Tag: Carbon Tax

Obsession with larger vehicles has gone into overdrive

Obsession with larger vehicles has gone into overdrive

Posted by | Jan 22, 2020 | |

Disconnect between concern about climate change and the vehicles people drive keeps growing. In 2018 I noted a couple of troubling Canadian transportation trends – the number of registered road vehicles is increasing faster than the population and SUVs and their ilk are increasingly taking over the roads. The drift continues. Between 2017 and 2018, Canada’s human population increase of 1.41 per cent was outpaced by a 2.01 per cent increase in registered road vehicles. In Nova Scotia, where population growth has become a fixation, the number of humans grew by only 0.96 per cent, while cars on the...

Read More
Lowered political temperature bodes poorly for warming climate

Lowered political temperature bodes poorly for warming climate

Posted by | Dec 1, 2019 | |

The sweet sounds of reconciliation between the re-elected Trudeau government and the leaders of the oil-producing provinces, which began immediately after the fall election, are continuing apace. After an earlier meeting in Ottawa with Scott Moe during which he delivered a conciliatory message to the truculent Saskatchewan Premier, Justin Trudeau last week sent his ministers on mollifying missions to the lions’ dens of Calgary, Regina and Edmonton. Very little has come out about the Edmonton tête-à-tête between Jason Kenney and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland. The news clips, which looked tame enough, were mostly about the now-settled CN Rail strike...

Read More
Houston, on carbon tax you’ve got a credibility problem

Houston, on carbon tax you’ve got a credibility problem

Posted by | Apr 2, 2019 | |

The federal carbon tax came into effect in four Canadians provinces on Monday April 1, with choreographed expressions of defiance from the usual sources. Front and centre were members of the “Resistance” – the sardonic (I hope) tag Maclean’s magazine attached to its December cover photo of the five middle-aged male Conservatives fighting the carbon tax. And for Monday’s media events, resistance fighters Andrew Scheer and Jason Kenney were joined by a recruit, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs who, like the aforementioned depicted premiers Ford, Pallister and Moe, heads a province subject to the federal levy. Meanwhile in Nova Scotia,...

Read More
With First Ministers like these who needs climate change deniers?

With First Ministers like these who needs climate change deniers?

Posted by | Dec 14, 2016 | |

Here’s a question. Who sleeps better at night? Those who deny climate change and therefore feel no need to do anything about it? Or those who mouth warnings about its awful impact, then deal with it in a half-baked way? That’s the poser that hovered as I read through the on-line documents that came out of last week’s First Minister’s meeting on climate change. The Prime Minister and the provincial and territorial leaders issued a communiqué that got the impact part right. The document proclaimed that: “Climate change is indisputable, as are the significant impacts it is having in...

Read More
Slick new emissions deal leaves lots of questions

Slick new emissions deal leaves lots of questions

Posted by | Nov 29, 2016 | |

In a post on Oct. 9 (Why McNeil’s Liberals should embrace carbon pricing but (likely) won’t) I suggested that fancy footwork would be required from the McNeil government to manoeuvre between the rock of higher gas taxes and the hard place of a fight with the Trudeau Liberals over carbon pricing. Last week’s coal plant two-step with federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna rated at least a six out of ten on the Machiavelli shrewdness scale. The provincial Liberals mended fences with their much more popular federal counterparts, kicked the issue of higher energy costs past the next provincial election,...

Read More

Richard Starr, The man behind the Point

About Richard

RICHARD STARR has had careers as a journalist, public servant, broadcaster, political staffer and freelance policy adviser. He is author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, a former radio and TV producer and weekly newspaper editor, and the author of three non-fiction books. Starr has lived in Dartmouth for more than 30 years.

Subscribe to Starr’s Point

Support Provided by