NDP leader Thomas Mulcair takes aim at oilsands

[Julian]

Mulcair needs to ramp it up with the rhetoric and hate. He is presiding over the demolishon of the NDP to anything other than a fringe party!

I Love It!

[WestViking]

The equalization program is due for renewal next year (2013). Whatever plan is adopted will be in place until 2018 well after the next federal election.

Mulcair's attack on the oil sands has major repercussions in the Atlantic provinces. Taxing oil production to feed Ontario's failing manufacturing industry will harm Atlantic porovinces just beginning to crawl out from under 'have not' status.

Manitoba (to my embarrassment) is battling hard to beat out Quebec as the most highly taxed socialist sewer in Canada.

Ontario currently has 40% of Canada's population and a similar proportion of electors. Mulcair wants to turn Ontario into a major recipient of equlaization peyments following the Quebec 'success' at the equalization trough. Mulcair's strategy falls apart when dealing with equlaization as Ontario's 40% population factor means nothing when all provinces are equal in a federal provincial equlaization negotiation.

[styky]

Treasury board president says NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's energy views 'reckless'


Canadian Press May 23, 2012 1:03 PM


CALGARY - The federal Treasury Board president says NDP Leader Tom Mulcair's view of Canada's energy sector is reckless and irresponsible.

In a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Tony Clement focused on Mulcair's recent comments that the country's resource sector and oilsands are driving up the value of the dollar and killing manufacturing jobs.

He said Mulcair's suggestion that energy companies pay for their pollution would cripple an important and growing sector and jeopardize thousands of jobs across the country.

Mulcair is coming to Alberta at the end of the month to discuss the oilsands, but it isn't clear if he will tour the development.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Tre ... z1viMTWy5A

[chainrock]

And now the arseh0leis sticking his nose into municipal politics here trying to pad the upcoming mayoral election for one of his prized dipper flag wavers.

This guy so pi$$es me off that I am even considering removing my facial hair.

[styky]

Mulcair to visit oilsands next week


By Jessica Murphy ,Parliamentary Bureau

First posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 05:03 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 05:16 PM EDT
OTTAWA - Treasury Board President Tony Clement says he hopes NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair's planned visit to northern Alberta will stop him from "dissing" the oilsands.

"I hope he sees things with a critical but open eye and I think he will be impressed," Clement told reporters Wednesday in Calgary.

"If he comes back with the same rhetoric, I don't think he's given the oilsands a fair shake."

The NDP confirmed Mulcair is scheduled to tour the oilsands and Fort McMurray next week - a first for the newly minted NDP leader.

Clement said his own visit to the region about four years ago showed him "the modern day reality of the oilsands."

The Conservative government has been hammering the Opposition leader for weeks over his theory the resource boom is a cause of the manufacturing sector woes in central Canada.

Mulcair's so-called Dutch disease diagnosis has angered Western premiers, who attacked him for the comments over Twitter and in media interviews.

The New Democrat leader has refused to back down from his comments, and Clement warned the Conservatives won't be giving him a free ride.

"He raised that debate first. We cannot let that debate go unmatched with our countervision," he said.

"This may be a debate that goes on three and a half years to the next election."

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/23/mu ... -next-week

[Godwin]

A simple solution exists. Let Ontario, Quebec and anyone else that cares to join them secede from Canada. A clear question and a significant majority and you are done.

[styky]

Mulcair’s carbon flaw: Cap-and-trade raises prices, it doesn’t lower emissions


lorrie-goldstein
By Lorrie Goldstein ,Toronto Sun

First posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 07:06 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 07:08 PM EDT
Imagine you’re NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and you’ve just been elected prime minister.

Now, you’re about to impose a massive, new cap-and-trade market on Canada as your solution to “Dutch Disease.”

In other words, you’re going to hit Canadian energy producers with a new cost, buying pollution permits from the government for emitting carbon dioxide, that they will pass on to consumers.

This will raise the cost of almost everything to the public. But if you’re Mulcair, you’re ecstatic.

After all, by auctioning off these pollution permits to industry, your government is securing a massive new revenue stream for itself from Canadians, worth billions of dollars annually, to pay for your new government programs.

Of course, there will be problems. For example, since, like Mulcair, you’re going to impose a cap-and-trade regime on Canada without there being one in the U.S., you’re about to damage the Canadian economy by making it more expensive to produce goods and services here, relative to our largest trading partner.

