Greens' climate plan sees 12-cent tax at the pumps
TheStar.com - News - Greens' climate plan sees 12-cent tax at the pumps
Carbon toll is price to avert environmental `catastrophe,' May says
June 06, 2007
Susan Delacourt
Ottawa Bureau Chief
OTTAWA–The Green party wants Canadian drivers to pay an extra 12 cents a litre at the gas pumps as the price of averting environmental "catastrophe."
Leader Elizabeth May is boasting that her party is the only one politically brave enough to call for carbon taxes that would discourage automobile use and finance other tax cuts that would allow consumers to make smarter environmental choices.
"Right now, the Green Party of Canada is the only Canadian political party prepared to state this obvious reality," May said yesterday. "We will use those carbon taxes to reduce taxes elsewhere."
May rolled out her party's environmental plan yesterday in part to coincide with the G-8 meeting starting today in Germany, where Canada's action on this issue – or lack of it – is a major story.
The Green leader had harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his announced intentions to be a "bridge" between countries that have signed on to the Kyoto air quality accord and the United States, which hasn't.
"If we stop being with the rest of the world and start siding with George Bush, we are global saboteurs and that's what Mr. Harper is doing right now in Germany," May said.
The environmental challenge is similar to the space race about 50 years ago in which then-president John F. Kennedy said the United States would put a man on the moon, May said.
"He couldn't prove it when he said it. He could mobilize the resources, fix the political will, and engage the public's spirit and imagination in a bold, collective venture," she said. "Surely we can do the same thing for purposes of survival."
May sees the political landscape divided on the environment, with Harper's government on one side and the Greens, Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois, with differences on their degrees of activism, on the other.
