Ontario's Leap towards economic oblivion

Rex Murphy:

Remember the Leap Manifesto? That was the wild-eyed ultra-greenist, anti-capitalist dogma-sheet that Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein dragged out ...

... Kill oil. Kill all fossil fuels. No pipelines. No refineries. Cripple the economy. Deny the poorer nations ... a cascade of unexamined and baseless assertions, a manifest distaste for reality, a raw pulse of dogmatic certitude, and a set of prescriptions that would obliterate a modern economy, push hundreds of thousands out of work, and bring the industrial age back to the days of horse cart and covered wagons for transportation. ...

The authors of Leap were ... merely projecting as it were private fantasies into the public arena. If, however, they had presented in Ontario, if they had urged Ontario’s government with the dreams they urged ... I suspect they would have been mocked as timid, restrained, unimaginative, even perhaps, regressive. For the Wynne government’s recently revealed plans for the ‘transformation of the Ontario energy industry,” is of a reach and scope, depth and range, that defies all comparison.

Even if there were good evidence that alarmists are right (and there isn't) Canada's contribution to global CO2 emissions is tiny and it's effect on global climate un-measurable.  But politicians like Wynne (and Trudeau and ... ) behave as if the world's fate hinges on Canada (or Ontario or ...) taking the lead in sacrificing their citizens' standard of living to Gaia. This is insanely reckless.  Canada has no obligation, moral or otherwise, to move any faster on this than the least committed of the largest GHG emitting nations.  Doing so is not only climatically pointless, it unnecessarily risks wrecking our economy.  We are being led either by nitwits or by cynical tax-grabbers or both.

To "save the planet" Ontario burns Norwegian wood pellets instead of Canadian coal

Except ... "wood pellets (especially those transported long distances ...) produce way more CO2 than coal."

"The Eighth Blunder of the World" - Wynne's Ontario

Philip Cross, former Chief Economic Analyst for StatsCan:

Ontarians are clearly having buyer’s remorse after re-electing its Liberal government last year, with two-thirds now believing that Ontario is headed in the wrong direction. 

... Ontario now qualifies for equalization payments, confirming its shift from “have” to “have-not” status within Confederation.  The government’s response was more government spending financed by deficits that doubled its total debt over the past decade.

 ... In economic policymaking, Ontario has become the Eighth Blunder of the World. Instead of focusing on policies that would encourage economic growth, the Wynne government is following the maritime province’s tactic of begging the federal government for more transfer payments. 

Kathleen Wynne's bizarre assault on Stephen Harper

Kathleen Wynne has been feuding with Stephen Harper, in part because he refuses to have the feds  collect the mandatory deductions for her new Ontario pension plan.  And why would he?  He is against expanding CPP mandatory deductions, favoring instead voluntary contributions, the  approach preferred by, for example, the employers of 2/3 of the private sector workforce.

Kelly McParland on Wynne's latest bizarro outburst:

Wynne’s latest effort is the suggestion that, had Harper been prime minister instead of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s national railway would never have been built.

... This is an odd statement, considering the considerable efforts Ottawa has put into convincing Ontario to get behind Energy East, the transcontinental pipeline that would move crude from Alberta and Saskatchewan to Saint John. It’s a truly national project, it would work to the benefit of the country as a whole, would create jobs and expand domestic refining activity ...

... Wynne and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard have issued a list of conditions they want met before they will deign to support the project.

... If Sir John A. had faced similar efforts to derail the railway over patently partisan provincial antics, the great project might indeed never have been completed. But it wouldn’t have been Ottawa’s fault, it would have been that of petty, narrow-minded premiers protecting their flanks at the expense of the country as a whole.

This an example of how the "loony left" earns its name.