shoegazer

Really? That's funny in a large number of cases that's hardly true. New features, which consumers want result in increasing energy consumption, not lower, though perhaps higher efficiency does occur over longer time period but change ONLY occurs en masse if they have similar prices. Think of lightbulbs. Compact fluorescent (light) bulbs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs but due to an upfront price disparity incandescents still outsell CFLs, even though CFLs are more cost effective over the long run. When Ontario soon mandates the switch to CFLs, it is estimates that this change will result in 6 TWh of energy savings per year, the equivalent of 6% of OPGs energy production per year or if confined to reducing energy production from coal, amounts to 6.2 million tons of GHGs being eliminated and that's just Ontario and just light bulbs. You're out of your gourd if you think a business would not spend $1 billion in capital investment to save $1 billion in annual recurring taxes, especially when they get capital cost deductions and the savings, clearly you forget most of your engineering economics and you've never worked on project budgeting or project finance. And this is different from what I said how? What I said was there are many examples where a minor change in the tax structure can push people to differing behaviours. Yes tere are thresholds for these decisions, an energy barrier of sorts to overcome but you seem to think the threshold is massive and that's simply not the case, there are technologies that become viable at a number of differing incremental steps. Well let me respond by saying that as someone with a background in engineering and applied mathematics including a doctorate in mathematics and as an expert in computer modelling, you're quite mistaken. Furthermore, since I've taught engineers I happen to be quite aware that engineers know next to nothing about non-linear dynamics or systems, and that includes mechs who've studied the navier-stokes equations, which are the largely pertinent equations, since the versions engineers study are the linearized ones where the non-linear terms drop out. I've written more source code than I care to recall, including MPI code, to solve multi-dimensional non-linear dynamical problems, including but not limited to moving boundary value problems. I'm fairly well versed in stochastic modelling, which if you're unfamiliar is probabilistic modelling, which has connections to PDEs, depending upon there form of the stochastic equation. Moreover I spent a number of years working, where I ripped models apart and thus am quite experienced in looking at models and seeing how well those models work. I'm familiar with calibration issues and over fitting problems and backtesting of models is completely sound and is used in numerous fields of research, from physics to finance. As I said are the models perfect? Nope, but they are fairly good and have good conformance to historical data. Are there variables of interest that are not fully understood or properly weighted and calibrated, perhaps and those weaknesses are addressed going forward and projections are revised as new data and research becomes available, but one doesn't simply though up one's hands and wait for a perfect model because no such thing exists. Newtonian mechanics is actually wrong but under a certain set of assumptions, work quite well as a first order approximation. Relativistic mechanics is also likely incorrect but again works as a very good first order, perhaps even second order approximation under certain conditions. Your comment about them doing ok for GMST but then performing poorly for regional ones is a bit of a non sequitur. What is being modeled is global climate. The more localised projections rely on courser datasets, lower resolution and are more susceptible to localized phenomenon. Newtons law of cooling does a very poor job of telling you what the local temperature is at a specific voxel on a specific streamline in a turbulent flow but it will give a very good idea of the total system temperature over a period of time. This is the difference between climate and weather. Weather is a localised phenomenon, subject to highly non-linear equations, whereas, first order approximations of climate are far better, because they dont require the same level of resolution and arent as sensitive to perturbations in input data. Again this is a different between climate and weather. There are separate models which address the linkages