Well you’ll be comforted to know that one of the promises listed as “broken” on the Trudeaumeter is to phase out fossil fuel industry subsidies.
I see a distinct lack of “attemped but failed” in that list. That makes me suspicious of the “broken” tally. There is a difference between breaking a promise and not being able to fulfill it.
I like him. Can you imagine any previous Prime Minister at the Tragically Hip’s final concert, looking as if they even remotely belonged there? Trudeau brings a freshness to Canadian politics that is much needed after staid, stoic, stale Harper. I don’t think the running tally of promises kept or broken is as important as the fact that he is going to do his best to leave this country in better shape than he found it.
One promise listed as broken is the ‘admit 30k Syrian refugees by January’ promise. While they did miss the arbitrary deadline, I have a hard time seeing an impartial commentator viewing that as a broken promise.
You do have to wonder about the sincerity of a promise that within less than a year allegedly can’t be fulfilled.
The promise “Guarantee that First Nation communities have a veto over natural resource development in their territories” is something any intelligent observer would have known is completely impossible, for the simple reason that there is no clear agreement as to what constitutes the totality of “territories” belonging to First Nations - some things clearly are, but there are varying degrees of claim and contest over any number of other territories, and offering a complete veto to anyone is kind of stupid.
The plan to accept 25,000 government-sponsored Syrian refugees by the end of 2015 was obviously a logistical impossibility and only a complete sucker would have thought otherwise.
If a promise can’t be done but was insincere to start with, how does one rate that?
The same thing can be said of the other 22 Prime Ministers who’ve served. All have tried to make Canada a better place. Not one of them embarked upon a progarm where they were honestly trying to make Canada a worse place. Some were successful, some were not, some a mix of the two, and some weren’t in office long enough to do anything. “Doing their best to leave this country in better shape” is not a point of admiration, it’s to be expected.
Trudeau is doing okay. Still pretty popular. I knew him in college and he is genuinely principled for a politician. The Liberals have this far avoided major gaffes and talked a good game.
Carbon tax.
To expand on that cryptic comment, he has announced that every province will have to institute either a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax and that if any province refuses, he will institute a carbon in their province. IMHO, this is extremely positive. Needless to say, the provinces that do not already have such a scheme in place or in the works (only Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia do) are up in arms over this “job-killing initiative”. Not that there is any evidence it kills jobs (since it also creates some), but it makes a good line. The other thing he has done is go back to government fact-collecting and also a sane science policy. The previous minister in charge of science policy was a creationist chiropracter who was opposed to what he called “curiosity-driven” research, that is the kind that makes fundamental breakthroughs.
So far, the motion is slow but at least in the right direction and I am moderately happy with him. Of course, being better than his predecessor is a low bar to clear, but he has with ease.
Alberta has a carbon tax plan in the gestational stages, FWIW.
It amazes me how we all view things through a different lens.
Well, the words “carbon tax” aren’t much of an argument. What’s wrong with it? Why is in inferior to other revenue options? What specific market distortion a does it create? Are they offset by positive effects on market failures?
My electricity bill last year was $7,000. That’s what’s wrong with a fucking carbon fucking tax.
ETA: Thank you Hydro One!
So you are aware, I trust, that your electricity bill wasn’t $7,000 because of a carbon tax, right?
Mine was about $800. What the hell were you doing? Not to mention that a carbon tax is fairly unlikely to have much of an effect on hydroelectrically generated power.
Some people are getting completely screwed with delivery charges. The system is insane.
Inicdentally, Ontario’s electricty is mostly not produced by hydroelectric sources, contrary to popular belief. Most of it is generated by nuclear energy. I know it’s called “Hydro One.” and we used to call it “Ontario Hydro,” and people call electricity “Hydro” for some reason, but your electricity is largely thanks to uranium, assuming you live in Ontario. The “Hydro” thing is an artifact of history.
Obviously, a carbon tax would still affect one’s electricity bill, since SOME of it is generated with fossil fuel, albeit not much - less than ten percent - and electricity is basically fungible, it’s not like you can decide you want more electrons from nuclear. Having said that, one’s electricity bill isn’t necessarily all that connected with how much electricity you use or any sort of logic that related to the customer, which is why we have examples of Hydro One customers who used no power at all getting bills in the hundreds of dollars, or people living across the street from each other using the same amount of power and being billed completely different amounts. Ontario’s electricity system is a financial and organizational disaster of epic proportions, many years in the making.
What that has to do with a carbon tax is basically nothing. Carbon taxes can have disruptive effects of the economy, and I think it is reasonable to mistrust the Wynne government about basically anything at all, inasmuch as any sense of honesty or principle was abandoned quite a long time ago. Having said that, the pure economic argument for shifting tax burden to carbon, and away from other things, is extremely solid. You can mess up the implementation of it fifty thousand ways, but in principle it’s actually very wise.
Isn’t “instituting a carbon in their province” what Trump claims to do with impunity?
My God.
This really does sum up what is wrong with the electorate, when educated people can make comments like this.
It is to laugh.
My parents house and Cottage combined was around 7000. The delivery charges to the cottage were pretty substantial. As for the house, they run a huge AC unit and heater in my dads office (he has elderly patients) that accounts for a large chunk. Long story short, maybe theirs is a similar scenario.
As for our little house in the city, we are well under 100 per month and we have bullfrog which apparently inflates it.
No doubt that Trudeau is winning the social media battles with his shirtless photobombs. And at this point he has had more vacation time since he was elected than I have had in the last 5 years.