If You Really Think About It...

The ads making the rounds these days from the PC war room tell you all you need to know about Doug Ford's view of the electorate: they are stupid - mere Pavlovian dogs that will salivate accordingly to attack ads. Young Sam Oosterhoff, who kindly posted the above on X, is just the latest of the Tory caucus to follow marching orders to denigrate the woman they see as their greatest electoral rival, Bonnie Crombie.

The above picture, which has also been promoted and propagated by various members of the PC caucus,  depicts their ongoing narrative of Crombie as The Tax Queen. The second point, about raising taxes every year as mayor, is a particular affront to intelligence. As far as I can determine, all municipalities raise taxes every year. That inevitability, for those who have any institutional memory, is thanks to the massive downloading that another PC government, led by the execrable Mike Harris, engaged in in the 90s, to the tune of the then massive sum of $3 billion. One needs only look at the ubiquitous homelessness and tent encampments blighting our cities to see how that one worked out.

As for supporting the carbon tax, well, there have been endless discussions about how the levy benefits the majority through the federal rebates; indeed, the latest revelation that the Parliamentary Budget Officer made a big mistake suggests this is just another of the red-meat issues that both the provincial and federal Tories use to stoke discontent.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer made an error in its carbon-pricing reports that are frequently cited in the Conservative Party's “axe the tax” attacks, and the Liberals want a more prominent correction issued.

The PBO quietly published a note on its website on April 17, admitting its economic analyses of the consumer carbon price in 2022 and 2023 erroneously included the impact of the industrial carbon price, too.

The PBO’s reports purported to analyze the impacts of the consumer fuel charge and rebates and concluded the carbon price’s impact on economic growth and jobs could mean up to 80 per cent of families won’t break even with rebates. The federal Conservatives seized on this talking point to counter the federal government’s assertion that eight out of 10 households will receive more money back through fuel rebates than they are taxed. For the last year, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his caucus have cited the PBO report as a reason to “axe the tax.”

“By incorporating the impacts of the industrial Output-based Pricing System (OBPS) for industrial polluters, the economic impacts projected in your report certainly overestimate the real costs of the fuel charge,” wrote [Liberal MP Ryan] Turnbull.

Not that any of this will make any difference to the attack dogs and those who bay at their provocations. However, the electorate, if it wants to make an informed choice, really needs to rise above the street tactics so favoured these days by our 'leaders' and learn to think for itself.

A big ask, I know.

UPDATED: A Masterful Revision

An antidote to the Ford regime's propaganda, thanks to Braeson Holland:

Fixed a few things in @FordNation's climate change attack ad 👇🌎👇#cdnpoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/Lzwjkdr3AH

— Braeson Holland (@braesonholland) May 15, 2019

UPDATE: Meanwhile, another redoubtable Star letter-writer offers this assessment of Doug the Thug's duplicity and mendacity:

Cartoon about Doug Ford’s missing facts was right on the money

Missing facts cartoon, Moudakis, May 15

Your editorial cartoon decrying Premier Doug Ford’s missing facts is right on the money. The only way to fight lies and half truths is with facts.

This is exactly the reason that bullies and truth benders such as Donald Ford (should be his new name) depict the media as the enemy: it provides contrary opinions and perspective using facts instead of rhetoric.

And the media has the ability to be a conduit of information, our only means of educating the masses. Unless they don’t read. And it is costly to buy commercial time on television unless one uses our own tax money to spread lies and half truths. Evil genius. Our wonderful province is in crisis and clearly in the hands of the wrong people.

David Ottenbrite, Cambridge

A Day Of Reckoning

H/t Theo Moudakis

Here in propaganda central (a.k.a., Doug Ford's Ontario), it would appear that few are being fooled by the outrageous campaign the Ford regime is conducting against the carbon tax imposed by the feds after Doug the Thug axed our cap-and-trade program. I believe the following letter-writer speaks for the majority of thinking people who must be singularly unimpressed by what the last provincial election wrought:

Half-truths and dishonest nonsense at my expense! That’s the latest from the Ford government and his trained seals. They say in their ads that Conservatives have another way to handle the problem of global warming. But that’s partisan nonsense and ignorant.

True, people dislike paying more for gasoline and home heating. But if the Ford government told the truth and completed the story, including the offsetting rebates they will earn, many people – even died-in-the-wool Tories – will agree that the only way we will reduce carbon emissions is if it hurts a bit to use carbon fuels. Best way to do that is to make us pay. Oh my god! That’s a tax isn’t it? Yes. But if we don’t do that, carbon emissions will continue to destroy our environment. Like the frog warming in the skillet, shall we happily refuse to move until it’s too late?

