Un-elected Senate Passes Kyoto Bill

Fellow blogger, Unambiguously Ambidextrous, wrote a very interesting article, Stephen Harper Tries To Teach Liberal Party Math, on the constitutional impossibility of the Conservative government complying with the new law passed by the “un-elected senate” that requires the federal government to adhere to Kyoto commitments. It is not a money bill, so it will be difficult to see how the government will be forced to implement it, taking into account the enormous costs estimated by economists to be in the billions of dollars.

According to Jayson Myers, chief economist for the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, in a Feb 9th, 2007 article featured in the National Post

"To implement the protocol we need to reduce fossil fuel energy by about 30% in order to get a 30% reduction in emissions and you need to do that in a four -to-five-year period," … "It is impossible to do”

...

"To reduce emissions in Canada by 30% you could eliminate the entire manufacturing sector, you could take all of the cars off the road, and together that would still not close the gap. So anyone who says we can ever meet Kyoto has absolutely no idea what the immensity of this problem actually is."


Mr. Myers also mentioned the staggering costs that Canada would face if it simply goes ahead and buys “emission credits”, as many of the countries in the EU are doing.

"That's $25-billion that's going offshore and is not going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, so we lose $25-billion. It's a poor use of money."

Despite revelations such as this from Mr. Myers and other credible economists, the "Un-elected Senate" still went ahead and passed the Kyoto bill, knowing full-well that it would never be accountable to its constituents for the massive cost or significant job-losses that would affect the Canadian economy if it were ever implemented.

The irony of this bill is that it compels the Conservative government to implement a plan in 60 days that the previous Liberal government was not able to do in the 13 years that it was in office. So the true intent of the bill seems to be designed to back the Federal government into a corner and chose between two unpalatable options. They can either ignore it and be accused of snubbing parliament and the constitution, or implement policies that would have such devastating consequences for the Canadian economy and cost our country thousands of jobs, higher taxes and a significant increase in the cost of living.

Fred made a brilliant comment in response to the article that sheds some light on some of the drastic measures that would have to be taken, should PMSH chose to implement policies to reduce Canada’s GHG from its present level of 30% over the 1990 level (Thanks to the Liberals) to 6% below the 1990 level by 2012. I have chosen to include it for the benefit of the readers

This comment is in the form of a hypothetical speach to parliament :)

“Mister Speaker, since the Liberal dominated Senate rushed approval of the Bill, I rise today to announce measures that my government must take to comply with C288, otherwise known as the “Pablo Rodriguez Law of Unintended Consequences”.

In order to comply with the Bill and Kyoto, it is necessary to take some drastic measures to either reduce emissions I Canada. Because it is not a money bill, we cannot buy credits from other signatory nations of the Kyoto Protocol who do not need to reduce their emission but get to sell these credits. We can force ordinary Canadians to use their disposable income to buy the needed credits.

Canada got hosed at Kyoto. Jean Chretien’s Liberal government signed Canada to a treaty that means we must reduce our standard of living in order to comply. Bill 288 further obligates Canada to reduce its economy in order to comply and because of the way the Bill is worded, our Government must achieve the 2008 - 2012 targets within 180 days of the Bill being granted Royal Ascent, so we must act NOW.

I am instructing a number of government department and agencies to enact the following emergency measure so that we can comply with the will of Parliament, or at least the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois parts of parliament.

1. Immediate shutdown of all coal fired power plants in Canada. We realize that this will hit Ontario very hard – 1/3 of Ontario’s electricity is coal generated, but look on the bright side, the lack of power will also cause the shutdown of thousands of plants and factories, throwing hundreds of thousands out of work. While we are it, we’ll close down all the top ten GhG emitters, as researched by Pollution Probe, listed below:

Rank Company Name Province

1 Ontario Power Generation On
2 Transalta Utilities AB
3 Sask Power SK
4 Alberta Power Corp AB
5 Nova Scotia Power Inc NS
6 Syncrude Canada Ltd. AB
7 Suncor Energy inc. Oil Sands AB
8 EPCOR Generation Inc. AB
9 Petro-Canada AB
10 Dofasco Inc. On

2. Immediate shutdown of the entire Petroleum industry across Canada – we will need to import our oil but we are only going to import oil from countries that will sell us Kyoto Credits. Besides we won’t need gas or oil because we won’t have the money to buy these big GhG emitters.

3. Immediately ban all wood burning fireplaces, charcoal and propane BBQ’s and summer campfires. All recreational vehicles and activities are deemed frivolous and will be banned. Sorry Bombardier, you are jusr screwed. No more skidoos and water jet boats. We are investigating how to ban forest fires as well, but that has its challenges.

