The Truth About “Revenue Neutral” Carbon Taxes

The local rag out here in Surrey has come the closest I have seen of any newspaper to tell us the real story on carbon tax.

BC is the only province that has one, and the government claims it is revenue neutral.  The Surrey Leader timidly crunches the numbers.

They use two case studies: the $40 000 a year single woman, and the $70 000 a year single income 4 person family.

The numbers for the single are crunched most thoroughly, and you get the sense that more often than not, the single will come out ahead in this carbon tax scenario.  Fine.

But then look at the family.  The paper doesn’t do nearly as thorough a job breaking this scenario down, because the numbers quickly get ugly.  They barely break even, and only if you assume that they drive less than what is really a very low number for kms driven.  Especially if those kids are in sports, or any extracurricular activity.  And the number sinks still lower when you factor in that most families live in places heated by natural gas, which also has a carbon tax on it.  The number of kms becomes even more unachievable if there is a dual income, which is more and more common.

When you look hard at the numbers, it is not even close.  The carbon tax is nowhere near revenue neutral for families in BC.

Maybe we should change the name to the “Family Tax”.

Justin Trudeau promotes Franglais

I thought the Conservative.ca website was really bad self-publicity until I learned about Justun.Caca! Maybe he wants to fight the Europen elite or maybe he just wants to one-up a fellow second-generation politician? I wish I had caught it earlier.

Race Can’t NOT Be a Factor in the Presidential Election ‘08

The polls are close, and lefties are surprised.

What would account for this tight race?

Quality of candidate?  No.  Barack Poppins is practically perfect in every way.

Policies?  The Brilliant Obama has thought out carefully every one of his positions… which is why he votes the Democratic Party Line so much more often than McCain did for the Republicans.

No, it must be race.  More than half of the United States of America is deeply, profoundly racist.  And that half, coincidentally, overlaps perfectly with Republican voters.

Yeah, that’s it.

Yes, true believers.  No matter what happens in this election between now and November.  No matter what is said, no matter how the leaders campaign, no matter who is the better candidate.  If John McCain wins the election, it’s because America is racist.

A flowered hat tip to Wonder Woman.

BREAKING: Is Garth Turner Splicing Images?

It has not been a good week for Garth Turner so far, what with his campaign being caught in an attempt to present an overly favourable electorate in Halton where none exists. However, the week is only half-way over and I noticed something a little fishy today on his blog…

Today’s post is supposed to be a juxtaposition of Stephen Harper’s visit to the same room Stephane Dion visited during the summer. Aside from the camera shots being at different points, giving us only a glimpse of the room in Harper’s case while Dion’s was the panorama, the graphics designer in me also picked up another issue immediately:

See that? Well, at first I had to be sure myself, so I blew up the image to get a closer glimpse…

Yup, that lady seems to not only have two different hair colours, going straight down the middle from the angle that the picture was taken, but she also wears two brightly different shirts! In other words, it’s clear that this photo has been doctored and cannot be trusted as an authentic view of the Dion event. Who knows, maybe Turner and co. took some of the extra people from the Harper event last night! The bigger question though is why Garth Turner (who, in this case, is personally responsible for his blog) insistent on deceiving voters? Oh, and on that note, since some of us Blogging Tories have known Garth to revise history…

Census forms and personal identification stolen in Surrey, B.C.

Just out of curiosity: are they reporting in the Surrey, B.C. news that completed census forms from 2006 were stolen by identity thieves? They are in Montreal. Through the access to information law, reporters recently learned a lot more was stolen too: credit cards, undelivered mail, card readers, debit machines, drivers licenses, government cheques, counterfeiting equipment and CDs containing thousands of personal profiles. The RCMP insist that the people arrested were not employees of Statistics Canada nor of Canada Post — they stole all of this stuff by knocking over mail boxes and breaking into homes or cars. We will have to take their word for it.