Plus, if cap-and-trade works as you advertised it, that is, if it actually lowers greenhouse gas emissions over time, the revenues it generates for your government will also diminish over time.

Sure, you can keep raising the price of the pollution permits by imposing stricter limits on emissions, but inevitably your government will face the law of diminishing returns.

Imagine being an NDP government stuck with a signature new tax that generates LESS money for your government over time. The horror!

Fortunately, the “solution” is easy.

It’s to detach cap-and-trade from the requirement to lower emissions, turning it instead into a modern-day form of papal indulgence that doesn’t help the environment, but simply makes “polluters” (translation, people) pay perpetually for the “sin” of using energy.

Carbon pricing is riddled with this idea of “papal indulgence,” right up to the global wealth redistribution schemes at the heart of the UN’s Kyoto accord and its successor agreements.

These, too, have nothing to do with lowering emissions.

They have everything to do with having the developed world pay a perpetual “papal indulgence” to the developing world, for the “sin” of emitting carbon dioxide, while the developing world goes right on emitting carbon dioxide without limits. (That’s why these UN schemes don’t work.)

This concept of papal indulgence extends right down to multi-millionaire “environmentalists” like Al Gore and Hollywood celebrities, who buy “carbon offsets” so they can nonsensically claim they’re leading “carbon neutral” lives, despite generating emissions based on their extravagant lifestyles that could choke a horse.

In reality, since there’s no way of eliminating greenhouse gases once they’re in the atmosphere — they hang around for anywhere from decades up to thousands of years — there’s no such thing as a carbon offset.

The only way not to emit carbon dioxide, is not to emit it in the first place.

The law of diminishing returns is one problem with cap-and-trade, but there are many others, based on real-world experience in Europe, which has had cap-and-trade since 2005.

Aside from not lowering emissions and driving up the cost of everything, cap-and-trade forces people into fuel poverty, meaning they have to pay more than 10% of their incomes just to power their homes, and is riddled with multi-billion dollar, criminal frauds.

But other than that, it’s a great idea. Honest.

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/23/mu ... -emissions

[styky]

Rex Murphy on Thomas Mulcair: How recklessly unCanadian

Rex Murphy May 19, 2012 – 6:00 AM ET | Last Updated: May 18, 2012 2:14 PM ET
It’s one of the unglamorous but efficient virtues of our federation that — usually — we manage to keep our fractiousness on low boil. A well-cultivated taste for moderation and a reasonable middle way is justly lauded as an element of the Canadian character.

There’s a style to our politics that may not be exciting, but works towards accommodation. Or, when accommodation is not possible, as on certain fundamental moral/political issues — abortion would be a key example — then parties settle for mutual forbearance that sidelines the most passionate agitators on every side of the issue. Our leaders show a considerate willingness not to provoke or agitate on an issue where resolution is unlikely or impossible.

Since Pearson, whom many take as the archetypal “dull but effective” Canadian politician, a leader of depth not display, we have willingly accepted an unexciting politics as long as it helps take the sharp edges off the great rifts and differences that are inevitably in play in so large and diverse a country. This mode is not always possible, of course, but it is by far the most desired, and usually serves to keep the social temperature down......................http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... ncanadian/

[styky]

New poll suggests Canadians split over NDP Leader Tom Mulcair's energy views

By: Steve Rennie, The Canadian Press

Posted: 3:02 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies) | Last Modified: 7:18 AM
OTTAWA - A new poll suggests Canadians are roughly split over NDP Leader Tom Mulcair's contention that the Alberta oilsands have given the country a case of Dutch Disease as he prepares to visit the province next week.

Mulcair has suggested the Alberta oil exports raise the value of the Canadian dollar, which in turn hurts the economy in other parts of the country.

The phenomenon is dubbed the "Dutch Disease" in reference to the manufacturing decline that occurred in the Netherlands after a boom in natural gas exports in the 1970s.

The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests slightly more Canadians disagree than agree with Mulcair — 45 per cent compared to 41 per cent — although opinions varied across the country.

The telephone survey of just over 1,000 people was carried out between May 17 and 20 and has a margin of error of 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Most people polled in oil-rich Alberta and the rest of the Prairies disagreed with the NDP leader, while those in Quebec and British Columbia were most likely to agree with him.

