My Letter to Dion

Reprinted here so that when you see the campaign re-framed to focus on thoughtful and honest leadership it's all because of me.

There has been a lot of talk in this campaign about the need for strong leadership. I think that’s misguided. While a strong leader is good, what we really need is a leader who is thoughtful and honest. A thoughtful leader can change his mind on issues. This is not a weakness. If the situation changes, or information changes, decisions can and should be revisited. The second part of this is honesty. A good leader will explain why the decision has been changed. He should be able to justify why both positions were taken, and people should accept the reasons for a change. We can’t stick dogmatically to the decisions we make especially in a world where circumstances change rapidly and dramatically.

A throw away line for campaign managers to decide about… Georgians voted for a leader they thought would be strong, I bet they wish they had voted for someone more thoughtful.

Harper says the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are good. He is more ore less correct. The fundamentals which the previous decade of Liberal governments established have placed the country in a good fiscal situation to weather the coming storm. Still, as the conservatives were so fond of saying not too long ago, Canada can’t spend the US out of their economic problems. If they suffer a lot, we will suffer with them. And a government who is unwilling to act boldly is either misguided because doing little or nothing is a recipe for disaster, or once again are being dishonest because they actually plan to intervene…or they don’t care about ordinary Canadians.

Dion’s plan for a carbon tax is also both thoughtful and honest. The Conservatives accuse the Liberals of a plan which will increase prices on everything. Do they think they can impose a cost without it being passed along to consumers? Look at what happens when the price of oil goes up. The price of gas goes up. It is dishonest to think that a cost can be imposed without it being passed on. If their plans are somehow costless, why do all of these businesses hate the planet so much that they are unwilling to take action which has zero cost to them right now?

What about the NDP plan. What are the costs in establishing a cap and trade bureaucracy? What are the costs to the Canadian economy if growth is stronger than expected and the cost of carbon credits increases dramatically. The emissions Canada, or the world is adding each year has a negligible impact compared to the impact of what is already up there. An NDP plan which could potentially see a massive year to year fluctuation in cost is ill advised, and dishonest if this issue is not addressed.

Is reorienting the economy to the future a gamble? I think it is much more of a gamble to stake our future on the old energy economy of the last century. There is no better time to change the incentives in the system than during a time up upheaval. There is not much investment happening now because of the economic conditions. If we set ourselves new goals, and alter the incentives as a carbon tax would today, all of the investment that will accompany a recovery will be made with that in mind. If we wait until conditions are already good, investment decisions will already have been made. We can both weather the storm, and come out ahead and transformed for the new economic realities of the 21st century.

When circumstances change, the actions you take change. You don’t run a deficit when times are good, you save for when times are bad. When times are bad, you use your savings to smooth out consumption. That’s basic Economics as Mr. Harper can tell you. Canadians have been paying down the debt over the last decade of Liberal management. Sure, we don’t have a positive amount in the bank, but our debt to GDP ratio has been declining rapidly, and on that measure we have A LOT more “money in the bank” that we have had in the past, or pretty much any G-7 country has now. We should be using these “savings” in a time of economic downturn to cushion the blow on the Canadian economy. That’s what the government should be doing now. Good fiscal management has given us the ability to ride out the potential coming storm better than most. This is an opportunity we must seize, not with talk of strength and confrontation, but with the goal of unity and moving forward.

The conservatives are the party of the 20th century. With the Green Shift, and a willingness to spend to stimulate growth when times are bad, the Liberals are joining the ranks of parties of the 21st century.