Fuelling distrust

One can always count on the Cons to find some way to make a bad idea worse. And so it is with their laughably inefficient slightly-greener car strategy, which due to the government's incompetence has yet to pay a cent to eligible purchasers:

More than four months after announcing rebates for those who buy fuel-sipping cars and trucks, the federal government has not paid a cent to buyers of 2006 and 2007 models that qualify, and automakers are voicing complaints as 2008 models flow on to dealers' lots.

The ecoAuto feebate program set up in the March federal budget, offers rebates of up to $2,000 and also slaps a maximum levy of $4,000 on gas guzzlers. But it is angering consumers and growing increasingly messy for the auto companies, associations representing the major automakers operating in Canada say in a letter to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Environment Minister John Baird.

“Our members report they are already receiving numerous letters of complaint and frustration over the fact that no process to apply for the rebate has been established,” David Adams, president of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada and Mark Nantais, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association , said in a letter to the federal ministers.

No money has been paid out to buyers of 2006 and 2007 models that qualify for the incentives, Transport Canada spokesman Robin Browne confirmed Monday from Ottawa...

(C)onsumers kicking tires on 2008 models, assuming they will get a rebate, may be out of luck because Transport Canada still hasn't announced what vehicles from the new model year are eligible.

No date is set yet to publish the list of which 2008 models are eligible, Mr. Browne said.

“The government has established a program that continues to be bereft of critical details for both manufacturers and consumers,” Mr. Adams and Mr. Nantais said in their letter.

The article doesn't make clear whether the Cons have been as slow in imposing the new tax on less efficient vehicles. But from the Cons' complete failure to put a rebate in place more than four months after it was announced - not to mention to take any steps to include 2008 models in the program - it's obvious once again that Deceivin' Stephen and company see any real accomplishment as secondary to the PR generated by making an announcement in the first place.

Because the program was so poorly designed to begin with, the environmental costs of failing to follow through with the rebates figure to be minimal. But there's still a serious danger that examples like the nonexistent feebates and the painfully ineffective home-inspection regime will serve the Cons' longer-term ideological goal of eroding public trust in the federal government's ability to get anything done - when all indications are that it's Harper's government alone that's the problem.