Thomas Mulcair is a hypocrite for not applying his polluter-pay principles to Quebec's hydro sector when he had the chance and now attacking Alberta's oilsands on the same subject, Reform party founder Preston Manning said Saturday in an interview on CBC's The House.
Manning said he ultimately agreed with the NDP leader when it came to forcing companies to internalize environmental costs through a cap-and-trade system or carbon levy, but the requirement must apply to all sectors of the energy business.
"I've been an advocate myself that you ought to internalize these environmental externalities, in other words, when you produce energy, you recognize that you're going to have environmental effects, you identify those environmental effects and the cost of avoiding them or mitigating and then you try to find some way to integrate that cost into the cost of the product," he said.
"The hydro companies of this country have flooded forest areas the size of Lake Ontario, so where's the reservoir tax that's the hydro equivalent of the carbon levy?"
As Quebec's sustainable-development minister in Jean Charest's Liberal government, Mulcair didn't talk about internalizing the environ-mental effects of the province's hydro operations, Manning argued.
"If you're going to preach that to the petroleum industry, how come you didn't implement that concept there?" he said.
Mulcair has come under fire for creating an East-West divide by blaming Alberta's oilsands for the so-called "Dutch disease" - artificially inflating the Canadian dollar and killing manufacturing jobs in Central Canada.
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Manning said he ultimately agreed with the NDP leader when it came to forcing companies to internalize environmental costs through a cap-and-trade system or carbon levy, but the requirement must apply to all sectors of the energy business.
"I've been an advocate myself that you ought to internalize these environmental externalities, in other words, when you produce energy, you recognize that you're going to have environmental effects, you identify those environmental effects and the cost of avoiding them or mitigating and then you try to find some way to integrate that cost into the cost of the product," he said.
"The hydro companies of this country have flooded forest areas the size of Lake Ontario, so where's the reservoir tax that's the hydro equivalent of the carbon levy?"
As Quebec's sustainable-development minister in Jean Charest's Liberal government, Mulcair didn't talk about internalizing the environ-mental effects of the province's hydro operations, Manning argued.
"If you're going to preach that to the petroleum industry, how come you didn't implement that concept there?" he said.
Mulcair has come under fire for creating an East-West divide by blaming Alberta's oilsands for the so-called "Dutch disease" - artificially inflating the Canadian dollar and killing manufacturing jobs in Central Canada.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
