Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion was forced to throw even more money at people who really don't like his carbon tax in an effort to mute their complaints ahead of a possible election:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has fined-tuned his party's main election plank, which he says will "reconcile the economy with the environment."

Speaking to his caucus on Wednesday, Mr. Dion said a Liberal government would set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to help groups likely to be hard hit by his proposed new fossil fuel taxes.

The sweeteners include $400-million in emission-reduction credits for farmers and forestry workers under the proposed Green Shift and a $250-million "green farms fund" to support environmentally friendly research aimed at cutting fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Another $250-million fund would help fishermen and truckers go green.

That ought to keep those truckers happy, right?

Wrong.  The Canadian Trucking Alliance has come out against the carbon tax, including the adjustment:

David Bradley, CEO of the Canadian Trucking Alliance says today’s announcement from federal Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, calling for a $250 million, four year fund to help the fisheries and transportation sector invest in green technologies is not likely to take away much of the sting from the carbon tax originally proposed in Dion’s Green Shift plan. “The trucking industry is already making the shift to smog-free engines, ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel and proven and available GHG busting technologies and devices,” he said. “What we need is a rebate program to accelerate the investment, especially during these tough economic times. “ In fact it has its own plan called enviroTruck which it says would remove the GHG equivalent of 2.6 million cars or 64,000 trucks from the highways.

Bradley says that it is not clear whether the fund announced today would be used for rebates or distributed some other way. In addition, he says "when the Liberal proposal is looked at over four years and spread across the all the freight modes and the fisheries industry it is unclear how much will really be available for the trucking industry."

He says that the trucking industry, which consumes just over 7 billion litres of diesel fuel per year to power its fleet of tractor trailers, is currently paying over $280 million a year in federal excise tax on diesel fuel – a form of taxation which is archaic and regressive and should have been repealed or reformed years ago. If according to the Green Shift plan a new carbon tax was to kick in and add another 7 cents per litre to the cost of diesel fuel, the additional tax paid by the trucking industry would be close to $500 million per year. "We still end up paying significantly more tax at a time when the industry is suffering from higher fuel costs, the appreciation of the Canadian dollar, border delays and a freight recession in both the United States and parts of Canada. Not to mention that trucks are responsible for the distribution of 90% of the country’s consumer products and foodstuffs as well as two-thirds of our trade with the US.”

The truckers want a rebate, which means cash, which essentially means they don't want to pay Stephane Dion's carbon tax.

But Stephane Dion won't give it to them.

Instead, Stephane Dion is going to make sure that Canadian consumers are forced to pay for the half a billion dollars in taxes levied against truckers in Canada.  Canadian's whose jobs depend on exports will see the cost of the products shipped to the United States go up as a result of Stephane Dion's carbon tax, making Canadian goods less competitive and throwing Canadians out of work.

But then Stephane Dion's carbon tax also funds anti-poverty programs, which would come in handy for these people.