Smoke 'n Mirrors:

CBC quoted some Liberal commentator who said that PC leader Andrew Scheer's address regarding young Trudeau's carbon tax at a gathering in Alberta was just smoke and mirrors.

Scheer is quoted to have said if he is elected, Trudeau's punitive carbon tax would be toast. 

Does that sound like smoke and mirrors? Not to me. Sounds like a statement of positive intent. And a welcome one. Someone has to end that ill-advised lunacy.

Scheer's speech included the idea that the PCs have a plan that will facilitate industry's efforts to reduce emissions. If historic records are accurate, all they need to do is tell the technical types what needs to be done, then shut up and get out of the way. 

Industry has demonstrated its ability to curb emissions over the last century. Anybody over 30 years old will remember the stench of hydrocarbons in vehicle exhausts emitting a shimmering haze in the heat of city streets crowded with traffic.

Old guys like me remember the reek of horse emissions in country lanes and city roadways. Those emissions were covered up with the less pungent smell of cigarettes, pipe tobacco, cigars and less-frequent baths. 

What emissions the Ottawa administration intends to cover with the stench of wacky tobaccy remains to be seen. Could be the smell of indiscriminate taxation.

Away back at the approach of the 20th Century, one New York politician is reported to have predicted that soon they will be unable to rid urban centres of dead horse carcasses. He calculated that by the turn of the century (the 20th) major US metropolitan centres will be at least 200 feet deep in horse dung.

It did not come to pass. That problem was solved not by politicians imposing more taxes, but by industry engineers. Most prominent among those were people like Henry Ford, who replaced horses with the Model T, an affordable automobile. 

Ford was no saint. He did that because, unlike the Ottawa Liberals looking to squeeze more taxes out of the working poor, he was looking to make an honest buck by improving their life style.

He did that handily and, in doing so, helped create another type of emissions--hydrocarbons. Over time, engineers solved that one with more precise ignition control, fuel injection, closed loop fuel systems and catalytic converters.

Now, the new car motors are running so clean, their exhausts are probably cleaner than the air they suck in for combustion. 

Hopefully, we will have to put up with young Trudeau's wild schemes to save the planet by merciless taxation of the working class only until next fall's election.