Everyone else is commenting on the budget, so why shouldn't I...

So we have the new federal Conservative budget. I've looked at it and am generally unimpressed. Though there's lots of spending, which wasn't a surprise with Harper throwing money around like it's going out of style, none of the spending has any real vision to it. It just gives the impression that Harper's trying to buy our votes because he's desperate to stay in power. The budget has provided me with some amusement though, but more on that later. As an example of spending that doesn't really do anything, look at the rebates and taxes set up on cars. The intent is to give an incentive to people to buy fuel efficient vehicles while providing a disincentive to people on less fuel efficient vehicles. On the surface this sounds like a good idea, and it is. The implementation isn't very good though. At best, if you buy a hybrid car, you'll get a $2000 rebate. Given the cost differential between a hybrid car and it's non-hybrid equivalent (on average about $10000) the two grand isn't that much of an incentive. Hybrids are now only $8000 more expensive than the cars they replace. I don't see people rushing to buy them with that kind of incentive.

The disincentive is equally as useless. At worse it adds $4000 to the worse of the SUV's. Now generally the people who buy high end SUV's are buying them as a status symbol, so the extra four grand isn't going to really enter into their calculations. It's interesting to note that pick-up trucks, the vehicle of choice for the Tory's core Alberta support, are exempt from the tax further reducing it's disincentive value.

There are two things that would have done more for reducing consumer production of GHG's. The one that the federal government could have done was to increase the gasoline tax. The higher the price of gasoline, the more people begin to switch to more fuel efficient vehicles. However this measure would be unpopular with both the voters who'd have to pay for the more expensive gasoline; and the oil industry who, after everyone started to drive more fuel efficient vehicles, would sell less gasoline. So though this would actually be effective, it's a political non-starter for the Tories.

The second thing is not within the realm of the federal government and would have to be put in place by provincial governments and that would be to base vehicle license fees on fuel economy. This would provide an annual disincentive for people owning "lifestyle" vehicles that guzzle gasoline. Again this would be unpopular with the voter and would be unlikely to get through a provincial legislature.

What amuses me about the federal budget is the reaction I'm seeing in the local Calgary papers. For those of you unfamiliar with the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, let me enlighten you to how they look. For the most part both papers read like a Conservative Party newsletter where the Tories can do no wrong and the Liberal party is the root of all that is evil in the universe. This budget has both papers and their columnists chasing their tails. The editors of both don't know if they're coming or going with articles that both state that this is the worst budget ever to those that say it's the best budget. How hard it must be to be an Alberta Conservative right now. Tory supporters so used to blindly following and praising the Tories, that when the Tories do something that goes completely against the grain of the supporters, the supporters have no idea what to say. They have to repeat the party talking points about how good the budget is and how it's going to silence the opposition, but on the other hand the budget has nothing to do with the harsh fiscal conservatism that they want imposed on the country. So the papers have gotten totally schizophrenic, trying to hold both views at the same time. To be perfectly honest I thought I'd never live to see the day that the Calgary Herald has something negative to say about a Tory government, but there it was in black and white, right beside an editorial saying how good the budget is. The same in the Sun. I suspect there's a lot of confused Alberta voters out there right now.