between specific localised weather patterns and climate, the GSM models don't need to be a catch all. First you're mistake is assuming what a useful level of uncertainly is in a climate model. In quantum mechanics the degree of accuracy or precision required of model predictions is far far higher than it is for Newtonian mechanics, which is higher than that for turbulent fluid dynamics. I'm an advocate of introducing a price signal into the market, which pretty much every economist is saying is necessary to properly deal with climate change. Why is it that 230 economists wrote a letter during the election campaign urging action. Why is it that every major scientific body including the Royal Society, the National Institute of Science, NOAA, etc. urges action be taken. Why is it Shell, BP, numerous insurance companies and many many others who have all looked at this problem from various angles agree. You say in an insulting tone, that I prefer symbolic measures or symbolism over substance. Bullshit. It seems you prefer doing nothing, ignoring problems out of some sort of "what can one person do" fallacy. Until pollution is all forms is properly priced it will continue. Placing a price on carbon is the FIRST step in reducing it and it has positive side effects as well. It favours industries that provide high profit for each tonne of GHG, thereby having an intensity reducing impact on emissions. You're simply relying on a do nothing approach based on FUD. The sky is falling economics, yet numerous companies from BP, Shell and SUncor have said complying with Kyoto wouldn't be economically damaging as have numerous economists. The Economist magazine has come out in favour of carbon taxes and they've always been market and business friendly so clearly they believe the cost/benefit of inaction to be far worse than action. We have plenty of uranium domestically so uranium isn't a problem and we can build breeder reactors so that continuous supplies of fuel are barely even necessary since they are self fuelling and sustaining nuclear reactions. Hell 2 2nd year university students at the university of Chicago made one a number of years ago as part of the UoC scavenger hunt by using thorium and americium as a beta source from smoke detectors. Fast breeder technology would allow us to move the entire global to nuclear power and still have abundant supplies of uranium. Consider as well that uranium is not anywhere near as heavily explored for as oil and thus there are likely vast unexplored uranium deposits, yet the same is almost certainly not true of oil anymore. Moreover thorium and salt water can be used in breeder reactors as a fuel soruce making fuel supplies for breeder reactors essentially infinite. Coal is abundant and there may be technologies for clean coal, Germany is investigating this but while generating power based on dirty coal costs less than that of clean coal, dirty coal will remain. The costs of various technologies have been passed on to consumers that was designed to eliminate pollutant, be it SOX and NOX from exhausts, with expensive catalytic converters on cars, which didn't kill the industry and the impact was real and it has a measurable cost. NO it isn't because there is an asymmetry in where and how the taxes are applied. Steel may increase somewhat to be fair because steel is a carbon intensive industry but there are alternatives to coke making for steel to move to lower GHG steel. Just analyse OPG and tell me OPG wouldn't be incented under a carbon tax to invest in lower emitting technologies. You really are obtuse. You seem to be under some misguided belief that what is small for one part of the system is small everywhere. It isn't. The incidence of carbon taxes and the sources of carbon emissions as asymmetric. It will be large emitters who will see significant increases in their costs and IIF they passed on all of the costs to consumers the costs would be relatively small. That said because they would have large costs, whether they pass them on or not, which can be reduced by investing in alternative technology THEY would have very real incentives to invest. Your $900 million vs $1 billion is missing the point that the $900 million is a one time capital cost, which itself results in lower income taxes paid out over a number of years due to the CCA deduction, the lower corporate taxes with a corporate tax cut and thats before one factors in a reduction in the carbon taxes being paid which are annually occurring expenses, NOT one time ones.

