Where was Preston the night the Alberta PC music died?

Ezra Levant has the answer:

Carbon Taxapalooza

Last Monday Terence Corcoran declared Carbon Taxapalooza Week:

We hereby declare this to be Carbon Taxapalooza Week. The objective is to acknowledge and deplore the great stampede of provincial governments to tax the hell out of fossil fuels.

On Tuesday, Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a self-appointed group of allegedly market-oriented economic policy wonks, will release a report calling for the provinces to adopt “carbon pricing” to help Canada tackle climate change. [Here's the full list Ecofiscal "commissioners".  It includes Preston Manning, Jean Charest, Paul Martin, Bob Rae, Peter Robinson (Suzuki Foundation CEO), etc.  With that rats nest of progressives and eco-illiterates what could possibly go wrong?]

Until now, Ontario hasn’t had much interest in carbon pricing ... But now, having exhausted a range of bad policies, Ontario’s Environment Minister, Glenn Murray, is pushing to adopt another set of allegedly less bad policies.

 Peter Foster: The way backwards on carbon policy:

... On Tuesday Canada’s self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission released a study, The Way Forward, that amounts to a recommendation for policy chaos in pursuit of the ever-more dubious cause of fighting catastrophic man-made climate change. ...

Peter Foster: Chris Ragan, market beautician:

You can always tell a fan of Big Government by the way he or she addresses the Invisible Hand, Adam Smith’s metaphor for free markets. ... This week, McGill economist Christopher Ragan, chairman of the self-appointed Ecofiscal Commission, came up with a more subtle put down - “Sometimes the Invisible Hand needs a manicure, and the way is to improve market signals.”

See also, Dennis Ambler at The SPPI Blog: A nest of carbon vipers

Vast sums of money, influence and power are involved in carbon mitigation schemes, and yet there is never any mention in the media of these massive and lucrative conflicts of interest. They appear quite content swallowing the diversionary tactics pushed by the likes of DeSmog Blog and Greenpeace ExxonSecrets with their claims of “oil- company funded deniers”.  It is doubtful that mainstream journalists ever bother to look behind the scenes at these people, yet it is all available on official websites.

Danielle Smith's "disreputable end"

Ezra Levant on Wild Rose defector Danielle Smith's defeat:



Update: More from Andrew Coyne.

The great carbon tax grab and BC's bogus green claims

Terence Corcoran:

Just as consumers start getting used to the idea of lower gasoline prices, putting billions of dollars in their pockets for spending on other things, politicians are conspiring to grab it back ... a long list of economists and celebrity policy wonks eager to provide support... Preston “Don’t call it a tax” Manning, The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, assorted think tanks ... Obama advisor Lawrence Summers ... Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada ...

... The carbon tax issue is no small policy shift. This is big statism in a green cloak, filled with policy inconsistencies, economic nonsense and out-of-control rationalizations.

... Carbon taxes are piled on green taxes piled on congestion taxes on top of regulations and other direct interventions. ... Worse, none of these taxes will do anything to improve the environment or curb carbon emissions...

Far left radical Saul Alinsky once wrote "never let a good crisis go to waste". Obama's far left fixer, Rahm Emanuel famously repeated it.   So, now, with a "crisis" in falling oil prices, opportunistic political weasels and wonks of all stripes are rationalizing a tax they hope can be imposed with minimal objection.  And once imposed it'll stay there after oil prices rise again. It's time for tax payers to show up en-mass on all their doorsteps carrying tar, feathers, torches and pitch-forks.

The B.C. carbon tax: Gordon Campbell's Liberals imposed a carbon tax in 2008 and have long held it up as a glowing success in  lowering BC's carbon footprint.  Terence Corcoran puts the lie to that load of junk economics:

... B.C. gasoline consumption is actually higher today than it was in 2008, both in absolute and per capita numbers. B.C. is therefore today producing more carbon emissions than it was the day the carbon tax was introduced.... Economics 101 is still the law, and the B.C. case for a carbon tax does not exist.

Preston Manning's appalling proposal

Peter Foster explains:

It sounds so simple. “We” need a fiscal system that produces more of what we want – good, clean jobs — and less of what we don’t want, which is “pollution.” Let’s call it an “ecofiscal” approach.

...  we need a carbon tax. But since taxes have such a bad name, why not change the name to a carbon “levy”?

... Mr. Manning, who heads the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, is also an advisor to the new, self-appointed Canadian Ecofiscal Commission, which aspires – like a cloister full of medieval scholastics – to set a “just price” for industrial emissions and thus fine tune a woefully inadequate market(ish) economy.

