Angry in the Great White North

Recall that when then Liberal leader Stephane Dion's plan to save the Earth with a tax on carbon was finally announced, it went by the name "The Green Shift".  A website was created at thegreenshift.ca.

The problem was that there was a Canadian environmental consultancy firm, run by Jennifer Wright, call Green Shift, with a website at greenshift.ca.

The Liberals seemed to not care about the potential effect on Wright's business, and even went as far as saying that Jennifer Wright would benefit from all the confused Canadians accidentally visiting her site.

Jennifer Wright was not amused, and sued the Liberal Party.  That suit was finally settled out of court, with the Liberals paying a licensing fee for the use of the name.

Well, the election came and went, and so did Stephane Dion's chance to tax carbon.  Immediately after the crushing loss, the Liberals removed the Green Shift carbon tax website, and redirected visitors to the main Liberal Party website.

Over the next few days, all mention of the Green Shift (the tax) was removed from the Liberal Party website.

Indeed, you click on the link on the front page of the Liberal Party website that promises to take you to "The Liberal plan for a richer, fairer, greener Canada", you get a "page not found" error.

But the final act to throw the Green Shift down the memory hole has happened.

The redirection for thegreenshift.ca has been changed yet again.  Now instead of going to the Liberal Party website, it goes to Jennifer Wright's company website using a 302 redirect.  That redirection is happening off the Liberal Party server, which is still acting as the DNS managing requests for thegreenshift.ca.

Perhaps this is part of the settlement with Jennifer Wright.  Perhaps this redirection means the Liberal Party can stop paying the licensing fee it might not be able to afford.  Perhaps the Liberal Party just wants to forget the whole Green Shift debacle, even if it means chucking some of the visitors to its server to Jennifer Wright's company website.

So that's it.  Stephane Dion's Green Shift is well and truly dead.  Good riddance.