This is a poor analysis. First the cost of gasoline rose sufficiently fast enough within a given time frame that the impact is inelastic. Indeed it's known that responses to gasoline prices are largely inelastic over a short time period, since most people can't just run out and buy a new more fuel efficient car tomorrow or modify their behaviour instantaneously to respond to a changing price environment - it's part of the reason why the market isn't a truly optimal means of allocating resources. Over a longer term however you will see a substantial change in consumer behaviour as consumers confront the choices of buying new cars, new furnaces, of insulating their homes, etc. I never said the responses would be immediate, indeed no reasonable approach can require an immediate approach since any changes will have some time and capital associated with them. Well my point wasn't at the consumer end, it was at the wholesale level. You can't honestly believe that $1.0 billion in carbon taxes for OPG or TransAlta would not result in changes, nor capital cost investment, especially with accelerated CCA deductions, which makes the ROIs of numerous projects, including a complete replacement with nuclear, given the new cost structures for these industries, which again CANNOT leave Canada. In fact the new 550Mw co-gen plant being built has a total capital cost of $750 million. Considering that Lakeview is being retired and Nanticoke is nearly the end of it's lifetime, being with 5 years of it's economic lifetime and about 10 years of it's technical lifetime, it's replacement and the decision on how to replace it WILL CERTAINLY be impacted by the existence of carbon taxes. Moreover lets address the SUV Hybrid you mention. First the cost difference between a Ford Escape XLT FWD 2.3L and the Ford Hybrid FWD, which are essentially comparable car is $25,399 vs $31,499, not $10000 difference but $6893 with taxes. Now assuming 200,000 Km of driving 75% city and 25% highway, which is consistent with average driving habits, at $1/L gas the Ford Escape Hybrid will use $11900 over it's lifetime and the Ford Escape XLT $19300, for a difference of $7400 in nominal terms, which if not spent over a differing time frame would make the Hybrid the more cost effective. If there was a small change in price, this borderline ROI would tip in favour of the hybrid, at the prevailing price point for gasoline with an additional tax. True And your level of knowledge of non-linear dynamical climate systems gives you the ability to make this assessment how? I'm absolutely sick of the denier crap. The models while not perfect are backtested and conform quite well to the historical climate data. Are there some things not fully understood? Yes. Will this have a substantial impact on the predictions, given that the predictions are being given as a range of predictions with uncertainty bounds being estimate. Likely not. Given that virtually every reputable climate scientist, every major science body, all of the major peer reviewed journals and a host of other qualified agencies all support the AGW theory and the conclusions drawn by the IPCC and other studies means that there is sufficient reason to do something. Yeah people probably said the same against going to the moon which had about 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% fewer direct benefits but numerous side benefits. Spending money converting our economy from one principally based around carbon to one less so, will help shield our economy as the cost of fossil fuels rise in the future as supplies further dwindle. Jesus wept. Not all projects will see a ROI for emissions reductions especially at the consumer and small business end, or at least it will be less so. The 700 large emitters who will be the principle companies paying the bulk of the carbon taxes will have a direct incentive, that will be large and real for them, but relatively small for the economy overall, to invest in capital. Again OPG and TransAlta who will be paying combined between $2.0 - $2.5 billion in carbon taxes. They will over the near to long term have substantial incentives to invest in cleaner technology and to swtich sources of production. The cost of capital technology will hardly rise that much as a result of increased energy costs to make the projects not viable. That's just completely specious. Perhaps however the same argument applies to the market price of gasoline or coal as well. The prices change and no one believes, nor knows where the price will go. A carbon tax creates and maintains a price signal in the market which ensures that the externalities are priced in and this helps avoid the problem of the 1970's where the fleet average mpg increased substantially due to

Blueblood. Mine doesn't need to but if you attended one they should consider it so that they don't have to count you among their alumni given that the best you could offer is that NOT witty retort. Clearly your knowledge of economics is as piss poor as is your understanding of how markets work or fail too. Sadly you present the stereotypical myopic and misguided responses, what little their was, of an ideologue. Well how about Finance. Considering that the banking sector is a bigger employer and produces huge profits I'd say we've found another. Moreover their is nothing wrong with oil production but it can be done more efficiently and with less emissions than is currently being done. Because the free market does a piss poor job of providing a true price for the commodity that represents it's true cost, when it fails to price negative externalities and this is a perfect example of market failure. Moreover the market doesn't do a good job of regulating use, despite your ideological leanings. The market seeks a kind of equilibrium, but one which is not solely based on economic fundamentals and that equilibrium is only a kind of equilibrium since the system is entirely dynamic and a true equilibrium in the sense of the a static system doesn't exists. Moreover market lags, dislocations, and friction prevent the system from even finding a true optimal dynamic equilibrium. You need to get your understanding of economics to a level beyond Econ 20. Fama's efficient market hypothesis holds, only over the longer term and then only the weak version of the hypothesis holds. Funny cause pretty much every economist worth their salt, you know all the people that made you think the free market is perfect - since you clearly never came up with that thought on your own - agree that a carbon tax is a more efficient means placing a price on negative externalities.

