Dion has unveiled a $400-million plan designed to enhance fishing stocks and make the Rock’s fishing industry greener and more profitable. It is said that Dion promoted his Green Shift carbon tax as a winner for Canadians and the planet even as senior Liberals in the crowd at a morning rally conceded selling the plan to voters is a tough uphill battle. John Efford, a former federal energy and fisheries minister, told that with gasoline prices hitting up to $1.50 a litre in St. John’s and worries about the economy, people are “afraid” of any mention of new taxes after Dion’s announcement.
Dion didn’t miss a beat in trying to capitalize on Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’s aggressive Anybody-but-Conservative (ABC) campaign to fill the province’s seven federal seats. It is told that the Liberals are hoping to add a seat or two to the four they already have in the province where the Conservatives’ three seats are considered up for grabs. It is fact that the Liberals are in a three-way race in Nova Scotia with the Conservatives and NDP.
According to Dion the green initiatives for the fishery as an essential element of his Green Shift carbon tax, something he promoted as a solution for the 21st century that is decades overdue. Dion said that the plan promises higher taxes raised from carbon producers would be shifted to finance, among other things, income tax cuts to offset higher energy costs.
