Criticism of Kennedy's position came up in the debate, as well as in the media. A blanket tax system puts an unfair burden on people who drive high emission vehicles for practical purposes. Punishing farmers, tradesman and anyone else who has a practical application for large vehicles alienates people unnecessarily. As Kennedy fleshes out his ideas, I hope he amends his proposal to exclude those that can legally justify their need for bigger vehicles. There is a massive difference between someone who has a "gas guzzler" for status and convenience, over someone who needs such a vehicle to carry out their economic survival. Living in rural Ontario, it is beyond obvious that farmers need bigger vehicles for a myriad of tasks that are essential for their livelihood. Lumping these people into the mix disportionately punishes those with practical needs. The true target in this debate should be the urban/suburban driver whose automobile choice is "recreational", with no relationship to objective need.
At this stage in the policy discussion, candidates are giving us a flavor as to how they approach environmental matters, as well as a level of seriousness. I think Kennedy's policy paper shows an understanding of the gravity of the situation and is a good first step. I hope, over time, as Kennedy gets a better understanding of consequences, he elects to modify his approach to show a "fairness" that zeros in on the true targets, without collecting people who have legitimate needs. A simple look out into the summer sky from various locations clearly shows where are the main concerns. The difference between shades of blue and varying degrees of brown clearly illustrates where the problem lies, hopefully Kennedy addresses this asymmetry as his policy evolves.
6 comments:
Any attempt to regulate based on where people live may result in some city types registering their SUVs at their cottage addresses - that should be #1 on the list for the parliamentary draftsmen. Perhaps Kennedy (and Ignatieff) should look at these kinds of offsets:
1) All additional revenue strictly ringfenced to support of federally assisted environmental projects. (In Ireland this was done with the C$0.22 plastic shopping bag tax.)
The federal assistance could be in the form of assisting municipalites and provinces with best practice planning more than direct aid so that technologies that are seen to work in some parts of Canada rapidly propagate across the country. Environmental cleanup of contaminated federal land (such as military sites) could be another funding area.
The feds should have a well resourced research centre scouring the environmental literature for emerging projects in Europe and other parts of the world, particularly in areas like 2nd gen ethanol and biodiesel from straw, pulp mill effluent and other waste streams rather than "1st gen" sources like corn which will impact on livestock industries like poultry and corn derived human foodstuffs. The provinces and municipalities could then access this data without the usual junketeering across the world by non-technical councillors and MPPs looking at cooling towers and storage tanks.
2) Improvement of rural incomes such that they can absorb high fuel costs which will inevitably come due to tighter supply and/or carbon taxes. This could be in the form of vastly improved financial and technical assistance to farmers getting out of unprofitable crops (or undesirable ones like tobacco) or livestock, or in assistance to co-operatives who are looking to return value added meat processing from the US to Canada to guard against future border closures.
Assistance in the processing of farm wastes to energy or alternative products (such as the project to produce grapeseed oil in Niagara) should be heavily supported as farm wastes are incredibly polluting. Remote farms should be largely capable of being off grid using solar, wind and/or water microturbines with the hydro connection becoming a backup or even an income source.
3) Broker agreement between all provinces (make the Council of the Federation do something useful and along the lines of the European Council) on switching annual vehicle licencing fees to one geared to CO2 emission/km (as in the United Kingdom) and harmonised across Canada in such a way that while it would be impractical to register in another province to save substantial amounts, the fees would continue to accrue directly to each provinces.
Farmers registering farm vehicles to be allowed fully deduct taxes on new vehicles against farm income, with a sliding scale of deductions for older vehicles to encourage upgrading.
4) Federal improvements to cross-provincial hydro connections particularly to improve uptake of renewables such as in QC, NL and MB - Bob Rae was right, this is the kind of national project Canada's federal government should be doing. Electrification of heavily used commuter services like GO Transit and the O-Train should commence with a goal of eventually deploying electric locomotives on both cross-provincial passenger and freight lines, powered by small, redundant, distributed generators in remote areas which would also power the local villages and towns and feed the National Hydro Grid which would almost certainly be close to major intercity transport links anyway.
Taxes on fuel and automobiles are frequently seen as a cash grab - it has to be clearly demonstrated that these fees will improve transport infrastructure, will not penalise rural dwellers but could make them richer and will demonstrably improve existing environmental damage.
mark
I don't mean to suggest it should be based on "where people live", only that there should be exemptions if someone can prove an economic justification.
The shopping bag tax is an excellent idea! Maybe "made in Canada" could also include a Tim Horton's cup tax so I don't have to see them on every road or park I go to ;)
steve
yeah I know what you mean - it's just that "farm vehicles" are frequently driven by upscale types so it's important that actual use rather than the "potential use" be determined in any exemption :)
mark
agreed.
When you start putting exemptions such as these in, you loose the original intent while increasing administrative costs.
This will encourage users of high emitting autos to tell the manufacturers to make better less emitting ones.
ronald
Every rule needs an exemption, in this case a blanket policy is unfairly harsh on the people who have legitimate needs.
There are already a myriad of low-emission vehicles, and some 4 cylinder "SUV's", people just choose the big cars.
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