A Spring Election?

Via the Toronto Star:

OTTAWA - New Liberal leader Stéphane Dion is hitting the road next week - including a stop in Toronto on Tuesday - to get his partisans ready for an election that could be kicked off as soon as mid-February.

The La Presse newspaper reported yesterday that the Bloc Quebecois is eyeing Feb. 15 as a date for a non-confidence vote against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. If Dion’s 102 Liberals vote with the 51 Bloc MPs, that means the collapse for the minority Parliament and an election just a little over one year since the last one.

"I’m not the one who wants an election," Dion said yesterday. But he called the current Parliament "dysfunctional" and hinted that it’s unlikely to hang together much after Harper introduces his next budget.

The Liberal party poll numbers are slowly inching up nationally and they're gaining back support in Quebec thanks to the Tories boneheaded policies so it seems Quebecers may be poised to put Adscam behind them to move forward with Dion's new leadership.

Meanwhile, we will no doubt hear cries of 'NEP!' (which always happens when the feds talk about Alberta's oil patch) on right-wing talk shows in Alberta with the announcement by Dion that oil and gas taxes will be under review if the Liberals get back in power.

"We will revisit the oil and gas tax regime to be sure it will be fair and competitive and also effective for greenhouse gas reductions and for the competitiveness of the economy," Dion told a news conference.

In particular, he said he wanted to look at a rule which allows the oil sands industry to write off investment costs at an accelerated pace. The rule was brought in by the previous Liberal government to help the industry in its early days.

"I'm saying that we will revisit it completely and if they (the companies in the oil sands) want to have it back ... they will need to come with zero-emission projects and (plans) to use three times less water, let's say," he said.

"Through that we'll change our country for good. Instead of having an economy based on waste we'll have an economy based on recycling, the best environmental technologies available, the best clean coal technologies, carbon dioxide capture and storage."

It's not like the Liberals risk losing any political support here in Alberta considering the fact that it's virtually non-existent and this type of pressure on the oil patch is exactly what's needed to get moving on environmental concerns, unlike the do-nothing strategy of Rona Ambrose. It seems to me that if American and Chinese companies want to boost their profits via their oil sands investments, they should be willing to comply with tough environmental standards as well.