Nothing is a vote getter in Alberta, the province is so blinded by Liberal hatred going back to the 1930's that they could have offered the world to Alberta and it wouldn't have made a difference. Nuclear has a high capital cost but is lower than other sources of energy for production on an ongoing basis . By raising the cost of GHG emitting production you make the TRUE price of coal based energy far less cost competitive on any analysis compared with nuclear. As I said, the cost of electricity would go up, I didn't say it wouldn't but the price rise would not be substantial for most consumers, the price of 1.2 cents isn't going to kill consumers or business. NO I DONT. You keep assuming things are mutually exclusive when they are not. You're painting a false dichotomy, which doesn't exist. Canada's electricity costs to business are so much lower than our competitors that we can afford a minor rise in the cost of energy and STILL maintain our relative position to them, especially when the income tax cuts are factored in. The response of the system isn't linear as you seem to believe. Thus Canada, while changing the relative weight of business costs can maintain an overall relative position with regard to business cost environment and yet make some areas more punitive than others, the providing the pigovian incentive to modify behaviour. The tax at the WHOLESALE level will be enough to change behaviour. OPG with $1.0 billion in extra costs each and every year will be MASSIVELY incented to change how they produce energy in order to reduce the carbon taxes they are subjected to, thereby reducing GHG emissions. The consumer end result of a 1.2 cent/ KWh won't significantly change the business cost environment. It will raise prices a bit and will make some energy efficiency projects which given current energy costs are not economically 'viably', viable. It will change the time to payoff of a number of energy efficiency projects just as higher gasoline costs make hybrids more attractive despite their higher initial capital costs. Again the false dichotomy fallacy. There are plenty of projects which from a cost effectiveness pov are marginal right now but with a 1.2 cent/ MWh increase for large companies will be worth investing in. Those investments will qualify for a CCA deduction speed up making them even more attractive. And? Did I say they didn't? Those who don't have large costs will see their increased costs offset by the corporate and personal income tax cuts. It wont apply perfectly uniformly but on average most businesses from an overall cost perspective, especially those not directly emitting, will be no further ahead or behind but they will have a different set of economic incentives. Why is it there are hundreds of economists all saying this is the way to go. Do you think they haven't done the analysis, they don't understand the implications? I've done more calculations and analysis of this than you and every poster on these fora combined I'd venture. I've spent hundreds of hours of my own on analysis on this subject, plus copious amounts of reading of others. By the way I'm an expert in mathematical modeling of financial and economic systems. I have multiple degrees to the doctoral level in mathematics, engineering and finance, with a further background in economics, biophysics and biology, so I'm well qualified to do this analysis. You can't outsource energy production or oil production or mining to China and these industries will be the ones most impacted. And neither can you yet you seem to without any qualifications whatsoever be able to say that it will only have detrimental effects. If you honestly believe that the cost of doing nothing is lower than the cost of doing something, well you're beyond help and redemption, because it's ludicrous. Stern isn't the only economist to come out and take this position. Moreover fossil fuels are going to run out and as they do the price of those goods will climb ever skyward making the economy based on them extremely unresponsive to changes in prices structure, so I highly doubt Stern is incorrect. The fact is there will be a very real cost to doing nothing and whether you agree with the exact number in Stern's report, there are costs to maintaining the status quo. Hydrogen, while hardly efficiently, can be produced by electrolysis and the energy needed to do so could be produced by green forms of energy production with mainline energy to supplement periods of intermittent supply. And it was merely one example. I didn't say that goods needed to be transported by electric vehicles did I? Even reducing the number of gasoline vehicles on the market would be significant in terms of emissions and the vast vast majority of those vehicles are for short commutes, or even the stepping stone hybrid vehicles are a start to transforming the energy basis of our economy. I dont forget anything. I'm fully aware of where our GHG emissions come from. But everything is ULTIMATELY the consumer that drives all of it. I'm fully aware that if you raise the cost of energy, then the cost of good will go up, since producers will pass the costs on to the consumer. Hell I've said as much. That cost rise in goods will be offset the income tax savings that consumers will see from the tax shift, it's the entire point of the shift aspect of it. The cost of all of those goods however will be minor on an individual goods basis. The casts both energy and transportation will be spread over a huge number of goods and so the price rises while real will be minor on an individual good basis. In aggregate for a family the price rises will be more meaningful but they will be again offset by the income taxe savings. To say that the goals are impossible is an agenda driven defeatist attitude, designed to paint the problem as impossible to address so lets just keep going as we are. It's BS. If I told you I was lowering you income taxes to ZERO but raising your carbon taxes, be it gasoline, home heating, etc by an equivalent revenue generating percentage, that you wouldn't seek to invest as either a consumer or business in technology that reduces your consumption of carbon emitting goods? It would be absurd to say no. This is the same idea applied at a less extreme approach and phased in to allow consumers and business a chance to adapt to the changing economic signals.

Yes and the country didn't swallow the GST/MST tax shift too well either but guess what, the electorate was wrong then as well. Just because the electorate votes in a given way doesn't make the electorate correct any more than the market's response to the prevailing economic conditions is rational or correct given fundamentals, which is why David Ricardo made himself a wealthy man and why Buffett is making himself a wealthier man, markets often over-correct and simply exhibit herd behaviour, which isn't rational. Perhaps but perception doesn't make something right. People perceive things to be a certain way all the time but it doesn't make their perceptions right and they can change over time. Yes they can. Taxes can be an efficient means of creating a price signal to deal with an existing, environmental and economic problem, just as taxes are added to tobacco and alcohol to deal with the negative externalities - increased health costs - associated with consumption of these behaviours, which leads to a lower of this behaviour as people decide it's too expensive to smoke. To paint the notion of a lower corporate tax rate as temporary belies and overt agenda. Any tax can easily be changed, the carbon taxed could easily be changed and eliminated. That said I don't see it as likely, that the corporate tax cuts would be changed given that it was the Liberals who started cutting corporate income taxes in the first place and the recent Conservative corporate tax cuts were only an acceleration of the existing schedule of corporate tax cuts contained with the Liberals past budgets. So what I believe is an insinuation that the Liberals would reverse the cuts seems to be to be based on nothing but wild speculation with no substantiative support. Moreover such a position is so highly cynical that one wonders what possible policy proposals could ever pass such a test. Regarding Norway, they have chosen to exempt a huge amount of industry from the carbon taxes which is why carbon emissions have continued to rise and thus it is not similar to what was proposed here. Denmark's carbon taxes were far more similar to Canada's as proposed and they experienced an emissions reduction. Considering that Mark Jaccard, who was hired by the Conservatives to analyse their program concluded theirs wouldn't accomplish anything meaningful in way of reductions due to similar loopholes to Norway makes the status quo far from a reasonable alternative. Moreover the cost of $65/ton carbon credit for non-exempt industries will certainly raise prices for consumers with no offsetting income tax reductions. Both carbon taxes and cap and trade seek to create a pric signal in the market for the negative externalities and a number of recent comparisons such as that in the Economist conclude that carbon taxes are the more efficient means to achieve emissions reductions. Intensity reductions do little themselves. Under that metric the LIberals from 1990 - 2006 were a resounding success as emissions intensity dropped 21.1% from 1990 - 2006, yet emissions increased 21.4% during the same time frame, down slightly from 25.4% over 1990 levels as of 2003. As opposed to what?

