It would appear the “love-in” between Prime Minister Harper and Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest will be short lived.

Only a few weeks ago they were front page buddies after signing an agreement that gives the province a role on the international stage through the UNESCO (an agency of the United Nations that promotes education, communication and the arts).

This week, Mr. Harper’s Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose served notice that Canada’s new government intends to withdraw from the Kyoto Accord (an international agreement that includes 163 countries and deals with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions). The United States is notably absent from the agreement and some have suggested that Canada’s new position on Kyoto is intended to mirror the U.S. view.

The United States does not support the Kyoto Accord because the Bush Administration says to do so would undermine the American economy (read the Texas oil and gas industry).

The Administration also claims the cost would be prohibitive. Estimates from Yale University’s William Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer put the number at $325 billion over decades. The Americans have already spent more than that amount in Iraq and that’s just in a couple of years. How ridiculous is it to spend billions on an illegal war when those monies could be used to help save the planet.

New Brunswick’s Environment Minister, Trevor Holder applauds Mr. Harper’s position on Kyoto while international environment groups, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the European Community criticize Canada for “trying to sabotage 15 years of international efforts to address climate change” and global warming.

Harper’s reaction was to announce a program to increase the amount of ethanol used in gasoline from 1% to 5%. Expert say that ethanol, made from corn and other agricultural crops would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions but the problem is that production of ethanol requires the use of fuels that emit greenhouse gases. It’s estimated that the net benefit of a 5% ethanol injection would be less than 1%.

The New Brunswick Liberals announced that they want to enshrine the Kyoto targets in law.

That seems like a bit of overkill although there may be need for legislative change to encourage the actions that lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It seems to me that more benefit would flow from a declaration of intent and a very real investment in new technologies to reduce gas emissions, legislation that would require lower emission vehicles and tax incentives that would reward the reduction of green house gas emissions in industry.

This week, Premier Charest announced that Quebec will meet its Kyoto targets regardless of what Canada decides to do. “We have every intention of pursuing our efforts (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) in order to abide by the Kyoto Protocol” said Mr. Charest.

Mr. Harper’s response was to say actions are more important than words on reducing greenhouse gases.

“There are lots of people around the world who have bold and ambitious statements about limiting greenhouse gases but I’m more interested to see what actual effective actions are undertaken”.

Mr. Charest’s Government received unanimous support from the National Assembly for a motion urging Ottawa to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Accord. The motion also called for the federal government to honour a previous agreement to contribute financially to the implementation of Quebec’s action plan on climate change.

NDP leader, Jack Layton praised the Quebec action and encouraged other provinces to follow Quebec’s lead. Manitoba Premier Gary Doer has already said that he has no intention of changing his province's commitment to its Kyoto targets, even if the federal government backs out of the agreement.

In my view, Prime Minister Harper’s do-nothing stance is irresponsible.

The link between carbon dioxide increases in the environment and global warming is well established. Carbon dioxide levels in the 1930s were below 300 parts per million. This year, they reached 382 parts per million. Ice is beginning to melt in the Arctic. Glaciers have disappeared in Patagonia. The hurricane Katrina that decimated New Orleans could be the precursor to what is coming if we do nothing.

Poor mouthing the Kyoto objectives exposes cracks in Harper’s grand plan for majority election (a coalition of voters from western Canada, rural Ontario and Quebec). It’s difficult to reconcile his promise of a made-in-Canada solution with his cuts in conservation and alternative energy programs. His determination to protect Alberta’s oil and gas industry can be seen behind his Kyoto stance.

The biggest crack may be found in the strain he puts on his relationship with Quebec and Premier Charest by withdrawing Canada from the Kyoto Accord. This comes just days after the Prime Minister rammed through his Afghanistan extension, a move that does not have a lot of support in Quebec.

I’m sure the Kyoto Accord has its imperfections. Its goals may be overly ambitious but at least they are goals. If wealthy, technologically advanced countries like Canada and the United States refuse to take the lead on this issue, less developed countries will continue to pollute the environment and our sons and daughters will bear the consequences.

Premier Lord has promised a program to achieve the greatest reduction of greenhouse gases of any province in Canada over the next five years. His Minister of the Environment must have been camping out with Mr. Harper when the Premier made his promise.

The term “fiscal imbalance’ will invite a giant yawn from many of our readers but there is more to the term than political rhetoric would suggest.

