Dion Challenges Harper to Debate

Dion wading into deep Western waters over carbon tax proposal

OTTAWA -- Accusing the prime minister of indulging in "low blow politics and character assassination," Liberal Leader Stephane Dion challenged Stephen Harper on Wednesday to a one-on-one carbon tax policy debate in Calgary, the Conservative PM's riding and energy capital of Canada.

Mr. Harper dismissed Mr. Dion's challenge for a leaders' duel on his home turf over "which plan - his plan or my plan - on climate change is the best, both for climate change and for the energy sector."

"Mr. Dion hasn't even realized that the debate started weeks ago," Mr. Harper's spokesman Dimitri Soudas said.

Mr. Dion believes he can convince Albertans that his "greenshift" proposal to tax carbon consumers and cut income and corporate taxes is superior to the government's regulatory plan to limit industrial carbon emissions. He rejected Mr. Harper's parliamentary secretary Jason Kenney's attack on his plan as regionally divisive.

Mr. Dion said Mr. Harper's plan is much delayed, full of loopholes, cumbersome and bureaucratic, while his carbon tax plan is simple, standard across the country and "I won't have to hire a single civil servant" to implement it.

"His plan will pass on tax to families with no tax cuts," Mr. Dion added. "People want to do the right thing. They just want to be able to pay their bills at the end of the month as well. We've come with a plan which addresses those two realities that are true as much for a family in Alberta as a family in Nova Scotia or British Columbia or Ontario or in Quebec."

Mr. Dion issued the debate challenge during an interview with Canwest News Service as he prepares to sell his carbon tax proposal during a four-day visit beginning Friday to Alberta, where Mr. Harper and other critics have cast the carbon tax as a new version of the federal Liberals' 1980s national energy program. The NEP, compounded by a collapse in world oil prices, damaged Alberta's economy for a decade.

Mr. Dion is scheduled to attend Calgary Stampede events on the weekend and plans to speak at a town hall meeting in Edmonton on Monday.

Mr. Dion said his plan has nothing to do with the NEP.

"It's only a game that Mr. Harper is playing," he said. " It's only Mr. Harper's partisanship that is creating this confusion."

Mr. Dion said the NEP "was an attempt to change the world price [of oil] to accommodate nine provinces," referring to the Trudeau government setting a lower price for oil in Canada than the world price, siphoning revenue from Alberta to subsidize imported oil prices, notably in Ontario.

"To the contrary, we are bringing Canada's practices closer to the expectation of the world," Mr. Dion said. He argued the world expects carbon pricing in a developed economy such as Canada and predicted the plan would attract investment in emissions reduction technology to Western Canada.

Mr. Harper's spokesman said in an e-mail that Mr. Dion's debate challenge "is a bit rich" since the Liberal leader has missed question periods in the House of Commons during the last week before the summer recess, the week that Mr. Dion announced the carbon tax plan.

"Mr. Dion hasn't even realized that the debate started weeks ago," said Soudas. "We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and Mr. Dion didn't get it done when he had the chance. He now wants to impose a carbon tax on everything. This green shaft will have the consequence of increasing prices on everything people buy."

Mr. Dion rejected critics who say the carbon tax would collect a disproportionate share of tax revenues from Alberta, because it has heavy industrial emissions, and shift much of the revenue in the form of tax breaks outside the province.

Since the tax will be imposed at the wholesale level, Mr. Dion said, the level of taxation will depend on consumption of energy, not on production. He noted that 46% of industrial emissions in 2002, the last year calculated by Statistics Canada, were on goods and services exported from Canada. That means a lot of carbon tax would be passed onto foreigners, not Canadian consumers, he said.