No it wasn't, though Quebec arguably would benefit more than some places, due to it's preponderance of hydro based power. Bullshit. Nuclear is an alternative as is natgas/oil based co-generation, which has substantially less emissions than coal. Nuclear is the obvious replacement choice for large scale energy production and with Lakeview being past it's economic life now, indeed it's at its technical life, is being shutdown and Nanticoke is nearing the end of its economic life as well. OPG is installing a 550Mw gas-fired co-gen, which will have substantially lower emissions than Lakeview, so there are alternatives. Nuclear while hardly perfect as far an environmental concerns - like hydro, coal and gas - has a far more localized impact and thus easier to deal with negative externalities. This is also fallacious. Our competitive position need not be changed but if a new price signal exists that encourages a differing course of action then it can and does change behaviour. Again simply look at OPG or TransAlta. Both will experience a significant increase in their costs of operation but both are due to the nature of their business unable to relocate so they will pass the increased costs on to consumer, business and individual in terms of higher electricity costs, about 1.2 cents / MWh in the case of OPG. OPG will experience between $1.0 - $1.5 billion in additional carbon taxes (and a minor reduction in corporate taxes). That $1.0 billion will create a MASSIVE incentive to invest in lower carbon emitting technologies and to replace existing coal and dirty oil plants with cleaner oil/gas co-gen plants and nuclear, which will reduce a significant amount of GHG emissions. The new oil/gas co-gen I mentioned above (550Mw) plant has a total capital cost of $750 million, and thus this plant with CCA deductions and the savings from the decreased carbon taxes will create a MASSIVE economic incentive to change behaviour. But the increased costs at the consumer end, especially for business, since it will be averaged over the entire economy will NOT significantly change Canada's competitive position given that we have the second lowest energy and transportation costs of our peers, in KPMG's most recent business cost analysis of various jurisdictions. I'm not contradicting myself at all. Our competitive position is such that we can afford to increase the cost of electricity and transportation because we are so low relative to our competitors that even a minor change, wont impact us. You make assumptions based on specious reasoning and thus the contradiction exists on your side not mine. Our corporate taxes will go down, making Canada more attractive from that point of view but our electricity and transportation costs for business will go up making us less attractive. However given that our energy costs and transportation costs are significantly lower than virtually all of our competitors, the competitive position for business in Canada will not really change though the odd business may see a shifted environment, on the whole things will remain from a business cost point of view the same, except the source of those costs will shift. Business can't lower their corporate taxes, except by earning less, in general. They can however adopt less energy intensive technologies and when energy is priced higher, the economic incentives to do so or the ROI from such projects becomes more attractive. Services for one which currently makes up 65-70% of Canada's GDP. Green energy production as a second, who can sell excess energy to the US grid. Numerous other business. Yes they all use electricity, heat and transportation but Canada, even with a Green Shift will remain competitive here but it will given existing businesses an incentive to invest in more energy efficient technology or modify behaviour by switching off the lights. Again you make this comment that business will be outsourced but to where? Canada has the second lowest energy costs for business in number of recent studies of business costs. Canada has strong competitive position. What a load of crap. This kind of thinking is exactly the reason we face the problems we do. There are tradeoffs to be sure but the fear mongering by people who believe it will result in a massive drop in our standard of living is crap. Read the Stern report, the consequences of doing nothing will also be a massive drop in our standard of living. Bull, we can change our source of energy to something which doesn't emit GHGs. We could all go wholesale nuclear, not without problems but it is an option which will substantially reduce GHGs. Transportation as well could largely be switched over - over a longer term - to hydrogen or electric power, and thus we can maintain our standard of living but it requires not a reduction in energy but a change in how we generate it. We've used coal and fossil fuels thus far simply because they are cheap up front. US energy costs have increased massively lately as a result of rising fuel costs because of their greater dependence on oil based generation. Moreover the denier crap is pretty much played out at this point. Only those with an agenda deny the existence and the massive preponderance of evidence supporting the AGW position. I wont even bother to argue that position with you, it would be a waste of my time, because if one doesn't accept the rationale now, one is bing intentional obtuse or is pushing an agenda and nothing I do will change that.