See also, Terence Corcoran: Why the call for bigger and better carbon taxes is about to escalate

... A decade of bad policy, including Canada’s disastrous National Energy Program, followed the first OPEC crisis. The challenge in 2014 is to avoid making a new series of policy disasters.

The push for taxes on "carbon"

Progressives have been ramping up the rhetoric for a "tax on carbon" or, euphemistically, "pricing carbon".  The usual suspects  have been doing so for some time and more recently it came from a less predicable quarter, Preston Manning.

It's worth reminding ourselves of the reasons to push back:

Finance Minister Joe Oliver: the "multibillion-dollar tax on everything"
Lorne Gunter: "Heaven help us ..."

BC, the first jurisdiction in North America to impose such a tax, is frequently held up by carbon tax pushers as a shining success.  Aldyen Donnelly points out why that and related claims are a myth:

... BC Ministry of Finance budget documents show, clearly, that total demand for the B.C. carbon-taxed products grew faster after the carbon-tax was introduced than over almost every other similar timeframe between 1992 and 2008.

Preston Manning - a traitor to his former conservative self

It would be interesting to know what has caused Preston's about face on conservative principles he so clearly championed as Reform leader. Advocating the use of weasel words to dupe the public into accepting a carbon tax does not sound like the Preston Manning I once voted for. Though we have to acknowledge that he has been spouting the sustainability mantra for several years.

Something happened to bring about his apparently new-found enthusiasms for more taxes, bigger government and Orwellian propaganda. It can't be evidence for the threat of man-made global warming - that has become nothing but weaker over the past two decades. Though since it figures in his push for a disguised carbon tax he's using it exactly as eco and far-left radicals do - as a tool to sell the public on an agenda they wouldn't otherwise support.

So what is it that motivates Preston's uncharacteristic, anti-conservative new stance? Why has he turned traitor to his former principles? "Green" seems to figure strongly. Maybe we should follow the money. Where does the Manning Centre get its green? Maybe it's from Big Green - eg. gigabuck foreign foundations like Tides, Rockefeller, Hewlett, etc.
[Update: Ezra notes that Manning is a member of the Pembina Institute Advisory Council. You can't get much more progressive and radically environmental than Pembina which has links to Tides and the Suzuki Foundation. See also.]

Whatever it is, it's sad.

Sign Ezra's petition.

Funding the enemy

Ezra Levant has been doing an excellent job of exposing how radical environmentalist, anti-oil sands, global warming alarmist "think" tank lobby group, the Pembina Institute, has been receiving support from organizations who ought to know better:

- the city of Calgary
- the government of Alberta
- oil companies
- the Harper government
- Preston Manning

Ezra is particularly disappointed in his old friend and mentor, Preston Manning:




More about the Pembina Institute.

The CBC and The Economist promote green huxster's "report" on BC carbon tax

University of Ottawa professor Stewart Elgie founded an organization called "Sustainable Prosperity",  "a national green economy think tank/do tank ... in the pursuit of a greener, more competitive Canadian economy."   [Note that Preston Manning is listed as a steering committee member.]

Sustainable Prosperity recently published Prof Elgie's upbeat "report" on BC's carbon tax - "An Environmental (and Economic)Success Story" promoted first by the CBC and yesterday by The Economist.

Given Elgie's green activist orientation it behooves one to read his report with some skepticism as it is likely to be tainted with substantial confirmation bias (and worse).  Both Elgie and his report are critiqued by Hilary:

Ottawa based Stewart Elgie – not unlike IPCC-nik and recently elected British Columbia Green Party MLA, Andrew Weaver – has a history of putting advocacy carts ahead of evidence horses. ...

And here's a commenter on The Economist piece:

... BC per capita energy use has been declining since 1978. The post CTax rate of decline is actually been SLOWER than the 2000-2007 trend (the CTax was announced and introduced in 2008)for the package of CTaxed goods, and most of the individual commodities in the package. ...

... BC's economy has always been less carbon-intensive than the rest of Canada's (due to its large hydro resource and two of the most densly populated major urban areas in the country) But comparisons of BC's fossil carbon energy usage and the rest of Canada's show that BC's relative advantage was much better every year from 2002 through 2007 than any year after the CTax was introduced.  ...

... Second, over 85% of the post-Ctax reduction in BC energy use was reductions in industrial energy use. This reflected the historically unprecedented shrinkage of BC's forest products and paper manufacturing sectors ...

