Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is planning to make a carbon tax a centrepiece to the Liberal election platform.

The Conservatives are all over this carbon tax idea:

The Conservative government's pre-emptive strike on Liberal support for a carbon tax intensified Monday as Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, warned a business audience the proposal would be disastrous for the Canadian economy.

Liberals are still weeks away from a detailed announcement of their plans, but Conservatives are already on an aggressive campaign to brand the measure -- rumoured to be a central plank of Liberal leader Stephane Dion's election platform -- as a giant tax grab.

So if the details are still being worked out, why do we even know about it?  Apparently it was leaked when Ontario Liberals were briefed:

But provincial Liberals at the Ontario Legislature were recently briefed on the findings of one of [Liberal Party pollster Michael Marzolini's] polls, conducted for a private-sector client. An insider who attended the briefing said the data suggest a carbon tax would be a hard sell in the crucial province of Ontario.

According to the insider, the poll found Ontarians are overwhelmingly concerned about climate change and support slashing greenhouse-gas emissions to meet Canada's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

So the Liberals pay for a private poll that shows that a carbon tax idea would be a hard sell in Ontario.  Perhaps this confirms findings by Conservative pollsters, and so the attacks against the idea begin in earnest.

For all we know, the person leaking this information spoke directly to the Conservatives as well, providing details on the poll findings, including where the poll discovered particular weaknesses.

So really, why leak it at all, to the press or to anyone else?  Why make it so easy for the Conservatives by making the carbon tax idea public knowledge, and especially discussing the confidential poll findings that would undermine efforts to sell a carbon tax?

One thought is that maybe this wasn't really a leak, but a trial balloon.  Float the idea out there, and then see how people react.

That would actually be smart.  Unfortunately for the Liberals, this is not a trial balloon.  How do I know?  Trial balloons are always floated by some junior member of the caucus.  If it flies, then the party leadership runs with it.  If it flops, then the party leadership can plausibly deny that the idea was ever part of party policy.

What you don't do, ever, is attach a trial balloon to the party leader himself.  That rather defeats the purpose.

Instead, Stephane Dion is being forced to defend the Liberal's carbon tax weeks before it is officially announced:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is gingerly lifting the veil on a political gamble that's expected to be central to his party's next election platform: a tax on emissions.

Speaking to about 800 supporters in a downtown Montreal hotel, Dion gave a lengthy speech that road-tested the Liberal campaign script, and though the words "carbon tax" didn't actually cross his lips, he made his intentions plain.

"We need a fiscal regime that will discourage pollution rather than reward it. Perhaps the time has come for Canadians to pay less tax on good things like work, savings, and investment. And perhaps the time has also come to put a price on waste and pollution," he said.

He avoids using the phrase "carbon tax" in some hope, perhaps, that the Liberals can still drop this idea if the situation becomes untenable.

But if it does become untenable, the Liberals will have some anonymous insider at a private Ontario Liberal meeting to thank.

Indeed, the way the (as yet undefined) carbon tax has swept away other political issues this week gives the Conservatives a bit of a break, as well as allowing the Conservatives to focus attention again on questions of policy, especially economic policy.

If the leak had originated from a meeting among Quebec Liberals, I wouldn't be too surprised.  Stephane Dion is not popular in Quebec, not even among Liberals.  As seen with the Jamie Carroll incident, there are Quebec Liberals actively working to undermine Stephane Dion.

But this leak came out of Ontario.  Ontario Liberals seem pretty loyal to Stephane Dion.  But perhaps it is better to say that they are loyal to the Liberal Party, and so are not as quick to stab at Stephane Dion for fear of hurting the party as a whole.  So for an Ontario Liberal to precipitate such a damaging leak is significant, I think.

To me it means one of two things:

• The polling numbers about selling a carbon tax in Ontario were really, really bad, and someone wants to deep-six this idea altogether, perhaps to save Dion from his own worst enemy, himself.
• The assumption that attacking or embarrassing Stephane Dion equates to attacking or embarrassing the Liberal Party is held by fewer and fewer Ontario Liberals.  Worse, perhaps some who had increasingly divided loyalties now believe that the opposite is true.  Save the Liberal Party by undermining, and ultimately removing, Stephane Dion.

In any case, now Ontario Liberals can't be trusted.