Polluter pay should be at heart of tar sands debate

Mulcair shows focus and consistency in decrying "Dutch Disease."

by Ish Theilheimer

If there's any reason for surprise over NDP leader Tom Mulcair's comments about the tar sands, "Dutch disease," and the polluter pay principle, it is his consistency. As long as anyone can recall, Mulcair has been making precisely the same points and saying almost exactly the same things on this all-important national issue.

His remarkable consistency and reasonable positions won him his party's leadership — with broad support from all regions, including Western Canada, where his rivals keep saying he is hurting himself with these same points and ideas. Indeed, when Straight Goods News interviewed him last September about his leadership campaign, it was nearly impossible to get him off the subject of environmental sustainability and how his views shaped his approach to industrial development of all kinds.

 

"Right now," he told us, "Young people are having the largest ecological, economic, and social debt in our history placed in their packsacks, and they're being told by the Conservatives there's nothing they can do about it. Meanwhile, there are the tar sands. No one's going to tell you we're going to stop extracting oil from the tar sands, but we can start doing it responsibly, applying basic principles of sustainable development: internalization of costs, user pay, polluter pay."

That's what Mulcair told us — and presumably many other reporters — eight months ago, and what he said in leadership debates. "Because we're not internalizing the environmental costs, Europeans are going to force us to and they're going to keep the money. But on the other hand, we're bringing in an artificially high number of US dollars. It's called the Dutch Disease," he told us, last fall. "Holland went through that when it discovered gas. The manufacturing sector gets killed off as our dollar goes up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to export our own product. Right now Canada is going through that kind of Dutch Disease."

Contrary to the warnings of critics, these position and words represented no sort of new divisive strategy or gambit. It's what Thomas Mulcair has always said and believed. No doubt that is why he had no interest in waffling, as Bob Rae suggested he should, or recanting, as Conservative hacks demanded.

Indeed, the source of all the recent controversy was actually his comments from a magazine article published months ago. These were dredged up by Conservative spin-doctors eager to dissipate outrage over their Trojan Horse budget bill, which directly threatens so many Canadians.

Bill C-38, as all Canada is learning, contains a rat's nest of changes that will dramatically affect the lifestyles and livelihoods of millions. The Bill raises the retirement age, cuts provincial transfer programs, forces trained, unemployed people to compete for low-wage work, and cuts vital services relied upon by Canadians everywhere.

Mulcair's critics suggest he is somehow playing the politics of regional division with his consistent insistence that the polluter should pay and that industrial development should conform to the laws of the land. If he is playing politics, current polls would indicate the strategy works. The NDP is either tied with the Conservatives or slightly ahead.

Canadians did not reject environmental science in the last election nor did, nor did they brand it treasonous, as have the Harperites. Mulcair's strong support in the polls may well reflect his consistent views on the environmental protection. If by sticking to his positions and becoming the focus of debate, his intent was to brand the NDP as being as a balanced advocate for Canada's environment and economy, he seems to be succeeding.

 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca