When I got a new computer a while back, I messed up my iTunes and lost some of the settings for podcasts that I would usually load on my Ipod. Today is the day to clean that mess up.
I went to the CBC podcast site to restore my podcasts by region. I noticed what I had not noticed before, so I don’t know how long it has been that way.
There is a podcast for almost every province, except for the Maritimes. But the only city to have its own podcast on CBCis… Do you really have to guess? Yes, you guessed it. TORONTO!
CBC and the Centre of the Universe in this country are one.
Lorne Gunter looks at citoyen Dion’s “Green Shift” and finds it to be a “Green Shaft” for western Canadians: it taxes the base of energy production and gives money based on consumption, which will benefit the place where more people live and consume in the country.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Dion intimated that while Alberta and Saskatchewan have just 13% of the national population between them, their economies could — should — pay up to 40% of the cost of his carbon tax because they produce 40% of Canada’s carbon emissions.
At about $16-billion a year in new carbon levies, the Green Shift would cost each Canadian about $500 a year — just under $2,000 for a family of four. Mr. Dion has promised to return that amount in the form of income tax cuts and subsidies. His proposal would “shift” part of Canadians’ tax burden from income to energy consumption.
But if [sic] won’t shift it evenly across the country. By aiming his taxes at producers, rather than consumers, Mr. Dion clearly means to extract more of his new revenues from some provinces than others — not coincidentally the provinces that seldom elect Liberal MPs. [ed. That must be a coincidence!!]
The share of the green taxes he wishes to impose on Alberta and Saskatchewan would work out to nearly $1,500 per capita, or $6,000 per family. In the rest of the country, the load would be just $325 per person or $1,300 a family. [ed. Why would hick farmers need so much money when slick, latter-sipping Central Canadians can do so much more with it?]
And it’s not as though Albertans, in particular, aren’t making a disproportionate contribution to federal finances already.
In addition to fuelling the federal budget surplus, Albertans contribute about $4,000 more per person to federal finances than they receive back in federal program spending. By comparison, the fiscal deficit Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty frequently speaks of for his province is just over $1,500 per person per year, and Green Shift wouldn’t raise that to $2,000.
Add together what Albertans are already contributing to Confederation with the green surcharge Mr. Dion is proposing, and Alberta families would be kicking in more than $20,000 extra per family if the Liberals are ever returned to power.
Mr. Dion spent four days in the West last week insisting it was not his intent to punish any one region for his environmental fantasies. But on Thursday, on an online news site for northwestern Ontario, Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff admitted that Green Shift was not an environmental proposal, but rather “the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years,” designed to “transfer wealth from the oil patch to the rest of the country.”
With this kind of incentive, I would not be surprised when Ontario flexes its envious electoral muscle and votes overwhelmingly Liberal again.
