Liberal leader Dion and the carbon tax

Neil McKenty

There must be a federal election by October 2009, or sooner if the Harper government falls on a confidence motion in the Commons.

In most Canadian federal elections there is no big issue. The major parties dive for the centre ground, leaving not much substantive difference between party platforms. Canadian voters, I would guess, make their decision on what they think of the leaders. Are they trustworthy, fair, competent, comfortable in their skins? Charisma is not a factor in current federal elections because no leader has much of it.

There hasn’t been a big issue in a federal contest since the Free Trade election of 1988. Could the next federal election be decided on a big issue?

It might well be. The issue currently being weighed on its pros and cons in party backrooms is the carbon tax.

The rationale behind a carbon tax is quite straight­forward: that we should tax less the things we want more of (work, savings, and investments) and tax more the things we want less of (pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, smog and waste). The intention of a carbon tax is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and slow global warming. Such a tax can be implemented by taxing the burning of fossil fuels – coal and petroleum products such as gasoline, aviation fuel and natural gas – in proportion to their carbon content.

This direct taxation is transparent. It can be popular with the public if it’s revenue-neutral – in other words, if the revenue from the carbon tax is returned to voters by reducing other taxes.

Could this be the defining issue that decides the next election? Indeed it could. And the man who is thinking of putting a carbon tax at the centre of his platform is Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.

Recently Dion ran the carbon tax up the flagpole for a Toronto business audience. “I’m prepared to fight an election on a richer, greener, fairer Canada, and I’ve said that for the last two years.”

Harper’s Conservatives are equally prepared to fight an election against the tax because they claim it would hurt our economy.

Other critics of the plan, including those in Dion’s own party who are nervous about any tax hike, especially on gasoline, say the proposed tax – to be officially unveiled next month – is confusing, expensive, and politically risky because many voters will see it as a money grab.

But Dion responds that his new tax, estimated to raise about $16 billion, will be revenue-neutral. “What can be clearer? We need to make polluters pay and put every single penny back into the hands of Canadians through the right tax cuts.”

Dion said jurisdictions like British Columbia, which will bring in the first carbon tax in North America this summer, have taken the lead in a movement he hopes will “sweep the nation.”

The latest polls show that 72 per cent of Canadians would support some form of carbon tax.

The Liberal leader also praised Quebec, which imposed a carbon-based tax last fall that pumps revenues back into programs supporting green technology.

The bigger fear among his own caucus members is that Mr. Dion, who at the best of times is not a great communicator in either official language, will be unable to sell his idea in 30 seconds at the door during an election campaign. One caucus member put the problem this way: “Voters do not want to hear how to build a watch, they just want to know the time.”

But the Liberal leader is planning his carbon campaign carefully. He has already dispatched 30-year-old rookie Ontario MP Navdeep Bains to sell the idea over this summer to young people.

One of his staff members, Nick Gzowski – son of the late broadcaster Peter Gzowski – has produced a TV ad about climate change inspired by the Make Poverty History campaign, in which film stars are seen snapping their fingers. In the carbon ad, Liberal MPs are featured clapping. Dion says, “We’re up to the challenge... Are you?”

There’s no question that Dion and the Liberals are playing a high-risk game. There’s also no question that a bold pol­icy to improve the environment and become a world leader in climate change could well engage the imagination of the Canadian voter, and be a political winner to boot.

It depends whether the Liberal leader can clearly explain the time, and not get bogged down trying to build a watch.

Navigating life with the right map

Neil McKenty

One day on my radio phone-in show the question was, “How do you get on with your mate driving the car?” Most of the callers, especially the women, recalled incidents where their husbands got lost. The reaction was always the same. First the husband denied he was lost, then he refused to stop the car and ask for directions and finally, in a fit of pique, he angrily refused to look at a map.

That radio program got me thinking about maps. Of course, if you’re lost it’s stupid not to consult a map and figure out where you are. But suppose you don’t have a map. Or even worse, you have the wrong map.

For example, you live in Montreal and for the first time you are motoring to Boston. You get to Boston alright, then the whole trip begins to unravel. You can’t find your hotel. You can’t even find the name of the street your hotel is on. You pore over your map. None of it makes any sense.

Finally, you see a policeman. You stop and show him your map. He looks at you quizzically. He says it’s no wonder you’re lost. You’ve been driving frantically around Boston using the map of Detroit.

But isn’t that how some people go through life, following the wrong map? Is it any wonder that so many are anxious, bewildered, angry and ultimately lost? Of course, now we're talking about an interior map, a map that somehow relates to the landscape of our own psyche. So where do we get this inaccurate, defective map that has led us down so many blind alleys? I think the answer is that we get this map from other people. Perhaps our parents gave us a map that applies more to their needs than to ours. Or we spend a lot of energy trying to live up to the expectations (the maps) of other people.

At the core of the problem is an instinctive sense that we are not being true to ourselves, that we are not living out our natural bent, nor, in the words of Joseph Campbell “following our bliss.” Instead our lives are still governed by external expectations — by these maps drawn by other people.

