Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Hardly Decimated: (32/27/19/12/8)

by kadyomalley on Thursday, October 9, 2008 11:11am - 47 Comments

Sneak peek at today’s offering from Harris Decima, which has something for everyone to dismiss as unreliable, inconsistent and the result of a rogue poll. Except for BlocWatchers, since my dealer didn’t have that number. I’ll update with a link to the full data as soon as it goes up, but this will tide us over for now:

Conservatives: 32 (+1)

Liberals: 27 (-)

NDP: 19 (-1)

Bloc Quebecois: 8 (-)

Greens: 12 (-)

UPDATE: A little more detail.

UPDATEDIER: Finally! All the details!

Tags: conservative surge!, Harris-Decima, liberals fail to plummet!, ndp support maybe not as sturdy as thought!

More by kadyomalley

TobyornotToby

A stronger mandate? I think another minority Conservative government would mean exactly the opposite, that Canadians don’t trust Harper to govern without compromising with the other parties. Not a mandate to do what he has done so far but to actually work with the House.
Andrew

Stew: you’re right. Cutting federal corporate income tax rates from 22% to 14% (a ppt more than the CPC) can be described as “radically left“.
RyanD

stewacide- you call Martin and Manley “centrist Liberals”? You think the Libs have taken a radical leftward shift? Martin and Manley were on the right of the party. Now you may like their stance or hate it but they certainly weren’t in the Liberal center. Remember that these were the guys who slashed and burned transfer payments to get rid of the deficit. That sort of serious cost cutting is definitely right wing.
As for going radically to the left, I just don’t see it. I think that Dion is returning the Liberals to a more genuinely centrist position (which includes some policies that lean both right and left).
stewacide

The Green Shift is the most radical proposed change to the Canadian economy this side of Communism and Social Credit. The idea that you would INTENTIONALLY LOWER ECONOMY PRODUCTION as if it were a social good in absolute LUNACY.

When and where else in the history of the world has this ever been proposed let alone implemented outside of apocalyptic/aescetic religious theologies? It’s one thing to feel guilty or pontificate about economic growth, but it’s something totally different to intentionally reverse it.

And even if you don’t ‘believe’ the intent of the Green Shift is to lower economic production (which is it’s clear and stated intent: to lower the level of economic activity to lower Co2 emissions ahead of technological efficiency gains), no sane government would turn the tax system completely upside down, totally without global precedent, and in such a way as would make it completely incompatible with the global trading regime.

I’m normally very un-excitable when it comes to politics; I think I have a very well developed sense of proportionality. But this ‘green shift’ is the craziest thing ever proposed in Canada by a party with a shot at government since the ‘real’ Social Credit parties of the ’30s.

p.s. I meant the likes of Chretien/Martin/Manley were in the political centre of the country as a whole.
stewacide

…also ‘left’ and ‘right’ economics are no longer what they used to be, at all. The ‘left’ used to be in favour of stateist development and the ‘right’ in favour of private enterprise, but each shared the same end: development.

OTOH this new ‘green left’, which Dion and the Liberals have come to encompass, is ANTI DEVELOPMENT. This de-industrial economic thinking has been vogue in 3rd world development studies for quite some time, but for it to be adopted wholesale by one of two major political parties of one of the richest and most advanced economies in the world (Canada)… well it’s decadence gone absolutely MAD.
RyanD

stewacide- The point of the Green Shift is not to stop economic development. It is to stear the development in a direction that is environmentally sustainable and potentially beneficial. For example, investing in the creation of environmentally friendly technologies will open up new opportunities and will be to our long term benefit as other economies realize that the current model is unsustainable. In short they aren’t trying to stop growth, they are trying to redirect it. Now you may disagree as to whether the Shift can or will actually accomplish this but to suggest it is intended to stop or reverse growth is simply incorrect.
Andrew

stew: you’re not sounding very credible. If you think a $10 billion tax is going to obliterate a $1.1 trillion economy, you shouldn’t be talking about economic matters.
Jenn

And also, Canada won’t be the only one following a green shifting strategy. In fact, it may soon be one of the few developed countries that doesn’t. Not that I’m saying we have to do as the rest of the world does (witness banking), but it will make it more difficult to trade if other countries penalize us (which they’d have to).
stewacide

I’m pretty sure the carbon tax is supposed to raise $15 billion a year. Compare that to ~$30 billion a year in business taxes presently: that’s a major tax shift.

Plus, it will certainly represent a major re-distribution of the tax burden in the economy (e.g. away from the service sector and toward industry and resources), leading to all sorts of inefficient distortions.

Not to mention it’d be next to impossible to implement domestically, and *literally* impossible to harmonize with our trading commitments (which gives me hope it’ll never be implemented even if the Libs get in).

I think the net effect will simply be to drive emitting industries outside of Canada. The tax is large enough to distort and decimate the Canadian economy, but not large enough to drive technological development ‘ahead of schedule’ or totally re-make the country’s infrastructure, lifeways, and economy base… That is, the Green Shift is large enough to be punitive, but not as all-consumingly radical as would be necessary to actually change the nature of our economy for the ‘better’ (if you think the negligible different it would ever make to global Co2 emissions is a worthwhile ‘better’).
stewacide

Other (i.e. European) countries aren’t doing anything of the sort.

Co2 reduction programs in Europe are a sham. Every excuse is found to make sure emitting industries don’t actually pay to emit: handing out free permits, Deceppe’s ‘territorial’ target approach, endless subsidies and export credits and exceptions, just plain turning the other way. Governments, very naturally, want to be *seen* to be doing something, but they dare not *actually* do anything because it would have an economic (and hence political) cost.

