Email
Print
Republish
Save
ShareNews Feature
Coalition stock rising
Stephen Harper’s market cred takes a plunge, leaving options for Lib-NDP government
With just a few days to go before voting time, it looks like all the certainties of the campaign have come undone.
The Tory sweep has turned into an Ontario disaster for them, with the Liberals polling eight points ahead at 34 per cent and the NDP at 24 per cent, just two points behind the Conservatives in Wednesday’s Harris/Decima rolling poll release.
Leadership isn’t just a sweater job after all.
Harper’s numbers are heading south because he met the economic crisis with the same politics of denial that have served him so well on the climate crisis.
When it was just about the environment, burying his head in the tar sands worked just fine. Turned out to be a bad habit, though. Mouthing meaningless reassurance in the midst of a global market meltdown just doesn’t sell.
Change is not a choice this time. It is a clear foregone conclusion. We are in a new time. The credit-driven American (over-)consumer has been the engine of the global economy. They are now tapped out. Turns out unbridled lending and trading on debt has its natural limits, just as natural resources do.
The old economics have come unhinged. A new, more sustainable basis for economic growth is needed, and there is a major environmental message embedded in this crisis. When huge issues go unaddressed, they will come crashing down on us.
Denial is disaster.
And from a climate standpoint, we have been stuck in denial politics during most of this campaign – mostly from Harper, but sadly also from Jack Layton.
He has run a sterling media campaign and galvanized an effective and eloquent response to Harper’s many erosive policies and actions. But Layton’s approach of counterposing cap and trade to Dion’s carbon tax was driven by partisan political necessity rather than good environmental and economic policy.
Motivated by the need to differentiate himself, Layton has been denying the fact that no matter how it is implemented, pricing carbon will cost us all.
I live in Toronto-Danforth and proudly sport a Layton sign on my front lawn. I will be heartsick if his wonderful Toronto team doesn’t include my favourite women in politics, Olivia Chow, Peggy Nash and my own former MPP, Marilyn Churley. I urge you to please vote for these incredible contributors to our federal dialogue, who have earned our support with their talent, energy, commitment and integrity.
But that doesn’t mean the NDP is the best and only hope we have on all and everything. Dion has definitely outdone Layton on climate change.
Layton claims cap and trade is about making the polluters pay. But every credible expert agrees that any price on carbon will ultimately be paid for mostly by consumers. Cap and trade would be just like a tax, but, like the gas price surges we have all been experiencing, imposed in fits and starts, without warning. The two policies are actually complementary and should never have been counterposed. One is immediate and the other long-term.
Dion’s carbon tax plan starts out with a relatively small added cost that increases over time. The tax increase on energy use will be steady and foreseeable, allowing for innovation, planning and incremental investment over time. This is the new foundation for a sustainable economy that we need.
Cap and trade, on the other hand, involves the creation of a complex new regulatory and market system that targets the country’s largest emitters only. It takes a long time to get going (five to 10 years), its effectiveness depends on very technical aspects of implementation, and it’s highly subject to manipulation. While the cost is initially incurred by large emitters, most if not all of these costs are passed on to consumers.
“The argument that a policy capable of reducing carbon emissions will only affect producers is without economic merit,” reads an open letter released Tuesday to Canada’s federal leaders, signed by 200 economists teaching in Canadian colleges and universities
At the same time, although I think Dion’s carbon tax initiative is the best environmental policy ever put forward by a major party, that doesn’t mean I think everyone should vote Liberal.
We are so fortunate in Toronto to be able to express our political will freely among the three pro-environment parties without any worry that vote-splitting will elect a Conservative. There is not one race in downtown Toronto that requires strategic voting, and if anyone says so, they aren’t telling the truth.
If you live in Mississauga, check the website voteforenvironment.ca for info on strategic voting. Otherwise, you’re in the clear.
I think the NDP deserves to be rewarded for its important contribution to the political dialogue in this country, and I strongly urge an NDP vote in the winnable NDP ridings of Toronto-Danforth, Trinity-Spadina, Parkdale-High Park and Beaches-East York. Outside of these, I suggest you see your vote as dropping $1.75 (the amount that every party receives for every vote it gets) into the hands of whichever individual candidate is most ready to work with those they disagree with, to make change happen. Because when we wake up on October 15, we will really need these people. It is already clear that any positive political future for the country involves leaders working across party lines
Here I offer kudos to another amazing woman politician. I truly appreciate Elizabeth May for her visionary insistence that politics can stay truthful and include mutual respect. She is onto something that has been resonating across the country.