Nobody is required to vote but everybody is legally required to fill out census forms. So, now that you know your personal information is not safe, should that change how you respond? I think you should. [Even if your information was safe I think you should reconsider how you respond anyway. Did you know that Lockheed Martin got the contract for this last census and the next one?] Your single vote makes no difference to the result of an election but census data is often used more directly when it comes to the allocation of funding for various government interventions — for instance, public schooling. Just think of this: sympathizers of various groups or social causes can lie to deliberately skew the data even if they are not part of those demographics themselves.

Whether they are identity thieves or policy makers, you really have no idea who has access to this census data and what they do with it.

Surrey BC Riding Watch: Newton/North Delta

Newton/North Delta

Incumbent: Sukh Dhaliwal (LIB)

I drive through this riding every day going to work, and I also go to church down there so I see a lot of this riding.

A little bit of history: this is Gurmant Grewal’s old riding. He had unfavourable publicity after he claimed to have been approached by the Liberals during their minority government to switch sides.  This led to him not running again in the ‘06 election.  Interesting note: his wife, Nina Grewal continues to hold the riding of Fleetwood/Port Kells.

So, the current incumbent, Sukh Dhaliwal, rode to victory on a bit of a reaction to Gurmant’s episodes.  As such, it seems to me that he holds his seat fairly tenuously.  I haven’t really heard of him doing much of anything of note in parliament.  Recently, he has been in the media spotlight for attempting to aid a convicted international drug smuggler in returning to Canada after his extradition to the USA to face charges.  This can’t reflect well on his campaign in Surrey, a city with a bad reputation for crime already.

As far as early race indicators, his competition seems to be a new Conservative nominee, Sandeep Pandher.  The Hill Times reported a bit of a row over Pandher’s nomination as until 2006, he was a member of the Ontario Provincial Liberal Party.  The candidate contends that there is a difference between the provincial and federal parties, and I agree with him, but an Ontario Liberal is not a BC Liberal, whose tent holds many many federal Conservative supporters.

The other strike against him seems to be the fact that he isn’t really local.  If he was a member in Ontario until 2006 he can’t have even lived in BC longer than a few years.  A parachuted candidate may not have much of a chance unless this riding is really a party voter for Conservatives, and only elected Dhaliwal as a reaction.

Both candidates have littered the major roadways with signage already.  In several places, I have wondered if they are actually in breach of rules regarding sign proximity.  Some of them along 88th Avenue appear to obscure sightlines to their opponents’ signs.

I’ll be back with an update next week!

Surrey BC Riding Watch: Surrey North

Surrey North

Incumbent: Penny Priddy (NDP) not running again

Surrey is full of ridings with history.  This one is perhaps the most nationally recognizable, as Chuck Cadman attracted national attention when he became the focus of a non-confidence vote during the Liberal minority government prior to 2006.  At the time he was sitting as an independent after losing the Conservative nomination during the 2004 election.  His vote could have brought down the government.  After checking with his constituents, he decided to support the government.  Later, stories circulated that he was offered bribes, and there are still some questions as to whether he was offered an insurance policy for his health in return for bringing down the House, as had the government fallen and he succumbed to his cancer, his family would not have been eligible for the benefits that he could have had as an MP.  A few months later he did pass away, to the chagrin of his constituents and family who missed his stand against crime, which was the original reason he sought office.

The 2006 election saw former provincial cabinet minister, NDP Penny Priddy run for the seat and win, with the endorsement of Dona Cadman, Chuck’s widow.  This year, Dona is running as a Conservative, having apparently resolved the issues that stood between the Conservatives and her late husband.  Penny Priddy has decided not to run again.  Given the Cadman family’s name in the riding, I don’t see anyone being able to stop Dona taking her husband’s place in Parliament.  But I will keep you posted on developments.  Put this one down to an NDP loss and a Conservative gain.

Election Questions

This is Robert Stanfield, long time Premier of Nova Scotia and leader of its Conservative Party, and a leader of Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party during the Trudeau era. In provincial politics he turned a pitiful party with zero seats into a political powerhouse that won majority after majority under his leadership.

