Time to put an end to reckless thinking

Re: “Carbon cap questions,” Editorial, Sept. 24.

The Herald’s editorial demanding answers about the province’s carbon tax rests on a false premise, exacerbated with an overly simplistic argument that a revenueneutral tax in a very different context will accomplish the same result.

The cost of Alberta’s carbon tax is not a new cost. The cost was incurred over the past several decades by a cavalier dismissal of science-based concern about the impact of human activity on climate. A rational plan to correct the reckless excesses of PC governments and strategically change the curve from a dependency on carbon-based energy to renewable is a moderate and necessary change.

The proposal by the editorial board for a revenueneutral tax amounts to little more than an effort to further the proposal first put forward and widely reported in 1999 by Premier Ralph Klein’s finance minister, Stockwell Day, explaining he could foresee a time, possibly within 15 years, that the Alberta income tax could be eliminated altogether because of growing revenues from natural resources.

It’s decades of that kind of reckless and irresponsible thinking that’s helped produce the challenges now faced by Finance Minister Joe Ceci. Jake Kuiken, Calgary and this level of service was matched by servers and other business establishments.

Everyone spoke English to us and helped with our French when we attempted it. We rented bikes in Montreal and Quebec City, where they have an impressive network of bike paths.

In Quebec City, a local biker stopped to chat with us on a ride and asked about our route.

He carried on ahead, but somehow magically appeared wherever there was an important intersection or detour on the route.

We really felt like we had made a new French-Canadian friend for a day. Try a visit for the history, the beauty, the food, and the French.

Merci, Quebec. Cheryl Sheppard, Calgary