Either/or

In trying to defend their carbon tax, more than a few Lib supporters have made the point that a carbon tax and other plans like cap and trade aren't mutually exclusive. And in theory, that's a fair enough claim. But it might help if somebody informed Ralph Goodale of that fact, considering that his latest submission to the Leader-Post couldn't be much more clearly directed against the very idea of regulating greenhouse gas emissions:

What about Stephen Harper's plan? Harper is proposing a punitive regulatory scheme. It would involve quasi-criminal penalties against all energy utilities, like SaskPower and SaskEnergy, the oil and gas industry, IPSCO Steel, PotashCorp, Cameco, cement companies, chemical producers and many others.

In their public sales pitch, the Conservatives peddle the false notion that this scheme would be entirely cost-free. Nothing will impact investment or consumers, they claim. They'll just slap carbon regulations on "dirty" businesses spewing emissions.

But if those Conservative regulations are more than just a sham, they will indeed create new business costs to be passed along to consumers. Unlike the Green Shift, however, there will be no offsetting tax cuts of any kind. And a small army of bureaucrats will be required to enforce the Conservative regulations.

Remarkably, Goodale only hints at the virtual certainty that the Cons' intensity-based scheme will be next to useless in actually reducing emissions. Instead, he eagerly throws out loaded terms like "punitive", "quasi-criminal" and "small army of bureaucrats" to try to paint any effort to regulate emissions in as harsh a light as possible - and that analysis applies equally strongly to either the Cons' regulation-only approach, or the cap-and-trade system favoured by the NDP.

From what I can tell, there's absolutely no way to run a cap and trade system without exactly the elements which Goodale is criticizing. It's obvious that some public-sector resources are needed to monitor compliance with any system, and at least some real penalties are surely a vital element in ensuring that industry carries out its obligations to monitor and report on emissions.

Which means that either Goodale's latest screed reflects general Lib disdain for some of the required elements of any cap and trade system, or Goodale is trying to peddle a line which directly contradicts the position which other Libs are trying to use against the NDP in other parts of the country. If it's the former, then the NDP does stand alone as the only federal party looking to include Canada in the international consensus favouring cap and trade - and if the latter, then Canadians have one more reason to doubt anything the Libs say about the carbon tax.