4. A 50 cent per litre “GhG Kyoto Credit Buying Tax. Based on recent data that we use about 45 Billion liters of gasoline every year, this new tax revenue should make up the shortfall in general tax revenues caused by the overall collapse of the Canadian economy caused by the cheap political theatrics of the Liberal Party of Canada. It will not make up for the billions in lost income taxes the Federal and Provincial governments will not collect by the 35% contraction of our economy we need to achieve to be Kyoto compliant.

5. We will not be able to afford generous EI support for all the laid off workers because the numbers will reach in the millions. Shutting down the oil sands alone will result in huge job losses in Alberta, but also in Quebec and Ontario, where tens of thousands of workers make the pipes, valves, machinery, trucks, tires, computers and other equipment that would have been purchased had we not put these actions in place to meet the requirements of the “Pablo Rodriguez Law of Unintended Consequences” Bill. Buzz Hargrove is going to be really, really, pissed off at Steffi & his best buddy Pablo “The economy Killer” Rodriguez. Shutting down the transportation industry will also be hard on employment, but we haven’t had time yet to count how many truck drivers there are in Canada, so we can’t tell you yet how many of their jobs will be toast.

6. For the tens of thousands of workers in the Financial sector, we are aware that the mortgage and credit crisis these moves will cause will result in the devastation of your industry as well, but we expect that the Barons of Bay street will be able to salvage a few jobs scamming a few bucks in the International Carbon Credit Trading Market, or as some have come to call it, the Kyoto Hot Air Credit Socialist Money Sucking Ponzi Scheme. Hopefully you will be one of the few out of the tens of thousands Financial Sector workers who will get one of these new jobs – you might even make megatonnes of money.

7. Since there will be a huge rise in the number of corporate and personal bankruptcies, our government will be enacting new legislation to simplify the process. Simply nail a sign to the front door of your home saying “WE QUIT” or for consumer debt, place your cut up credit and bank cards in an envelope and mail them to Pablo Rodriguez. That’s all, no lawyers or courts needed

8. We will also be reducing the size of the federal government payroll by at least 35% to meet the requirement to keep the budget balanced to the new and much lower levels of Federal revenues. That should be a few hundred thousand fewer Civil Servants at the Federal Level and many, many more at the Provincial level. We understand this will devastate the economy of Ottawa, but what the Hell, the rest of Canada doesn’t care about what happens in Moonbat Land sur Rideau, so no worries. To the 150,000 or so Civil Servants who will lose their ticket to the Golden Pension Plan, tough shit.

9. We will be forced to make massive reductions to the Federal government’s transfer of Social Services & Health dollars to the provinces to fit within the new fiscal capabilities of Canada’s Federal government. We will leave it up to individual provinces to decide to close schools or hospitals, or both, or whatever. It’s a provincial responsibility, but at the very least, expect much longer waits for even basic medical service. Since Canada, in addition to using “more than our fair share of Carbon” also uses more than “our fair share of global health care”, it’s about time we cut back, suffered more, did away with excessive health care and just suffered along with the rest of the world.

Its not all bad news. Canada should be able to save a fortune in Immigration costs. We have a forecast from government experts that Canada will go to last place in the quest for skilled immigrant labour. Somehow they don’t want to come to a country with power shortages, no air conditioning, limited winter heating, no jobs a Health Care system modeled on Zimbabwe and a devastated economy. Go figure. The USA and Australia will benefit from these immigrants and their skills.

Mr. Speaker, let me close by thanking the Liberals, especially Mr Chretien who’s stupidity, ego and driving need to buy himself a political “good-guy” legacy got us into this mess, the current Liberal mega green leader Citoyen Dion, the NDP, under the leadership of Jack “Talban” bin Layton, the Bloc Quebecois and their inspired of Gilles “Hairnet” Duceppe for voting for Bill C288. But especially all Canadians want to thank Liberal Pablo Rodriguez for devastating our economy and depressing our standard of living to upper third world status. And of course, all those unelected, self-serving Liberal Senators with a life long lip-lock on the public, taxpayer funded teat would actually have to work for a living instead of sucking the blood of taxpayers like a swarm of malarial mosquitoes.

As we huddle in the cold and swelter in the summer heat, as we stare at our old car we can’t afford to drive, as we fondly remember how hard it was to get out of bed on a Monday morning to go to the job we used to have, we can take pride in being the best-est, wonderful-est, the most moral-est international goody-goody boy scout country supporting the great socialist ponzi scheme called Kyoto and proving we are doing our part to help the planet be saved.

Thank you Mr. Speaker”