Fundamentally, European schemes amount to subsidies for ‘feel good’ green industries (windmills, solar panels, etc.), but don’t actually punish real-economy emitters disproportionately.

The Green Shift, OTOH, would *ACTUALLY* tackle emissions *FOR REAL* because it’s relatively clear and simple: a price on carbon emissions. And that’s it’s fundamental flaw.
RyanD

Stewicide at 4:19 pm “The Green Shift is the most radical proposed change to the Canadian economy this side of Communism and Social Credit.”

Stewicide at 5:08 pm “the Green Shift is large enough to be punitive, but not as all-consumingly radical as would be necessary to actually change the nature of our economy for the ‘better’”
So it is far too radical and therefore utterly terrifying…BUT one of its major flaws is that it simply isn’t radical enough…uh…wow…what a difference an hour makes.
stewacide

There’s no contradiction. The Green Shift is indeed the most radical scheme ever to come close to implementation in Canada. But at the same time it’s claims that it’s going to fundamentally change the structure of the Canadian economy (besides shrinking it) doesn’t hold: doing so would require a ground-up redesign of the economy.
stewacide

…a ground-up redesign of the economy utilizing alien technology is more correct.

The Green Shift is predicated on the idea that there’s technology out there we can relatively easily/cheaply/rapidly switch to, if only the economy was given a kick in the pants. There isn’t.
Ian

Sure there is, stewie. It’s just been too expensive compared to the price of oil.

Think of it in reverse – people knew about the oil sands for decades, and knew how to get the oil out. But the process was way too expensive until the price of oil went up up up.
RyanD

So you are suggesting that “the most radical scheme ever to come close to implementation in Canada” isn’t radical enough to change anything significantly. It is radical enough to utterly destroy our economy (which I think is a pretty major change) but not radical enough to actually do anything. If that is what you are suggesting I’m affraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one, I just don’t buy it.
As for it being “the most radical scheme ever to come close to implementation in Canada” I’m not so sure. I think the initial implimentation of income tax may have been pretty radical at the time. How about Universal healthcare?
I’m not arguing the Shift isn’t radical but I think you are exaggerating a bit.
stewacide

The most ‘radical’ thing about the Green Shift is that it’s goal is so… I can’t even think of a word… abstract? arbitrary? extraneous?

Tax and structural reforms in the past were aimed at providing some clear public good. You may or may not have at the time agreed with the income tax or universal healthcare, but it was obvious what their aim was, and they were clearly rational aims (funding the government, providing healthcare).

The same applies to traditional left vs. right economic arguments. While there’s no agreement on the means, everyone more or less agrees on the ends.

OTOH the only motivation for this Green Shift seems to be to make the country ‘feel good’ about itself in an extremely shallow sense. I don’t think even it’s most ardent defenders and global-warming-apocalyptics think it’s going to have any impact at all on global warming (although to hear Elisabeth May talk you’d think some fraction-of-a-fraction-of-a-fraction-of-a-percent reduction in global emissions Canada could ever possibly make will be the difference environmental nirvana and the end of life in the universe).
Steve M

Would the Libearls be able to get their Green shift passed if they were to win a minority gov’t?

Jack Layton would have to do an abrupt about-face, but he could probably justify it by saying “Well, at least it’s something”.

Would Duceppe support the Green Shift? I know it’s not his choice (he wants something like a direct money pipeline from Alberta to Quebec), but he hasn’t dumped on it the way Harper and Layton have.
Andrew

stew, you’re glossing over the fact that there have been government projections of the effect of a carbon tax, and it suggests there will be virtually no effect on economic growth. I know you think you are more credible than trained economists, but I think you’re blowing smoke. Provide any shred of evidence (of the empirical variety), that suggests raising carbon taxes and lowering income taxes as the Green Shift suggests would devastate the economy. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.
RyanD

Stew- I’m pretty sure the actual aim of the shift IS to provide some clear public good (ie. a livable planet). Now you may diasgree on the likelyhood that it will work but people also diasgreed with Universal Healthcare (and some still do) and said it wouldn’t work. It seems your last comment implicitly accepted that the shift was not more “radical” than income tax or universal healthcare, rather, you suggested that it was radical in a different way because it gave no clear, agreeable goal. Do we not agree that clean air and a stable climate are good? Considering this, perhaps it isn’t radical in a different way after all.
stewacide

Ian: Just because there’s always been another energy source just over the horizon in the past doesn’t mean either a) that is the case today, or b) we can rush its adoption if there is one.

Principally, if there was an obvious replacement for fossil fuels WE’D ALL BE HEADED THERE! The problem is that we don’t know which direction to row!

That new alternative energy schemes keep popping up and then fizzling out, with no agreement that any of them are viable at scale, suggests to me it’s far premature to try to move away from fossil fuels.

I wasn’t around, but I would guess that wen the age of coal was getting underway any educated person could tell you coal was the future. Ditto when the petroleum age began. The problem with these post-petroleum schemes is that nobody seems to know what’s next!!!
stewacide

“Do we not agree that clean air and a stable climate are good? Considering this, perhaps it isn’t radical in a different way after all.”

Are you saying Canada implementing the Green Shift will do *ANYTHING* to forestall global warming?

That’s how Dion and May are SELLING it, but in reality nothing Canada does at the margin will have ANY appreciable impact in global emissions. Very likely we’ll just drive ‘dirty’ industries off-short to less-technological-advanced and hence more polluting countries.

This Green Shift is more akin to self-flagellation. An economic hair-shirt. It seems predicated – acknowledged or not – that we can somehow make our unsustainable lifestyle ‘cosmically OK’ by paying a bit more for everything.

I for one don’t accept karma in lieu of employment and consumption.
Wayne

an economic hair shirt : good comment and it works on so many levels = well done!