One Million Canadians Have To Decide Whether To Pay Their Hydro Bills Or Buy Food......

.......you have seen the television commercials. How do the people go green so they can get an energy rebate that is supposed to cover the increased energy costs? Zednik lists some of the major components of Dion's Green Shift and asks some serious questions.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Dion’s Dirty Little Carbon Tax

• Across-the-board personal income tax cuts of about 10 per cent for all three tax brackets, as people pay more for heating costs, food and other items.
• A moratorium on new federal taxes on aviation and diesel fuel for the first year of the program.
• Extra help for low-income Canadians in the form of tax credits so they will get money back to help pay for higher cost of goods, even if they report no income on their tax returns.
• Additional help for rural and northern Canadians to help soften the blow of possibly higher costs.
• Assistance for non-profit groups that may face a crunch — for example, women's shelters that have to pay significantly more to heat their premises.
• New tariffs on goods imported from countries that have no carbon taxes, as a way to even out higher costs for similar goods produced in Canada.
• Enriched tax breaks for companies using and inventing green technologies, to encourage research and development as well as investment.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/18/liberal-carbon-plan.html#socialcomments

Goodness knows I have been a political junky for most of my life, and goodness knows from time to time even the best of us have taken something that the Liberals or NDP have said or proposed and spun it in such a way that it wasn’t quite a lie, but it was a distortion of the truth that was used solely to get a shocked response from the uninformed masses.

This time around, there just isn’t any need.

I have never been “scared” of a government or party proposal, I mean of course there are times where I can seem outraged or stunned but at the end of the day I never fear for a means to be able to provide for my family or continue with my day to day life, or worry about my companies future.

Today for the first time in my life, I am scared.

Scared that people will look at a 10% income tax reduction with a smile on their faces and vote Liberal.

What I need to know is this,

Why are we punishing the middle class for having the audacity to heat their homes?

Why are we punishing commuters because our major cities have a terrible and in most case a near max capacity mass transit system in place?

Why are we punishing those who work in Toronto who had to buy a home all the way in Barrie just so their kids could have a yard, or their own room because the property in Toronto and the area around Toronto is so expensive the average middle class worker cannot even dream of affording it because they made the sacrifice to commute an hour and a half each way so their kids could have it better?

Why are we punishing the lower and middle income Canadians with a higher cost of food, clothes and all bare essentials that we need to live because corporations will no doubt pass the cost of this tax down to them

Why are we further punishing the already struggling manufacturing industries in Ontario and Quebec by charging a further tax over and above the current tariffs on goods imported from overseas? Most manufacturing firms need to outsource to China just to stay afloat, now we want to punish them more?

Why are we going to make lives even more difficult for low income families that do not pay tax by giving them credits at tax time AFTER suffering through a year of painful cost increases?

Why only a one year moratorium on aircraft fuel and diesel? Don’t those working in the Transportation and Airline industries already have enough stress on their shoulders about losing their jobs?

Why are we not rewarding Canadian families who have already tried to become Green, rather then punishing everyone for those who didn’t?

Why is there a carbon tax break for every special interest group, but nothing for the average working Canadian?

Why is there no sort of protection from corporations using this carbon tax as a means to increase profit? All of a sudden we could see an increase in diesel to 2.50 a liter under the claim of the “Carbon tax” is increasing fuel, transportation of fuel, and refining of fuel?

Why is it that the average Canadian consumer will be taxed three times on every good they may buy, as the import tax, the transportation tax, and then the final carbon tax will all be coming out of our pockets?

What a painful and brutal way to punish Canada’s middle class on a plan that does nothing more then punish rather then reward.

Mr. Dion, you should spend a winter in a basement apartment in Toronto making 22,000 a year as so many do and you tell me how “neutral” of a tax this is.

Even for myself, I can work anywhere the perk of my Industry if this tax were to pass I kid you not, I would have an application for my green card in hand and I wouldn’t be at all surprise to see many manufacturing jobs follow me a few kilometers south.