Department of Redundancy Department

Gas cost 68 cents a litre two years ago: it's now almost twice that. A big bag of rice that retailed for $5.99 last week just jumped to $17.99. Airlines still advertise dirt-cheap fares; it's only in the fine print that we discover the one-way trip to London, England, billed at $299, will wind up costing you close to a thousand bucks once all the taxes, fees, levies, surcharges and miscellaneous hosedowns are exacted.
In this environment, Stephane Dion has the unmitigated gall to call for a carbon tax?

It's not that I'm against the idea of polluters paying for their sins. I actually rather like that idea, if it'd work. There can't be any kind of a "cap and trade" system, mind you: that would simply spread the pollution around.

But as for a carbon tax?

Okay, it might work. It seems to have worked in Sweden. But if we're going to enact this thing, I'd really like to stop hearing

"THE NEW TAX WILL BE 'REVENUE-NEUTRAL'."

Yeah, right. And income tax was a "temporary" measure introduced to pay for the First World War. And the fuel surcharge introduced in the Mulroney years was "temporary". Dion's party promised to scrap the GST, too. Taxes are to governments as booze is to a lifelong alkie. Occasionally, the government will issue press releases saying "I'm not really addicted, I can stop any time"...all the while looking around all shifty-eyed for the next fix.

I'm sure Dion's intentions are noble, and the PR campaign is working overtime to convince Canadians that this new tax won't cost (most of) them anything. But that's a load of greenhouse gas. A whole new level of bureaucracy would be created to administer the carbon tax, for one thing, each salary paid for by our tax dollars. But that's really the tip of the melting iceberg.

What is the purpose of a carbon tax? To reduce GHG emissions, yes? But then what happens if GHG emissions are reduced? Then the tax would be reduced as well, right? Sure, and pigs will fly out of my butt.

The problem is that this tax would affect everything. Dion has repeatedly insisted that fuel prices would not rise, or at least that if they do, it would be the result of "market forces" and not the carbon tax. The Liberal leader is either lying or frightfully naive. Does he really believe that any business, faced with a new tax, won't simply pass it along until it lands in your pocket like a Capital One banker. Has he forgotten that everything in the whole wide country is transported using gasoline, and that there's no alternative in a country that, unlike, say, Sweden, is so far flung? Just how much does he plan on reducing income taxes, anyway?

"Market forces", he says. Would those be the same market forces that are turning people away from SUVs and pickups? If the oil supply gets tight enough--and everything I've seen suggests it will--Dion's carbon tax will be utterly and completely redundant.

Not that that ever stopped a government from imposing a tax.