Signs of the changing times inserted themselves into the election even before the market dive. This campaign has been a real demo run for a new emerging politics that places value on collaboration and co-operation over intense party partisanship and competition.
Over the last few weeks, I have been writing about and participating in one of the most hopeful and exciting new political developments we’ve seen in a while – a growing citizens’ movement that goes beyond the old politics of us-and-them, seeking ways to work together to get the job done.
The message to our leaders needs to be loud and clear. A new consensus is emerging that on October 15 we expect our leaders to find common ground and work together in a way they never have before.
If they listen to us, we may all be winners this time out.
NOW | October 8-15, 2008 | VOL 28 NO 6
- News
- Pan Am Games pressure points
- Paw prints all over the planet
- T.O. council's left split over mayor's race
- Place of wordship
- TTC's fare game unfair
- Mind the cash gap
- Newsfront
- WEB JAM
- Facebook’s only face
- Letters to the Editor
- Big 3
- NOW editors pick a trio of this week’s can’t-miss events
- Festivals
NEWS POLL
189 Church St, Toronto ON M5B 1Y7 | Telephone 416-364-1300 | Front Desk Hours: Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm | email
Wayne Scott Candidate, GREEN PARTY of CANADA DAVENPORT
http://www.davenportGPC.com
I don't understand your logic here, and how it undermines any reasonable strategy for actually addressing what seems to be your core issue in this election.
If, you have such an obviously strong desire to repair our environment, how could you ignore specifically backing the obvious choice - ME - in the Toronto riding of Davenport.
Is it because I am a member of the GREEN PARTY of CANADA, and you are putting party affiliation ahead of what is best for the planet? What does that say about the message you purport to be offering with your Vote For Environment project?
At the initial Toronto Smog Summit, then-city councillor Jack Layton introduced me as "the man who walks the talk." I actually joined the NDP a little while later when my friend Jack was running for the party's leadership, and personally asked me to. I had specific reservations even then, about his or anyone's ability to address the issues threatening the environment and still serve the interests of the NDP's traditional base. When I raised these concerns with him, he assured me he could handle them. So I signed up and voted for his leadership. But over the ensuing years, the realities of party politics have appeared to take their toll on the NDP's environmental focus, as you yourself, point out in your opinion piece.
So maybe it is because I am not a woman that you have not endorsed me.
I apologize for this failing - to paraphrase Frank Zappa, "I am not female, but there's a whole lotta times I wish I could say I'm not male" - but the only woman running in our riding is the Conservative candidate, and I'm sure your personal bias doesn't extend that far. True, I am replacing the woman whom the GREEN PARTY had hoped to run in our poor, little neighbourhood, but she had to take a job in Ottawa a week before the election was called, and I merely responded to the GPC's frantic search for someone naive/brave (dumb?) enough to take this on, on such short notice.
NOW has reported on my uniquely enviro-friendly activities for years - just ask Enzo - and although your magazine consistently ignored the brilliant Toronto music projects (Whiskey Howl, Robbie Rox, theDifficultMusicians, et al) that have been my joy and honour to be associated with over past decades, I have remained a loyal NOW reader.
And I assure you that I fully intend to continue enjoying your magazine, long after the particulate matter of this contest has settled.
Still, after NOW's well-founded argument against returning incumbent Mario Silva, by not specificly endorsing me, you seem to be suggesting that the NDP's Peter Ferriera might make a better champion for the environment than I. (I received an environment-laced, pre-recorded, scatter-shot phone message from supposedly non-party-oriented municipal politician Gord Perks suggesting the same thing.) I have tried, and I believe succeeded thus far, in running a high-road campaign.
My stated goal from the outset was to engage the electorate and help them to make a more informed choice on October 14th. Right from the start, I even have had both Mario's and Peter's election signs on the front of my house to encourage voters to educate themselves as to what all those anti-Conservative choices are.
This exercise has afforded me so much to be thankful for this weekend. Not the least of which has been the opportunity to meet and listen to the real-life, day to day concerns of so many of my Davenport neighbours.
But the old-school, 20th century-styled partisan politics evidenced by the NDP and its supporters, has been the one true disappointment.
And so much more indicative of 'then' than NOW.
Just trying to keeping my eye on The Ball, eh? Wayne Scott Candidate GREEN PARTY of CANADA DAVENPORT http://www.davenportGPC.com
All comments are reviewed.