Think of the tortuous journey of a man who wants to be a writer but instead, living up to his family’s aspirations, has become a priest. Or a woman who wants to be an artist but finds herself doing a degree in bioethics because that’s what her father, an eminent doctor, wanted her to do.

I think the word “hypocrite” is relevant here, not in a moral sense, but from the Greek root meaning “actor”. It’s a dreadful burden to go through life being an actor, following the wrong map.

So how does a person develop his or her own map for the journey? My own experience is that a crisis of some sort may be required to get us on the road to existential honesty. Some of us must hit what AA calls an “emotional bottom” wherein we realize that (with the wrong map) we are powerless, that our lives have become unmanageable and we must reach out for help. It is in this “bottom” that I believe we take the first decisive step in beginning to draw our own map.

It is a marvellous paradox that when we become vulnerable we also become able to grow from the inside. In that sense, God does indeed write straight with crooked lines. Or as the Canadian therapist Marian Woodman puts it, “God comes through the wound.”

There's a type of litmus test to tell whether one lives by one's own map. First, a friend telephones and ask you to a party. You say you’ll get back to her. The reason for your delay is not to consult your agenda. The real reason is that you don’t want to commit yourself in case another more interesting invitation might turn up. Only those who habitually live outside of their own maps are mature enough not to continually hedge their bets but to move in a straight line. Another friend invites you to take on a project. You hesitantly say yes not because the project interests you but because you don’t want to offend your friend. You're not living on your own map. Only those who do so are comfortable saying no when it is the mature response. How and why a person says no says a lot.

Drawing your own maps is not a decision nor an act of will. It's a process which requires awareness, demands patience and is truly liberating.

Blessings on your journey.

Hillary jeopardizes Democratic win

Neil McKenty

It is remarkable that the two candidates running for the Democratic nomination are so strong they risk weakening their own party. Imagine another three months of trench warfare between Senators Clinton and Obama. The collateral damage for the Democratic party is that this slugfest can only help Senator McCain now and in the general election next fall.

Because she is behind in so many categories – elected delegates, popular vote, states won – the New York Times has concluded Mrs. Clinton has no more than a five per cent chance of winning the nomination at the convention in Denver next summer.

So is it any wonder calls are increasing that Clinton should sit down, review her situation and bow out. Among others, the distinguished Democratic Senator Leahy from Vermont has urged her to do just that.

But Senator Clinton, displaying uncommon energy, resiliency and resolve, has made it clear she is staying the course at least until the primaries are over in early June. Even her critics admit she has every right to do so.

So what would it take for Senator Clinton to win? For starters, she would have to pull ahead in the popular vote to balance her second-place spot in number of states won and in pledged delegates. Unfortunately for Clinton, almost nobody who has done the math thinks that she can win the popular vote without re-votes in Florida and Michigan.

Mrs. Clinton is more than 700,000 votes behind in the popular vote. With 10 states and territories still to vote (including Pennsylvania which she will almost certainly win), perhaps another six million votes could be cast if turnout is very high.

To get the lead in the popular vote, she would need to win 56 percent of all the remaining votes – or well more than 60 percent of the votes outside of North Carolina and other states she is expected to lose. So far, though, Mrs. Clinton hasn’t won 60 per cent in any state except Arkansas, where she had reigned as first lady.

So any way you slice it, Mrs. Clinton’s chances of winning the popular vote are negligible. And without the popular vote, she is toast. In view of that bleak prospect why does Mrs. Clinton stubbornly insist on soldiering on? Her own people say she’s not a quitter and she will hang in right through the convention. Her critics are not so kind. Some say her real strategy is to destroy Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the general election so that she can compete again in 2012.

Meanwhile, the big winner of this Democratic fist-fighting is Senator McCain. A recent Gallup poll found that 19 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. McCain in the general election if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee. More startling, 28 percent of Mrs.Clinton’s supporters said they would defect to Mr. McCain if Senator Obama were the nominee.

In addition, each Democratic candidate is inflicting wounds on the other, wounds the Republicans will rip the scabs off come the general election next fall. Mrs. Clinton says she would have walked out of Obama’s church given the hateful comments of his minister. She also said both she and Senator McCain are qualified to be commander in chief, pointedly omitting Senator Obama. The Obama campaign underlined Mrs. Clinton’s big fib about fleeing sniper fire in Bosnia.

Granted, tempers may cool by November. But dragging out the contest only deepens wounds and reduces time for healing. In nine of the last 10 presidential elections, the nominee chosen first ended up winning the general election. And if the Democratic nominee has been crippled, that would hurt Democrats running for other offices as well. When Mrs. Clinton goes down to defeat how many of her Democratic friends will she take with her?

I freely confess that up until the beginning of this year I supported Hillary Clinton for president. And, if despite all the odds, she is still selected and elected, I think she would make a good president. But I have now concluded that Senator Obama might make a great one. His speech on race relations was the best since Bobby Kennedy in 1968. He has special appeal for young people. He would put a new face on America in the world of nations.

Hillary has waged a gallant campaign. She could have a brilliant future in the Senate. But I believe the time has come, for the sake of her party and for her own sake, for Hillary to gracefully bow out.