Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Why Libs Shouldn't Walk Away From Green Issues

...because people haven't, although though here in Canada they have walked away from the Green Shift in particular.

...which is why Iggy's answer here isn't bad, if a bit rote (from James Curran's notes):

Iggy: proud of Stephane's leadership on it. (Should be he wanted a carbon tax shift). Must remain faithful about enviromental sustainability. Gotta get the retail politics of this issue. Gotta figure out how to sell it. Has to work in the air, on the land on the sea where deisel fuels are used. We have to listen to cdns.

I have only vague memories of Ignatieff's 2006 green plan, but I recall it as involving a fairly aggressive cap & trade system. More generally, I think it was a good exercise for all the 2006 candidates to have been required to produce a fairly extensive statement of their environmental principles, and I hope that the same expectation applies this time around (although of course nobody expects them to lean as extensively on their environmental creds as Dion did).
Hint: it might make Iggy more palatable to Left wing of the party, who often look upon him as a Conservative in Liberal dress.
Link to Iggy's old platform paper. Thanks, James Curran.

2 comments:

James Curran said...

http://www.politics.ryerson.ca/rubenson/downloads/Ignatieff_book.pdf

Steve V said...

Ignatieff favored a carbon tax in 2006, even went so far as to "tax at the pump". He spoke about a tax shift, but the really neat part, any money collected from taxes would go back to the paying province on the relief side. It really is a terrific way to stop the "wealth transfer" nonsense, a powerful buffer to that criticism. It will be interesting to see Iggy's environmental plan this time out.