Against Carbon Tax Shift: Argument 1
I attended a fashionable cocktail party in Calgary last night and used the time to gauge people’s initial response to the carbon tax brought forward by Stephane Dion. It’s valuable in these kinds of debates to spend the first week or so observing and empathizing with the people you wish to convince and not to offer any arguments. Understand and empathize where people are coming from and take them into account when you attempt to persuade them.
Facts and statistics and science are good, but people will not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Understand, empathize and pattern your argument to your audiences.
The response was universally negative and the arguments against were not against the idea of carbon tax, but rather against the credibility of the government to honestly implement it.
Argument 1.1: The money collected by the carbon tax will be going into government general revenues instead of being specifically targetted to a specific program. If it is going to a specific program, the government will need to expand its bureaucracy to collect, track and spend the money.
More taxes = bigger government.
Bigger government = bad
Argument 1.2: The Liberals cannot be trusted with the money. In the wake of the sponsorship scandals, the gun registry and its long-remembered reversal on the promise to scrap the GST, the Liberals cannot be trusted to honestly implement this program. This inherent distrust of Liberals and of government in general is a very strong argument against the implementation of a carbon tax shift program.
Kudos to the Alberta Progressive Conservative MLA Iris Evans who used her media time to equate Dion’s carbon tax to the National Energy Program. If there are any three letters in the alphabet that get Albertans backs up on an issue in a way that forstalls rational thought, it’s N.E.P.
Well played, Ms Evans. Well played.
Kudos also to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who labelled the Liberal’s program as ‘crazy’, a sentiment that was repeated almost verbatim by the rum drinkers in the crowd.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Would you say that the negative reaction to a carbon tax proposal is: a)partially out of conservative allegiance where it is enough to repeat the mantra that Liberals can’t be trusted with money; b)mostly out of the fear that energy producers will be too heavily taxed…again; c) or out of the general sense that energy prices are already climbing so high that it in itself constitutes a tax?
My impression from here, in Ottawa where political allegiances are mixed and ever-shifting, is that people are concerned over high price of gas, over the fact that our industries like car manufacturing are already feeling the brunt of high energy costs (of the inputs). And therefore a move towards a form of carbon tax at this stage will alienate a lot of folks.
Personal example: My recent trip to Newfoundland saw me drive an awful lot of kms to get to where I wanted to go. And the “compact” car I’d wanted to rent turned out to be a Dodge Caliber - pretty nice car, but hardly an economizing choice. They had nothing smaller (!!) Therefore, my trip cost included over $150 in gasoline, maybe closer to $200. On top of airfare and on top of already steep car rental costs. Bus wasn’t a good option. That’s a deterrent. I still enjoyed my trip, very much, but am now concerned that future car-based vacations will simply become unaffordable.
cheers,
JT