Green Wishes

Here’s a question I wish my Conservative government would ask: does Canada really need 250,000 bureaucrats to run her?
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Soylent Green is about as good a movie as ever to watch while you’re talking about a plan for saving the earth from overconsumption and resources depletion while at the same time as exploding the economies of the world so that they will produce as much as everyone needs and more and in fact leave us with a higher standard of living and a higher level of wealth and prosperity than we had before. Even if we have more people than we had before.
I think we should start with Canada. We can start with the grand bargain. This is an idea that originated with the Tory proposal in Great Britain and also the BC Liberal budget handed down by Carol Taylor, the finance minister, in which she proposed a gas tax of about 4 cents a litre for BC which would collect about $600 million a year for three years for a total of $1.8 billion. I believe this could be the solution for the narrowing surpluses that the slowing economy is providing the federal government while at the same time is unleashing the animal forces of capitalism to give us ever more wealth and prosperity and standard of living.
I believe that we should propose a similar gas tax at the federal level which, if the figures were proportionately the same, could raise as much as $6 billion a year for the federal treasury. The extra revenue from the carbon tax that would be put in place would be enough to eliminate the capital gains tax at the federal level and probably eliminate several other taxes on savings and investment and interest so as to unleash economic growth, the kind of which we have not seen since before WWI. I don’t think of it as a magic bullet, but it seems like an obvious approach that we could use where we would be revenue neutral but we would be reducing the taxes on the productive forces that give us wealth and growth. The main point that Carol Taylor’s budget made that twigged me on to this was the idea of the revenue neutrality. She promises that all dollars raised by carbon taxes would be replaced dollar for dollar by tax cuts on income and business and would make the country a beacon for investment from around the world.
At the same time, the carbon taxes would help us to manage and eliminate excessive carbon emissions and also release the technological drive and invention that would be needed for technologies like carbon capture and sequestration and other methods that would allow us to explore new energy and extract it without carbon emissions exacerbating the global warming or greenhouse situation.
Where I’m going to China on this is in admitting that carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and global warming are important enough priorities to bring in such taxes. It should be done in the context of a carbon trading system which would also make us a beacon for the world in controlling carbon emissions. We would attract many more monies for investment in those strategies. The great idea about this approach is that it doesn’t cost the treasury anything and net it doesn’t cost the economy anything. It takes the pressure off the very activities that will not only make the economy just as strong but stronger yet.
Such an approach would have to be married with a major effort to deregulate and demonopolize the economy at all phases, whether it is foreign ownership of banks, open skies for airlines, the elimination of marketing and other supply management systems for agriculture, the elimination of subsidies and a new unilateral drive for free trade around the world, particularly with emerging and poor nations and especially the agricultural sector. The revenue that we would raise from this, not only from the carbon taxes but also from the new economic activity caused by the creation of many thousands of more jobs with a high value and lucrative businesses, would give the government the ability to provide new resources for the most important government functions, particularly the defence, foreign relations and, above all, infrastructure. They should also be supported by an initiative to find new ways to deliver government services, either through private-public partnership or through outright private in other competitive methods or systems. Infrastructure in particular like road or sewage plants could be delivered in the fashion through mortgages, tolls and other alternative financing options. It would provide new sources of capital. Bonds could finance such projects with very little cost to the government. It would also in the end probably delivery everything from electricity to water on a cheaper, more efficient basis, and create thousand more stockholders in hundreds of new companies that would be involved in industries privately that previously were completely controlled by the public sector. Here we would have the virtuous circle, not only economically in which there is full employment, growth, low interest rates and low inflation because there is no new government money having to be flushed into the economy in an inflationary way, but also in that we would have economic growth. A cleaner environment. Less emissions. More ability to deal with real pollution problems.
If David Suzuki can praise such an approach, then we see finally the signs that something new is happening.
The Toronto Commission, hired by David Miller to look into the city’s functions, also demonstrated some of this thinking. There we saw that, we were richer than we thought, to coin a slogan. It takes an ability to think outside the box, but such a program, if adopted by any party, would lead to a sweeping win in all parts of the country. It would show everyone from Quebec to Alberta and beyond that we were not only serious about the environment but also serious about the free enterprise system. It would prove that we believe in capitalism and it is not only good but that it can bring greater benefits to us all and to the public interest.
If Flaherty had proposed such a budget, it would not have been a matter of us waiting to see if we could make the Liberals approve it and let it pass, but we would be the ones going off to the Governor-General calling for an election.
The party that adopts a strategy like this is the one I support. I feel if we were the ones to do it, we would wrong-foot all of the opposition and after having already defused the law and order and Afghan issues, we will have defused the fiscal, economic and environment issues in a thrice.
I realize the largest political obstacle to this is Alberta and the fact that almost 30 seats in our caucus come from that province. But I believe we would be able to show that this could be good for Alberta as well. If anything, it celebrates the virtues of imagination, creativity and free enterprise that have made Alberta what it is today. It is the great quid pro quo that a country that has been built nearly every province in Confederation on such a bargain (a railroad, a bridge…). We can do it again. We can lead the world. Probably, most of the structural and economic reforms that we require, including deregulation and demonopolization and desubsidization would have to occur once we had a majority. The starting point is the grand bargan. I think it’s probably irresistible.
Stéphane Dion built his whole leadership campaign on green and even dressed his worker in that colour. His chief economic advisors and consultants have spoken the gospel of productivity, cutting taxes and denouncing the lowering of the GST. Now it’s time to marry that idea with Mr. Dion’s sincere belief in green.
But I hope that the Conservatives think of it first. I hope it’s not too late. Perhaps, after a decent interval from the tinkering budget, we can stride ahead and make this the proposal to secure the future for Canadians for generations to come. Or not. But let’s hope the other parties don’t too.