Hopefully the only thing that changes is the way we vote in the next election
To the Expositor:
A Cabinet document recently leaked to the Globe and Mail contained some detail regarding the pending Climate Change Action Plan the Liberals are about to make public. My last note to this newspaper discussed Naomi Klein and The Leap Manifesto and her version of economic madness. This latest piece of work from Kathleen Wynne should make Klein green with envy. It is one thing to pontificate about the benefits waiting for all of us if we embrace the Manifesto. It is quite another matter for the Government of Ontario to table an action plan that clearly will serve to cripple an already economically sick province.
If you think that the current government has mismanaged the energy file over the last 13 years, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This latest document will bulk up the Economic Section of the Book of Morons like it has never been bulked before.
A hint of what is to come:
• natural gas is to be banned. Home heating will be electric or geothermal. Never mind that over 70 percent of homes in Ontario are currently fitted with gas heat. Never mind that it is a clean and economic source of heat [which is why people use it]. Of course, here on the Island, read propane instead of natural gas. Never mind that it is the most economic and reliable power source to bring on to manage peak and swing loads [which is why it is used for this purpose everywhere on earth].
• Four billion dollars will subsidize retrofits of buildings to get them off of natural gas.
• Homes will require an “energy-efficiency” audit before they can be sold.
• A big push for electric cars. Every two car family will have one electric vehicle. This to happen within eight years. Plugs-ins for electric vehicles installed at every LCBO. You can knock back some of that grog you just purchased waiting for the battery to charge.
All of these things will rely on electrical energy that has tripled in price on the Liberal watch—and again, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
A couple of salient and recent quotes from the Financial Post:
• Ross McKitrick, “The climate file has pushed deranged extremism into mainstream policy planning.”
• Kevin Libin, “In an era where assisted dying is the big thing with Liberals, this could be the first case where it’s tried on a province.”
Just a couple of additional points, Glenn Murray, Minister for the Let’s all Hold Hands and Jump off an Economic Cliff movement, has suggested that the government will show some responsibility and subsidize increased costs for home heating that will be sure to come. Someday, someone will take some pain to explain to Murray that the government is not a source for money, taxpayers are! So isn’t that rich, a household will pay three, five? ten? times more that at present for heat, then the government will reimburse that household, then tax it for the same amount. Brilliant!
All of this comes with a cap and trade system that the Liberals intend put in place. Ross McKitrick, again writing in the Financial Post, points out that the economic logic of carbon pricing is that the market identifies the cheapest abatement options and weeds out the rest. However, with the revenues from its cap-and-tax plan, the government plans to subsidize the abatement methods the market rejects. It’s like digging post holes with one hand, filling them back in with the other, and then charging the taxpayer for the privilege of watching it all unfold.
Wynne promises “a transformation that will forever change how we live, work, play and move.” Hopefully, for the sake of the future of this province, the only thing it does change is the way we vote at next election. It can’t come soon enough!
Shane Desjardins
Mindemoya
