OTTAWA - Stephane Dion rolled the dice Thursday on his future as Liberal leader, unveiling a complex and politically risky plan to wean Canadians off fossil fuels.
The "green shift" would impose a carbon tax worth $15.4 billion a year - to be offset by an equivalent cut in income and business taxes and a boost in tax breaks for poor, elderly, northern and rural Canadians who stand to be hardest hit by the increased cost of necessities like home heating fuel, electricity, food and travel.
In choosing to make the plan the centrepiece of the Liberal platform, Dion is setting up the next election as an epic battle over competing economic and environmental policies. But he's also triggering a debate over character.
Dion cast himself Thursday as a bold, visionary leader with the courage to do the right thing.
By contrast, he characterized Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a bully who is spreading lies about the Liberal proposal and indulging in juvenile attack ads rather than engage in an honest, thoughtful debate about the most serious crisis facing the planet.
"These attack ads are a sad joke and an insult to the intelligence of Canadians," Dion told an enthusiastic crowd of Liberal MPs, senators and staffers, most of whom sported green caps and T-shirts bearing the slogan "The Green Shift."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/2008/05/14/5568121-cp.html