Slim, may I ask what you base this on? Canada does things differently than the US right now and we aren't losing out on trade, in fact the thing that has most impacted trade has been the rising dollar and not any of the other factors. Canada has a very cost competitive environment for business and business investment when one looks at the broad range of factors that play into where a company decides to locate. For business the green shift would have had three main impacts on business. First it would have raised the energy costs of businesses, especially energy intensive manufacturing. Second it would have raised the transportation costs on business. Lastly it would have cut corporate income taxes, it woul have increased the CCA deduction rate making investment, especially in green tech a cost effective and economical choice and it would have sweetened the SR&ED credits. Concerning energy: The cost of energy increase would have varied by province and would have had minimal effect in Quebec. It would have had an effect in Ontario on average about 1.2 cents per KWh and that's with OPGs current coal production which would be phased out in the near term - the plants are nearly their technical lifetimes and need to be replaced anyway. Moreover Canada has among the lowest energy costs of any business jurisdiction within which to invest so a minor increase here wont change our competitive position. Concerning transportation: The impact here will be even smaller. Again in transportation our competitive position is a leading position, we have the second lowest transport costs (IIRC) in KMPG's business cost comparison studies of a number of investment jurisdictions. The impact of $30/tonne of carbon taxes on diesel will be relatively minor spread out over all the goods transported and will result in about $0.07/Litre in additional cost, but this has been dwarfed by the change in fuel over this time. Lastly the lower income taxes will help offset some of the increased costs that companies bear and most of those bearing the increased costs will be companies that cannot leave the country anyway: utilities and oil sands produces aren't going anywhere, they can't, the oil is here and energy cannot be transported long distances without severe transmission line losses. But the flip side of the coin is that lower taxes will encourage non-energy intensive industries to locate in Canada due to the widening gap between other jurisdictions and ours along the income tax lines. So I disagree that it will be a loss to Canadians and might even be a gain.

Hardly. They're idiots pure and simple and the green shift being gone only supports that. The green shift was the far better policy, especially compared to the Conservatives Turning the Corner plan, which was the conclusion of their own economist who they hired to analyse and vet their program. His name is Mark Jaccard and you can read his report on the matter. Mr Jaccard, in fact came out in favour of the Green Shift plan.<br><br> When all of the economists and experts come out in favour of a given course of action, those whose experience, knowledge and expertise give them the ability to make a real determination based on proper analysis and not memetic BS and people reject it, it says something about the level of intelligence of the people. I read blogs like this over and over again and people who are barely capable of tying their own shoes make assertions about an economic policy proposal they've never done the slightest bit of analysis of. It's quite sad.

