Modeling Journey

Ignatieff has taken a decisive step to prepare for a coalition Liberal-NDP government come February, by harmonizing the Liberal Party’s environment policy with the policy agreed upon by the three opposition parties in the Accord signed late last year.

Ignatieff has scrapped the carbon tax idea:

“The Liberals' effective abandonment of a carbon tax, a measure designed to fight global warming by discouraging carbon emissions, removes what was a major political headache for the party.

"I think a carbon tax has a lot of problems, which we discovered. We took it to the marketplace of Canadian politics, and the Canadian electorate said, 'We want to do the right thing environmentally but this isn't working for us, think again'," Ignatieff said.”

And the Accord clearly addressed the commitment by the LPC, NDP and Bloc to pursue a cap and trade policy:

“There is also a commitment to "pursue a North American cap-and-trade market" to limit carbon emissions.”

Seeing these moves by the leader of the Liberal Party must send shivers up Harper’s spine, despite the steps he has taken to butter up Ignatieff and to avoid having the Liberals do the logical thing (given the many reasons Harper and his government have provided to MPs for not trusting him or his party and therefore for not having confidence in a Tory government lead by him) vote no on the coming confidence motion.