Friday May 09, 2008
A minefield to navigate with care
In theory, carbon taxes can play a useful role in encouraging consumers to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. People do change their behaviour in response to prices. In practice, the federal Liberals are taking political and economic risks by considering the imposition of new taxes on the carbon in all fuels. The extra revenues would be used to fund personal and corporate income-tax cuts, so the Liberals can depict these measures as a simple reshuffling of the tax system. But carbon taxes require careful calibration to make sure that they don't sideswipe domestic producers and low-income consumers. It is particularly difficult to ensure that they don't make cheap imports from the carbon-spewing developing world even more attractive when compared with the prices of Canadian products, both our exports and those we use ourselves.
Unmixed findings
Until recently, Tony Clement simply ignored the reams of research on Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection facility for intravenous drug users. Now, seemingly laying the groundwork for the site to be shut down when its exemption from the Criminal Code expires on June 30, the Health Minister has taken to cherry-picking certain studies and misrepresenting them.
Vive le Canada uni
On the beaches of Normandy yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, strongly evoked the memory of Charles de Gaulle in marking the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, yet he tacitly disowned one facet of the Gaullist legacy - favourably to Canada.