The poll indicates most people don't share Mulcair's sentiments in Ontario, the country's manufacturing heartland, where the economy has been hard hit from the restructuring of the North American auto sector and other blue-collar industries.........................http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada ... 70435.html

[RedDog]

So 41% agree with Tommy the Commie. Some would say that tells you all you need to know about Canada.

[chainrock]

"while those in Quebec and British Columbia were most likely to agree with him."


Well.......... I'm shocked.

[styky]

Redford targets Mulcair before oilsands visit

By Jessica Murphy ,Parliamentary Bureau

First posted: Friday, May 25, 2012 04:56 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, May 25, 2012 05:07 PM EDT
OTTAWA - NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair will visit Fort McMurray next week, but that hasn't convinced Alberta Premier Alison Redford he has an open mind on oilsands development.

"I find him quite unpredictable with respect to some of his comments," Redford told reporters near Edmonton on Friday.

She also urged him to come clean about whether he sees Canada's resources as a "tremendous benefit" to the country.

"There may be people that don't share that view and he very well may be one of those people," she said.

"But then he has to be clear about that because what it means in terms of his position is that it changes what Canada's economy looks like."................http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/25/re ... ands-visit

[Jean]

"while those in Quebec and British Columbia were most likely to agree with him."


Well.......... I'm shocked.

Everyone exeptected Québec to agree with Mulclair the most. It's BC that surprises me, I tought they would side with us.

[Edward Kennedy]

"while those in Quebec and British Columbia were most likely to agree with him."


Well.......... I'm shocked.

Everyone exeptected Québec to agree with Mulclair the most. It's BC that surprises me, I tought they would side with us.

BC is a beehive of lefturd lunacy.

[styky]

Facts a cure for Mulcair's disease

By Monte Solberg ,QMI Agency

First posted: Sunday, May 27, 2012 08:00 PM EDT
One of the best parts of a bona fide world financial crisis is it forces us to come face-to-face with reality, though that first meeting almost never goes well.

For instance, the Greeks are finally facing up to the unpleasant reality they’re broke. When this sad fact first became apparent, the Greeks rioted because they were mad about reality being so mean to them.

But now at least some Greeks are accepting reality, if not exactly celebrating that it has moved into the spare bedroom as a way to save money. Anyway, the people of Greece will be better off once they accept that for the next few years they will have to be worse off.

In Canada, Thomas Mulcair must face up to his own alarming reality, which is Canada isn’t broke. In fact, Canada is doing quite well due in part to our resource sector, which notably includes the oilsands. What I was shocked to learn from Mulcair is the oilsands gave us Dutch disease, which causes embarrassing symptoms like a flaccid manufacturing sector and excessive emitting from the petroleum sector.

Does Canada really have Dutch disease or is it Thomas Mulcair who has a disease? Could it be that he is allergic to prosperity?

I’m no doctor, but I am pretty good at arithmetic, and Mulcair’s story doesn’t add up. Canada’s oil and gas sector produced $54 billion in GDP in 2010, an impressive number to be sure. But manufacturing, mostly centred in central Canada, was almost three times bigger at $160 billion. Those manufacturers produce automobiles that run on petroleum, which in turn encourages more development of the oilsands.

Bigger yet is central Canada’s $257 billion financing, insurance, real estate and company management sector, which also finances the oilsands.

But we should ignore these facts because Thomas Mulcair has a disease he is determined to spread to us and you can only catch it if you ignore reality.

In this case, we are supposed to believe that, despite accounting for less than 5% of Canada’s total economic output, the oil and gas sector is somehow primarily responsible for the high dollar.

Then we are supposed to believe the high dollar is primarily responsible for the troubles in manufacturing. Then we are supposed to not notice the recent strength in the manufacturing sector.

We should also ignore the fact there wouldn’t be an oilsands if consumers, including millions of Canadians, didn’t demand more and more petroleum. For good measure, let’s ignore the new study that shows significant improvements in reducing carbon output per barrel in the oilsands.

But the real problem with Mulcair’s disease is it distracted us from noticing that a strong resource sector has helped protect Canada from economic shocks. Selling those commodities to the entire world ensures we aren’t too reliant on either just domestic consumption or manufacturing exports to the U.S.

The reality check for Tom Mulcair is the resource sector he derides gives Canada added protection and prosperity that is a comfort in these troubled times.

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/25/so ... rs-disease