The subject concerns you and me. Premier Lord and Dalton McGinty, Premier of Ontario have drawn a line in the sand between recipient and contributor in the long standing debate over wealth distribution in Canada. They represent opposite poles in the divisions between the rich and the poor, the resource-rich and the non-resource provinces.

A little more than a month ago, the ten premiers met in Montreal to discuss a $2 million report on fiscal imbalance that was prepared for them by a “panel of experts”. The report was designed to pry more money from the federal government and concluded that the feds should put an additional $9.6 billion a year on the table for the provinces.

• $4.9 billion would be for healthcare, post-secondary education and social assistance.
• $4.7 billion would increase equalization payments to the provinces.

The problem is that equalization goes to the seven weakest provinces and is paid for by the wealthiest including: Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

McGinty claims there is a $23 billion a year gap between what taxpayers in his province send to Ottawa and what they receive in return. He resents the fact that Ontario is funding lower tax rates in the poorer provinces. He thinks the fiscal imbalance between provinces and the federal government should be settled on a per capita contribution basis rather than on the basis of need.

Poorer provinces like New Brunswick say it’s impossible to provide comparable services at competitive tax levels without equalization because the cost of per capita delivery is much higher in small population provinces.

Ironically, Alberta’s Ralph Klein has no problem increasing equalization payments but he’s opposed to the formula recommended for calculating payments. The report recommends that all provincial revenues be used in calculating equalization. Klein doesn’t want resource revenue included in the calculations. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland agree with Klein because they cut side-deals with the previous government to exempt oil and gas revenues from equalization calculations.

Premier Lord takes the view that New Brunswick is entitled to an increase in equalization and that Canada’s richer provinces should be happy to pay.

The so called fiscal imbalance has been a hobby horse of the Bloc Quebecois for the last few years but the new Conservative Government hijacked the issue in the last election with a promise to resolve it.
The recent federal budget includes a discussion paper on “fiscal balance”, mentions nothing about an “imbalance” and offers no solution for an imbalance.

Clearly Mr. Harper’s election promise of fiscal-fixing ranks well below his infamous five priorities (accountability, lower taxes, gun control, child care subsidies and healthcare waiting times).

The discussion paper sounds more like a re-working of the federal-provincial relationship than an attempt to resolve a fiscal imbalance. It talks about the need to clarify roles and responsibilities between levels of government and requirements for local autonomy. It uses the proposed daycare subsidy of $100 a month to illustrate the Government’s interpretation of local and individual autonomy.

It talks about the need to “limit the use of federal spending power in areas of provincial responsibility”. When discussing federal transfers, it uses terms like “formula” and “principle-based equalization”. It sounds like a one size fits all approach to me, one that moves closer to Dalton McGinty’s view of equalization than Premier Lord’s.

The paper floats the idea of giving provinces more access to particular tax fields. It ignores the fact that each province has a finite tax base tied to the size of its population, the size of its industrial/manufacturing base and the extent of its natural resources.

A province like New Brunswick with a small population, a tiny industrial base and limited natural resources has no chance in today’s world without help from either the Canadian family or windfall profits from a major resource find. The only alternative would be an industrial renaissance. Tax points are only helpful when you have something to tax.

The fiscal balance paper is not close to a fix nor does it offer direction in terms of a fix. It does suggest the Government wants to revisit the terms of Confederation in the Constitution Act of 1867 and by implication reduce the federal government’s modern day role in the affairs of Canada.

In that context, one could envision the economic union of our own Maritime Provinces. It would make sense in a world driven by productivity, innovation, competitiveness and border security. A one time “equalization transfer” to the region that would be contingent on economic union and a development plan for the future could bear fruit far heavier than Premier Lord’s demand for increased equalization funds.

At the end of the day, Stephen Harper’s craving for majority government will drive him to resolve the fiscal imbalance issue in favour of Quebec and Alberta (not Atlantic Canada) because Quebec and Alberta are where he will find a majority, if it is to be had. His notion of a smaller, de-centralized federal government has particular appeal in those provinces.

We already have an indication of his appeasement strategy in his cozy-up with Jean Charest and the UNESCO Agreement (an agency of the United Nations that promotes education, communication and the arts) that gives Quebec more presence on the international stage. Premier Lord should be careful when he hitches his wagon to Mr. Harper. He might get blown away by the dust from Quebec.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at heronplace1@rogers.com

I’ve been visiting in the United States for the last ten days.

