Rae, Ignatieff cool to carbon tax

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OTTAWA — Liberal leadership candidates Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff would ditch the Green Shift carbon tax, outgoing leader Stephane Dion’s signature policy, on grounds it was rejected by voters on election day. 

The two Toronto MPs said on separate occasions this week — Rae likened the Green Shift to “cod liver oil” — that the Liberals have to go back to the drawing board to replace their plan to tax diesel and other fossil fuels and redistribute the revenue in tax cuts.

Their positions were aired as an official with the Prime Minister’s Office signalled the Conservatives are readying lines of attack on Ignatieff and Rae on the issue. Briefing reporters on condition he not be named, the official noted that Ignatieff advocated a carbon tax in the 2006 race and that Rae helped write the Liberal election platform which contained the carbon tax.

Rae said the Green Shift was pursued without applying common sense, good judgment or the daily experience of ordinary people. “Politics is not about philosophy or theory,” he said in an interview.

“You go back to the drawing board on how do you get to where we want to get to in a way that’s going to be eminently practical and a way that’s going to raise the interest and the passion of Canadians. It’s not like cod liver oil. You’ve got to make sure that what we’re providing for people is something that they actually want.”

Ignatieff renounced the Green Shift in two television interviews Tuesday evening.

“The voters have told us to come back and think again about how to reconcile environmental sustainability and economic progress,” he said.

Ignatieff’s spokeswoman Jill Fairbrother said Wednesday that Ignatieff would keep the policy goals of environmental sustainability and economic prosperity.

“That’s here to stay,” she said. “The question is how to get that right. Liberals heard from people across the country, from fishermen in the East to those who make their living transporting goods, that they have serious concerns about this, so there’s a lot of dialogue still to be had to come up with a solution that works for everyone.”

The change in tack is certain to spark lively debate as the campaigns to replace Dion take shape.

Toronto MP Martha Hall Findlay said she was disappointed at the abrupt change. The Green Shift is a sound, though miscommunicated policy in her view. “I hope the leadership candidates don’t start down the ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ approach,” she said in an interview.

Dion and some other Liberals blame the unpopularity of the Green Shift on a sustained Conservative attack branding it “a tax on everything.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called it insane, said it would devastate the economy, damage the West and would threaten national unity.

Rae said Liberals have to listen to voters — “If they ain’t buying it, you gotta stop selling it” — and he said the party has to be more practical.

“You don’t start with a theory,” Rae said. “You start with the hard bedrock of the experience of Canadians in all walks of life. If you lose sight of that you can have an interesting life, but it won’t be a successful political one.”

Hall Findlay said the tax-cut side of the Green Shift policy was undersold. Voters mostly heard about the carbon tax. “It was and is the right policy.”

By Juliet O’Neill, Canwest News Service