Sunday, June 29, 2008

Peter A. Nelson And His Lettuce Fetish


Peter A. Nelson, executive director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association, has achieved a certain level of notoriety lately for being a carrier of Tory water in their attack on the Dion Green Shift.

Specifically, he has argued that:

Transportation costs would rise with increased fuel costs as a result of carbon taxes, prices of consumer goods and food would rise, inflation would then in turn rise.

The average consumer would see this rise in the form of paying $8 for a head of lettuce at your local grocery store.

How do you like them apples, eh? Except that last year when Maine considered running a toll road through the state to the Canadian Border, he argued that

We cannot continue to discuss Atlantica, Atlantic Gateway or Self Sufficiency until we resolve the issues around transportation infrastructure in and out of the region and the rising costs of transportation which are causing Central Canadian shippers, producers and manufacturers to send their goods to higher population areas along the US eastern seaboard and away from Canada’s east coast in other words we are headed for two things in Atlantic Canada, one being that it will soon cost $8.00 for a head of lettuce in Newfoundland and secondly that we will be able to buy any pair of shoes we want in the region as long as they are black oxfords!

So now we're at $16 a head. But there's more! Yesterday, on the Trucknews website, Mr. Nelson argued that recent increases to fuel surcharges levied by Marine Atlantic would have even more deleterious effects:

In short, a couple of years from now you will be able to buy any pair of shoes you want in Newfoundland as long as they are brown oxfords. The region-wide impact will be this: as manufacturers, producers and shippers pull back from Newfoundland, it then becomes very easy to stop shipping to other costly and less populated areas in Atlantic Canada like Cape Breton, southern Nova Scotia and northern New Brunswick," adding that the day of the $10 head of lettuce in Atlantic Canada is not far away.

So now we're up to $26 for a head of lettuce in Atlantic Canada, and a severe shoe shortage!

A couple of things in conclusion: 1) Mr. Nelson should get some new material, and 2) Dion has been lucky thus far in the quality of his Green Shift opponents. He's going to need to remain lucky, however, if every time he tries to explain The Shift he generates headlines like this one.

h/t Calgary Grit.

1 comment:

Ti-Guy said...

Are we talking, Bib, Boston, Swiss Chard or Iceberg here?

Oh, never mind. The complexities of political discussions escape me anyway.