... the driver of post-2007 energy demand reduction in BC has been de-industrialization. Manufacturing employment in BC has fallen 26% since the CTax was introduced, while the Cdn national average has been a 15% decline.  ... etc.

Christy Clark, “Iron Snowbird”? More like “Plastic Dodo Bird”

When Preston Manning dubbed BC Premier Christy Clark an "Iron Snowbird" last week there were mixed reactions from conservatives (mostly disbelief, guffaws, sniggering, etc) . Here’s how Vancouver’s Alex Tsakumis reacted:

Christy Clark Was Not Ever, Is Not Now, Nor Will Ever Be a Conservative! ...

‘Iron Snowbird’ my derriere. Let’s do a little Christy retrospective:

(1) Grew up in staunchly Liberal home where Liberal doctrine was like mother’s milk. Daddy Jim was a huge federal Liberal who HATED Conservatives.

[...]

(4) Part of the federal Liberal machine that took over the provincial Liberal party. Conservatives were not welcome until Gordon Campbell came along...
[...]


(6) Spent her entire time as a talk show host reading from federal Liberal speaking notes when dealing with national issues (I know at least two people that have shown me emails sent to her, including responses, about what kind of “shitheads” Conservatives are and how Stephen Harper was (is) an “asshole.”)
[...]


(14) Pretends to be socially conservative, while living a life completely detached from such a constrained reality ...

[h/t BC Blue]

Preston Manning goes for the green

In today’s Post is an article written by Preston Manning and Andrew Heinzman shilling for:

Sustainable Prosperity, a national policy and research network dedicated to the development of a green economy in Canada.

Geez! There must be some real green in going green. Anyway the article is loaded with the usual baffle gab on "low carbon" "green economies", "energy", "climate change", "sustainable development", "balance" ...etc, etc, which, of course, as a nation we have to get on top of quick (throw a ton of gubm’nt policy and money at) or else.

The first thought that crossed my mind was: "I sure hope Peter Foster jumps on this soon!" And sure enough, he had a column written before the end of the day. Bravo Peter!

What set off initial alarm bells was that one of its authors was Preston Manning, sometime leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, who has for some time been transitioning to the policy dark side.The piece, co-authored by Andrew Heintzman, who runs "the first Canadian investment company to be exclusively focused on investing in environmental sectors," was pretty much a stock "Canada needs to get out in front of the green revolution" piece of the type so beloved by policy wonks.

... they recommend, specifically the grand Pigovian conceit that market prices are all "wrong" and that, with a little judicious intervention, we shall be on the way to "sustainable technologies."

... Sustainable Prosperity is a political organization right down to its Orwellian moniker. It is filled with the tendentious notions about "footprints" and "food miles" and subscribes to the fatal conceit of expansive and competent policy.

Preston Manning: Reforrrmm needed to fix “democratic deficit”

Preston Manning is glad that Canada’s electoral muckety-mucks are concerned about declining voter turn-out, "Canada’s democracy deficit" and suggests "open primaries" as a way of fixing the problem. My response to Preston:

Dear Preston,

I don’t know about open primaries or other reforms but I don't buy your initial premise. There is no "problem" with so-called "low voter turn-out". The 59% turn-out in the last federal election was excellent. It certainly doesn’t represent a "democratic deficit" and neither do the other quoted turn-out numbers of 51% and 41% for BC and Alberta respectively.

People don’t vote for a wide range of reasons but my guess is general apathy counts for the greatest numbers - they don’t vote because politics is not really relevant to their lives. They’re not tuned in to the various party platforms and so it doesn’t matter to them which representative or party is elected.

So whatever the voter turn-out and whatever their reasons, in a free society people are entitled to their apathy, to be left alone if they so choose. Everyone doesn’t have to be a political junky - and thank God everyone isn’t. Moreover, people who are unaware of the issues and party platforms have a duty NOT to vote - as their votes would only add random noise or, worse, distortion to the process.

Why not treat election results as a statistical sampling of voter preferences and not get anxious about voter turn-out? Let’s face it, a sample of 30%, 40% or more is a very LARGE sample. The daily polls which attempt to predict election results in the run-ups to elections typically consist of one or two thousand respondents.

So let’s not tinker with the system with a goal of enhancing voter turn-out. This could ultimately lead to idiocies as in Australia where voting is compulsory or to hokey proportional representation schemes. Both would be big mistakes.

So please don't encourage our electoral officers. Instead, spend your time and energy tackling some of the real democratic deficits such as unelected senators and regional inequities in seat distributions.

Sincerely,
JR