Well then Canadians are IDIOTS. Indeed the more I read blogs like this and the fora on the Globe and Mail, CBC and National Post the more I'm convinced the average Canadian is an idiot and the more the words of Winston Churchil ring true: "The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter".<br><br> More than 230 economists during the economic turmoil wrote a letter supporting the Green Shift idea. The Economist, even in their endorsement of Mr. Harper said he was wrong to attack the green shift/carbon tax and that it is good public policy and they congratulated Mr. Dion for bringing forth the idea. <br><br> Between ca and trade systems and a carbon tax, the vast majority of economists support the latter. Greg Mankiw, professor of economist at Harvard and outspoken supporter of pigovian taxes, has written extensively in support of carbon taxes.<br><br> Canadians may have rejected carbon taxes but again that just means Canadians as a whole are ignorant and purely self-serving and I see daily comments that reinforce that view. And it is exactly that kind of thinking about negative externalities that leads us to the place we are in wherein they are a problem that needs to be addressed by some form of government regulation because the market alone never will address it, unless a price is attached to those externalities. <br><br>

Jobu Your point is actually both factually wrong and incorrect on a logical level as well. Even if Corporations did employ 90% of Canadians - they don't - it's a meaningless comment, yet you tried to use it to back up an even more erroneous comment, that being that Canada needs Corporations and if we had a different corporate taxation regime, that we wouldn't have corporations. That comment quite simply is BS. Firstly as some have already pointed out, the public sector accounts for about 16-17% of the Canadian workforce. Of the remaining private workforce 10% are sole proprietorships and partnership and this is based on Revenue Canada Income Statistics for 2006. But even that is less important than the following. More than 64% of Canadian are employed by small to medium size businesses, those with less that 100 (48%) and 500 (16%) employees respectively and NOT large foreign owned corporations. And this is significant because these ones are unlikely to be leaving Canada even under a different tax regime, not that I'm sitting here advocating such but you're quite simply wrong in your entire thesis. Now some large corporations MIGHT leave but business taxes are only a small part of the competitive environment that businesses look for in deciding where to locate. They also look for a skilled/educated workforce, Canada regularly ranks high on this; the look for a place with low location costs, land/rent/building, electricity and utilities, communication, where Canada ranks 2nd best in KMPG's analysis of business location costs; they look at labour costs and Canada's labour costs are also highly competitive; they look for stable government and regulatory environment; infrastructure and transportation costs; nationalised health care, which lowers the cost of doing business by not having to provide some aspects of employee health plans (this is a major advantage of Canada over the US as far as automotive manufacturing). The number of cost factors that impact a corporation's choice of location is well beyond simply corporate taxes. So lets look at what happens when one lowers corporate taxes, which you can thank the Liberal government for starting, who brought in a number of tax cuts in 2000 and whose corporate tax cut schedule, the Conservatives used recently, though sped up, to make their cuts; that is to say the Liberals had already planned for the cuts in earlier budgets and would have implemented them had Martin not lost the election. But moving beyond that, those who advocate the ever lower corporate tax case OFTEN, hell almost invariably point to Ireland as a country who has benefited from corporate taxes, with and ever rising GDP, which on a per capita basis is higher than Canada's. Wonderful, except it's an illusion of success though they have had some. First GDP is a fairly crap measure, which was never intended to be used to do cross country comparisons but ignoring that it paints a distorted picture, or a "Grossly Distorted Picture" as the Economist called. In fact Ireland's GNI, is far far lower than their GDP and the reason is most of Irelands GDP is due to money that merely flow through the country due to the number of shell head offices that are located there for tax purposes. Zug in Switzerland is much the same story. In fact Zug has one corporate head office for every 3 citizens located within and a corporate tax of 5.8% (IIRC). On the other hand we have Mexico which has low corporate and personal income taxes yet it has huge unemployment problems, more than 40% of it's population living below poverty, a significant degree of income disparity and an inconsistent and broken infrastructure. Do I think we should be raising corporate taxes? Not particularly, but the basis of your entire argument is incredibly weak. And lets address the last point. It was the Liberals, largely due to Paul Martin who turned this country around; who cut income and corporate taxes, who regained Canada's AAA debt rating after it was lost under Mulroney. It was under Chretien/Martin's reign that Canada was a continued leader in the G7 and the reason we are in the position we are today. They positioned Canada to be in the position we are to possibly weather to ensuing storm and it had NOTHING to do with Harper. Under Harper spending has increased at a rate of 7% annualised; and don't say it was to restore transfers, Paul Martin did that in the 2004 budget, with a $12 billion increase over fiscal 2003-04. Harper has done a few decent things during his time in power but the man hardly deserves the credit the right likes to give him and his spending has been excessive, well above revenue growth. Oh and as to the current fiscal surplus you were referring to, the $2.9 billion, well lets not omit the fact that there was $15.5 billion of off-balance sheet borrowing during the first 4 months of this fiscal year which INCREASED the federal debt.