Please, Premier Ford, stop using my tax dollars to fill the airwaves with BS!

Bruce Rogers, Lindsay, Ont.

And a recent Star editorial adds further clarity:

The federal carbon pricing plan, which started in April, will cost the average Ontario household $258 this year but the $307 rebate they’ll get will offset those costs and then some. It’ll be the same thing in 2022 — the year the ad chooses — when the annual cost is forecast to rise to $648 and will come with a $718 rebate. So it’s a net gain for most families, not a cost.

And the very reason the federal levy is being applied in Ontario is because the province does not have a better way. Last year, the Ford government killed the existing cap-and-trade program and lowered the province’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

That the Ford regime never listens to the people it claims to be for is exemplified by this fact:

The latest Nanos Research poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Canadians think it’s unacceptable for a province to opt out of the federal plan. Not surprisingly, the same number also oppose provincial governments using taxpayer dollars to fight it.

One need not be Nostradamus to see that a day of reckoning is coming. The world's heedless plunge into climate disaster and the governments that aid and abet that plunge guarantee it.

And Now, A Word From Another Green Guy

H/t Theo Moudakis

Payment Is Now Due

For those who don't want to be saddled with additional costs such as carbon taxes to battle climate change, may I humbly suggest that the price of doing nothing is even greater, as the following amply illustrates.

Start the video at the 4:15 mark:



Clearly, payment has come due.

Now Things Are Getting Really Ridiculous

A sad menagerie for all to behold.

A Betrayal With Far-Reaching Implications

Despite the inspiring persona he peddled to win the last election, Justin Trudeau has turned out to be just another politician. As hard as that might be to accept, his betrayal of his promise to be something else, something better, is undeniable. For me personally, the sting of his failure to enact meaningful measures to combat climate change hurts the most.

And I am not alone in recognizing the fraud he perpetrated. Both The Toronto Star's editorial board and columnist Thomas Walkom offer lacerating assessments of the prime minister's perfidious antics. His most recent decision, to scale back the carbon tax, is emboldening the retrograde Doug Ford, Ontario's new premier with some very old (think 1950's) ideas:

... in scaling back one element of the national plan to put a price on carbon, Justin Trudeau managed to weaken an already too tepid program, and hand some provincial premiers — who are determined to oppose any carbon tax — more ammunition to fight in the court of public opinion, never mind, possibly, in the courts of law.

Emission-intensive industries that compete with companies in jurisdictions without a carbon tax, were already set to receive credits worth 70 per cent of what an average firm in their sector would pay under Ottawa’s plan.

Now, most won’t have to pay the carbon tax until their emissions reach 80 per cent. And four industries deemed to face particularly high competitive risks — iron and steel manufacturing, cement, lime and nitrogen fertilizer producers — won’t pay until they hit 90 per cent.

The Ontario government is running with this retreat:

Already, Ontario’s Environment Minister Rod Phillips is crowing about how this change is proof that his government was right to kill Ontario’s cap-and-trade plan, and right to fight Ottawa’s carbon tax in court.

All of which, of course, panders to a public that is far more eager to embrace willful ignorance than confront harsh reality, a hint of which was recently released by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which revealed

2016’s record-breaking year of damage caused by natural disasters such as wildfires, floods and ice storms across the country cost $4.9 billion. And that was just in “insurable” damage.

Thomas Walkom comes at this issue from a different perspective but with the same underlying premise, that Trudeau's weak carbon tax will accomplish little:

Before Ford became Ontario premier, Trudeau was in danger of being outed as a fraud on the all-important climate change file. But Ford is such a laggard in this area that no matter how little the Liberal prime minister does, he seems active by comparison.

Ford’s decision to challenge Trudeau’s carbon tax in court serves to obscure the reality of the proposed federal levy, namely that it is too low to be effective. And it allows Trudeau to continue pretending that his climate change strategy is vastly different from that of former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper — when in fact it is not.

And Walkom offers compelling evidence that the emperor has no clothes, nor any real climate-change convictions as he echoes the old Harper way of doing things, such as mirroring U.S. behaviour:

In 2016, he very publicly matched Obama’s decision to reduce methane emissions. A year later, after Donald Trump reversed that Obama move, Canada’s Liberal government quietly announced it would delay implementation of its new methane rules until 2023.

Last week, Ottawa announced even more quietly that it plans to ease proposed carbon tax rules for big industrial polluters in order to match the new laissez-faire attitude of the Trump regime.

But surely Trudeau's carbon tax marks a bold departure from American inaction? Well, not so much:

Ottawa’s fallback carbon tax — set to start at $20 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions next year and rising to $50 per tonne by 2022 — is too low. If carbon taxes are to work, they must be high enough to discourage consumers from using products, like gasoline, that create greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts I’ve talked to say that, to be effective, carbon taxes must be set at about $30 per tonne now, rising to $200 a tonne by 2030.

