, Quebeckers typically have smaller cars because we are poorer than Ontarians for instance. We also have a lot of clunkers on the road. Charest knows this so he doesn't care as long as he covers himself once again with the green mantle.

Anonymous said...

I sincerely hope that the automakers will tell Mr. Charest to stuff it. The car companies are in trouble as it is, and loading them down with more ridiculous regulations further threatens their long-term viability. In a very polite manner they can explain to the Quebec socialists that, in the interests of their stockholders, they cannot take on any more requirements that would increase their costs and reduce their profitability. As a taxpayer, and therefore a stock holder in GM & Chrysler, I do not want my investment jeopardized just because some puffed-up little politician thinks he he carries some weight on the international stage.

gimbol said...

Charet has benefited for years by the fact that a real conservaitve alternative does not exist in Quebec provincial politics.
Voters there see him as the federal PC that jumped ship to the provincial liberal party, thereby giving them moral cover by thinking he's only liberal in name only and he's one of us.
Sadly, in his eagerness to pander to the elites and play the anti-Ottawa card now and then, he's become nothing but the fair weather federalist clown.
Let me guess, his next move will be to ask Ottawa to bail out the suffering manufacturing sector in Quebec because its doing more than any othe rprovince about climate change.
The proper response to Chubby the Clown is to laugh at him and tell him to stop whining about making his province a permanent ward of Canada.

Anonymous said...

The problem is Quebec stupidity flows westward...to Ottawa. Expect the Liberals and the NDP to be proposing similar "NATIONAL" standards for auto emissions.

tao_taier said...

What a wrecking ball of a policy and an needless economic drag to boot.

Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

I doubt this will hurt auto manufacturers much. Expect to see small cars and less of them on the roads of Quebec. The North American automakers do have small cars so they are still in the market. (real conservative)

Canada Goose said...

Actually there is a small government party in Quebec, the A.D.Q. But unfortunately the popular Mario Dumont (he has his own news talk show on t.v. now) stepped down after his party lost seats in the last election. This was mainly because Charest hid the losses of the Caisse de Dépôt et de Placement (Quebec pension fund) and said that Dumont was just scaring seniors. Charest got a majority.

The A.D.Q. then had an leadership election which was won by two votes (one of which was a joke by a t.v. personality). The winner Gilles Taillon refused to take on the second-run Eric Caire in a major role so the latter decided to resign from the party, along with another M.N.A.
Since then the party has a new leader, but he has quite an uphill struggle given how Taillon did everything to destroy the party before he left (accusing the party of financial irregularities).

JR said...

Granted, Quebec alone is a small part of the N.A. economy so this particular policy idiocy will only hurt Quebecers, and all for zero tangible effect on the environment which, presumably, is what it's for.

But the race to wreck the auto industry isn't just in Quebec. It's in California and, worse, Washington.

Anonymous said...

Gimbol has it right...

Charest does not care what happens to the few auto-dealers and their employees, he does not care what this does to the Quebec economy! Rather, if the Quebec economy gets worse, the Quebec government gets more money!

Why?

Because Quebec politicians have, for longer than I've been alive, been implementing policies which are really, really destructive to the Quebec economy, knowing full well that the rest of Canada will pick up their bills and, if their economy goes down, we'll just send them bigger 'transfer payments'!

Already, Quebec receives thousands of dollars more for EACH Quebec resident from the Federal government than they pay in taxes. And, this money does not go directly to the citizens - it goes to the Quebec government!

So, why shouldn't Charest try to hurt the Quebec economy - it means more money for him!