He entered federal politics when he threw his hat into the race for PC Leader, a position he had previously declined to compete for. When he did announce, however, he quickly became the front runner and a favourite for Anti-Diefenbaker Conservatives.

He led the party into the 1968, 1972 and 1974 elections, losing all three times to the Liberals. He favoured policies such as official bilingualism that were meant to appeal to Quebec voters, but in the end he failed to manage any great successes in the province.

————-

Stanfield, like Harper, ran his party in an election times very closely before that of the American Presidential election, in 1972. Also like our current situation, the election was closer than most in recent memory and many predicted a Conservative victory. Another similarity would be that the Liberal Party did not really have much of a platform, and voters had a hard time finding ways to align themselves with them.

Of course, there were differences. Dion is no Trudeau, and the Liberals went on to win, albeit very closely. And there was no Bloc to get in the way in Quebec.

However, it seemed rather similar to me, and it brought to my mind some questions that I think we should ask about the current election.

1. Is there a scenario where we could see the Liberals winning, either by majority or minority?

2. What would this election look like without the BQ? Would the Conservatives, Liberals, or NDP gain the most? Who would LOSE the most?

3. What happens to Harper if he DOES lose? Does he keep the leadership?

4. What happens to Dion if he wins? Does he become the next Chretien?

5. Is there a scenario we could see that would have the Bloc losing their major party status, either now or in the near future?

If you can answer these questions, please do.

Surrey BC Riding Watch - Fleetwood/Port Kells

I plan to do a weekly update of the local races in the South Fraser Valley area.  It turns out that several of the “battleground” ridings of this election are ridings I live in or drive through every day.  I thought people might be interested in what is going on and how the races are shaping up.

Fleetwood/Port Kells

Incumbent: Nina Grewal (CON)

This is the one where I live.  Since the write was dropped, her signs went up early and plentifully, closely followed by her NDP opponent, Sao Fernando.  This riding has been mentioned in several places as one to watch, as support for Nina has never been that strong even though she has been elected twice so far.  It’s supposed to be a close race because the Liberals have tapped an ex-provincial cabinet minister under the BC Liberals, Brenda Locke to run against her.

My sense is that Grewal’s weak support comes from her marriage to the unfortunate Gurmant Grewal.  His fall from grace attracted a lot of negative publicity and caused him to lose his seat, which I think unsettled her team in Fleetwood.  I think most voters in this riding just vote Conservative, and would vote for a dog named Rover if he ran as a Conservative.  She’s been adequate but unspectacular in my view as an MP.  I don’t see her around the riding much.  I watched her in a candidates’ debate during the ‘06 election and she was very party line up until the point where a man on an open mike said something that she took personally, then she got very animated.  If she showed that passion about her party and its policies, I might actually vote for her instead of just against the other parties.

Having said all that, I have also seen Brenda Locke at a candidates’ debate when she ran for the Provincial seat of Surrey/Green Timbers against Sue Hammell.  She was also singularly unspectacular, and lost to Sue in the election, despite Hammell actually living in Victoria and not even being from Surrey.  I don’t see her as being much of a “star candidate” though she does have a public profile, which is more than I can say for the NDP candidate.  The fact that it’s a week into the election and I have yet to see a single Liberal sign up in the riding leads me to believe they don’t have an organization in place to back her, or that organization is very weak.

So far, I don’t see a threat to Grewal’s seat, though she’s not done much to impress as an MP.  Tune in next week for new developments.

Justin Trudeau in it for the show!

Whether he knows it or not, I think Justin Trudeau has a fine grasp of politics — it is all about the show:

“Listen, I’m not going to go out of my way to demonstrate the depth of my knowledge about this, that or the other thing because that’s a losing game,” said Trudeau, who has been a teacher and community worker.

— and most of us really do not expect you to have any depth of knowledge anyway.

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