There is no indication that the Liberal government is willing to be so audacious.

Supporters of the Trudeau government will argue that something is better than nothing, and that economic realities constrain Trudeau's hand. The only problem with that thinking is that it is much, much latter than we like to think, and smiles, rhetoric and half-hearted measures will not slow the tide of the earth's inexorable march to a new normal, one that already is proving decidely unpleasant and deadly for millions of people.

In The Realm Of Canadian Political Whoredom

I nominate Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine Mckenna as Queen:



And here is what she had to say after news of the Trudeau climate betrayal emerged:


Prostitutes are renowned for weaving fantasies. In that regard, McKenna is clearly and most eminently qualified.

Speaking Of Neoliberal Tools

It is never nice to shatter someone's illusions, but sometimes it is necessary. That is exactly what iPolitics is doing as it reports a not unexpected but nonetheless egregious betrayal of the environment and climate change mitigation as it dawns on our perfidious prime minister that an election is coming up next year:

Bowing to concerns about international competitiveness, the Trudeau government is scaling back carbon pricing guidelines for some of the country’s heaviest energy users, and signalling that more easing could come before the plan takes effect in 2019.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has issued new guidelines that increase the emissions threshold at which polluters will have to pay a carbon tax.

... after meeting with industry stakeholders, it determined that four industries in particular – cement, iron and steel, lime and nitrogen fertilizer producers – face a high competitive risk and will have their carbon price thresholds adjusted.

Draft regulations issued in January indicated a benchmark for when industries would start to pay the carbon tax at 70 per cent of average emissions.

However, the new rules set to take effect in the new year will increase the carbon tax threshold to 80 per cent of emissions intensity.

The four sectors assessed in the high competitive risk category will not have to pay the tax until they reach 90 per cent of emissions.

The government says other sectors may see adjustments to their greenhouse gas output measures, depending on further review of the impact of carbon pricing on their domestic and international competitiveness, with revised draft standards expected by fall.

Those who follow politics closely will not be surprised by this. Those who place their faith in sunny ways, pearly smiles and nice hair, however, will likely be shocked and seek solace in government propaganda justifying this sabotage of what already was a wholly inadequate plan.

Short-Term Gain For Long, Long-Term Pain

I will readily admit to readers that I am not by nature one who sees the glass as half-full; however, since the June 7th provincial election of Doug Ford, which revealed that far too many of my fellow-citizens are quite happy to enter into Faustian pacts, my natural tendency toward brooding pessimism has intensified.

And With Good Reason.

A post-election analysis reveals how debased the electorate has become:

Ontarians handed Doug Ford a strong Progressive Conservative majority because they feel he best understands their pocketbook struggles and trust him to take quick action on excess government spending, says a revealing post-vote study by Navigator Ltd.

“If on the first day he calls in the auditors and cuts 10 cents off the gas tax he’ll be off to a very good start,” said Jaime Watt.

Despite the kind of magical thinking his promises require, voters responded with enthusiasm to Ford's vows to offer an array of money-saving schemes with no plan to pay for them, other than a promised $6 billion in efficiencies, code for massive cuts that those with even a mdicum of critical-thinking skills understand.

But probably the most depressing aspect of the Navigator study is that Ford supporters don't really give a damn about anyone but themselves:

Voters were less concerned with longer-term issues like infrastructure, pharmacare and anything aimed at the next generation — a factor that could have implications for upcoming municipal and federal election campaigns...

With an attitude like that, Ford Nation will be in its glory, at least for the short-term. At the start of July, Ford intends to recall the legislature to end the York University strike and

implement his planned 10-cents-per-litre reduction in gas prices.

He is hoping to achieve that by cutting the provincial excise tax and scrapping Ontario’s cap-and-trade program with Quebec and California.

While withdrawing from the climate change pact could take 18 months, Tories believe the taxes can be cut before Ontario exits the greenhouse-gas reduction program.

Turning his back on climate change abatement and adaptation will undoubtedly elicit paroxysms of joy, but, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for:

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 180 billion tonnes of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimetre every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.

The melt rate has tripled in the past decade, the study concluded. If the acceleration continues, some of scientists’ worst fears about rising oceans could be realized, leaving low-lying cities and communities with less time to prepare than they had hoped.

But what do facts mean to the people devoted to a provincial Wizard of Oz? Probably as much as they do to those who see no paradox in a prime minister who says that we can meet our climate-change goals at the same time we buy up and expand pipelines to extract more bitumen from the tar sands of Alberta.

Clearly, we are no longer in Kansas.