He is succesful winning elections as an MP. The demands on what we need from the Leader are in another league, and with many more dimensions and demands.
And how will Mulcair make us winners when he puts our heads on the chopping block?
Even though Mulcair says he will use cap and trade to raise general revenue, I think he will be able to defend his position. Mulcair is no Stephane Dion. Hopefully, the +/- of his strategy will be discussed in tomorrow's debate.
Nobody could have sold the Liberal program with the political foolishness built into it. I said so when it came out- before Dion's ways had any effect. "The Liberals will be the ones to get the punishment. Opportunity for us."
They started sinking as soon as the predictable attack ads came out. Predictable, because the Liberals practically wrote the script for the Harper Cons. All before Dion opened his mouth.
And guess what attracted the Liberals to the "revenue neutrality" concept cribbed from the Greens. They had been with us on cap and trade and critical of the carbon tax. Dion affirmed that in and right after the leadership race [and no "communication problems" then].
But the attraction of the carbon tax with revenue neutrality- give the money back through the income taxes and credits system- was that the Libs could say it was not going to cost anyone.
There were two huge problems with that.
1.] Political expediency, not that this fazed the Liberals: carbon pricing revenues are needed for green initiatives to proactively foster energy use reduction, as has been the case with successes in Europe. Carbon pricing alone has negligible effect- whether carbon tax or cap and trade. But for political expediency the Libs wrote off all the carbon tax revenues to the revenue neutrality for individuals.
2.] It did no good. Expedient intent or not, they painted a target on themselves. Because it ended up looking like- and to a large degree was- taking new taxes for new social programs. TAX GRAB!
And Mulcair has set up a repeat.
He said in Halifax, and has now affirmed with a lot more words and illustrating examples, that cap and trade revenues is the way to go in getting new revenues instead of what Brian Topp has proposed.
In the first place, if you are going to use cap and trade monies to fund the new revenues to maintain existing social programs that we need, what is paying for the green spending initiatives that Mulcair has affirmed we will do and the NDP has always EXPLICITLY promised will be what ALL the cap and trade revenues will be spent on.
But focusing on the political foolishness: this is a repeat of what the Liberals did in 2007. The Libs wanted to bypass the political risks of promoting carbon pricing, Mulcair wants to avoid the political risks in straight up saying you are going to tax anyone more, even the rich.
We know how well that worked for the Liberals. Now Mulcair suggests trading the risks of saying you will tax even the rich more, and his alternative sounds good on the surface. Topp says that he is confident Canadians are with us in taxing the wealthy. If you think that is risky, you think it is better that Mulcair promises things that don't add up and which are not just risky but guaranteed to get us skewered for surrendering the political benefits crafted into the NDP policy we have had for 5 years???