It’s interesting to note the differences between our two countries. Canadians love to boast about their friendship with the Americans. In the United Sates, one would be hard pressed to know there is a Canada.

I read the newspapers in that country and watch the news on television. The only mentions of Canada or things Canadian are related to the National Hockey League playoffs or the odd baseball score reporting a Toronto win in baseball. I watch Steve Nash in the NBA playoffs but nobody identifies him as a Canadian.

The only Canadian news I saw in the last few weeks was a buried item in the Charlotte News, reporting that the Softwood Lumber issue had been resolved and the United States will refund some $4 billion in punitive duties.

There was also something in last Wednesday’s New York Times about the Harper budget (buried on page 10) that informed us that his budget would generate a $20 billion tax cut for Canadians and a $1 billion reduction in government program spending. The only other Canadiana was cast by Fox News and their castigation of Neil Young for not being an American.

Life is interesting in the United States.

The disparity between the well to do and the poor is stark. Part of the community drives $50,000 SUVs, plays golf and lives in houses or condos worth $200,000 or more. The other part of the community cuts their grass, live in slums, work for minimum wage and wonder what the future holds for them.

I was talking with one fellow who had just returned from a volunteer mission to Louisiana, post-Katrina. He talked about the homeless and/or displaced New Orleans residents and their conditions.

He talked about their living environments flooded with alligators and poisonous snakes. He talked about people living in tent cities with nothing but the clothing on their backs, people who had never been outside the city limits of New Orleans before the hurricane, people traumatized by their refugee camp circumstance.

Americans are concerned that Medicare (publicly funded healthcare for seniors) and social security programs could be bankrupt in the next ten years.

They’re concerned about “illegal aliens” otherwise know as immigrants from Mexico and Central America. It’s estimated that some twelve to twenty million illegal immigrants live and work in the United States. Some Americans want to send them home, a hypocritical situation given the fact these immigrants are gainfully employed as construction workers, agriculturalists, domestics and others and two thirds of them pay taxes. The dichotomy is found in America’s preoccupation with border security.

As one gentlemen said to me “there are a lot of people in the world who want to kill us. We have to stop them from getting into the United States”.

Back dropping these concerns is an undercurrent of anger and rage that so far has only found serious expression in non-traditional media, a few anti-war demonstrations and late night comedic pokes at George W. Bush.

People are incensed about their loss of a city (New Orleans), the presidential lies about Iraq, the torturing of prisoners, the loss of tens of thousands of soldiers to death and serious injury, their economic solvency, loss of their global reputation and the rampant corruption and political scandal in Washington as witnessed by the Abramoffs, the Libbys, the Delaneys and Dick Chaney’s former employer, the Haliburton Company. The mid-term elections could help vent some of this anger.

Resting on this stage is a growing discomfort with gasoline prices that have topped $3.00 a gallon over the past month. There was public derision over the Republican’s promise of a $100 gasoline rebate (since dropped).

There is an underlying fear of China as a major holder of American debt and repository for “American jobs”. There is concern that China’s growing demand for oil and gas is putting pressure on gasoline prices in America.

There is also embarrassment in the hypocrisy of Dick Chaney’s claim that Russia is rolling back democratic reforms while he seeks oil and gas from former Soviet territory and neighbor Kazakhstan.

There is worry about healthcare. A lack of heath care insurance is driving Americans to financial ruin and even death. Some 46 million of them have no healthcare insurance whatsoever.

A survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-partisan organization in the United States that studies health care found that 41 percent of non-elderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were without health insurance or healthcare for all or part of 2005. In Canada, we worry about waiting times.

I’m struck by the fact that ordinary Americans in one-on-one conversation seem pretty close to Canadians in terms of the daily needs and interests of life. On the other hand, I get the impression they are imprisoned by their patriotism and their fear of terrorism. They are greatly conflicted by their need to support U.S. troops in Iraq, even as they know their President took them to war under false pretenses.

America is a country of 300 million people. Canada is a tenth of the size. The people of the United States barely know we exist. When we identify ourselves to them, they are polite but patronizing as one would patronize a tourist in a hospitality environment.

They equate Canada to cold weather, natural resources and barren territories. They live in an isolated world where much of their media serves as a filter for what’s happening around the globe and fails to inform in terms of the reality of events in the world.

They’re great people but they come from a much different place.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and business owner operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic.