The Green Shift?  It's just a tax by another name.  But that name is getting Stephane Dion and the Liberal Party in potentially deep trouble:

An environmental consulting and supply company in Toronto is firing off a legal "cease and desist" order to stop the Liberal party from using the firm's trademark name - Green Shift - for its new carbon-tax plan.

In what could become an embarrassing confrontation for Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, the owner of Green Shift says she is taking the legal step after earlier attempts failed to get the Liberals to drop the name from their environmental plan.

Environmental consultant Jennifer Wright, who has owned Green Shift since 1999 and registered the company name in 2001, said Monday she and a handful of other dedicated environmentalists who work with the firm can't afford to have its identity associated with any political party.

This is not the first time Stephane Dion has taken someone else's efforts in environmentalism and tried to pass it off as his own.  He ripped off David Suzuki's work, but suffered no lasting damage because David Suzuki hastily remarked that he was happy the material was being copied without attribution.

If David Suzuki has no care to protect his intellectual property, then so be it.  Indeed, he probably was happy to see his ideas (and his words) being incorporated into a politician's platform.

But the Green Shift people are not amused:

"For us to take this further (against the Liberals), it's a David and Goliath problem," Wright said. "We're fine on our own, without any political affiliation. We've done everything to build our name on trust and integrity."

She added the company has worked with government departments of all stripes across the country, including consulting with the Ontario NDP for its election campaign last year, and cannot afford being associated with any one party.

Gee, environmentalists who don't think being cast as allies of the Liberals is a good thing? 

Of course, when you think about it, it is not a good thing.  It's a terrible thing.  Just look at this cartoon from today's Edmonton Sun:

The Green Shift people are suffering real damage from Stephane Dion's second known attempt at environmental plagiarism.  Unlike David Suzuki, these people can't afford to be ridiculed in this way, or to be associated directly with Stephane Dion.

The damage they are suffering is real and consequential.  They have every right to go after the Liberal Party to recover their losses and to reestablish their control over "Green Shift".  Indeed, they have to make this effort, because if they don't, the damage Stephane Dion has inflicted on the credibility of their trademark will be irreversible.

The word is that a lawsuit is planned.  When will Stephane Dion learn that just because he likes another person's ideas, his exaggerated sense of his own moral righteousness doesn't give him the right to pass off those ideas as his?

[But be careful if you grab a Liberal Party image...]