Angry in the Great White North

Some time ago, I wrote about how Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, in defending his carbon tax, directed people to Jennifer Wright's Green Shift Inc website.

This is not a trivial mistake.  It lies at the centre of the lawsuit that Jennifer Wright has launched against the Liberal Party:

I was beyond livid when I realized that, despite my very vocal objections, during the coming General Election, 308 Liberal candidates would be promoting an election platform whose environmental tax program would carry the hijacked name of our company. Along with Liberal candidates on their doorsteps, Canadians would be inundated with Green Shift posters, billboards, advertisements, commercials, doorhangers, T-shirts, hats, bottle openers, news stories and who knows what else -- all of them referring to Green Shift the tax policy, not our company and its eponymous "greening" program.

The damage to our company's good name and impeccable reputation would be almost incalculable and almost irreparable.

Of course, we can add Stephane Dion using the URL of Jennifer Wright's company website Green Shift Inc when telling people where to find the carbon tax calculator of the Liberal massive tax plan.

And I spotted another occurrence of the same problem.  It happened in mid-July, in a small Alberta-based paper called the Smoky Lake Signal.  Go to Jennifer Wright's website to learn more about the Liberal Party tax grab:

Stephane Dion brought his "Green Shift" message to Edmonton on July 7, 2008. At a well-attended "Town Hall" meeting, he presented an explanation of these ideas and what they will mean to Albertans. This was followed by a Question & Answer session that had Mr. Dion predicting that this plan would boost investment in new and innovative technologies in Alberta along the lines of that currently taking place in Norway.

As outlined by Stephane Dion, the Green Shift would bring in increased charges to polluters and offset these with a refundable income tax credit to Canadians and a favorable environment for investing in renewable energy and 'green' technologies. He affirmed that there will not be any new tax on gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel - the Liberal plan would convert the current excise tax on gasoline (roughly $40/tonne of carbon) into the new carbon tax over the next four years. Details of the tax credit are available on the Internet at www.greenshift.ca .

A confused reporter.  Some sloppy editing and fact checking.  Several hundred readers getting the wrong information.

But then that's the point.  Pockets of confusion grow and spread, until Jennifer Wright's company is utterly forgotten by most, and for the few that recall that there was once something called Green Shift Inc, an assumption that it somehow was taken over by the Liberal Party.

This particular bit of confusion is dated right after the carbon tax plan was announced, suggesting that right from the beginning, people were unclear on the difference, even reporters who should have known better.  The damage to Jennifer Wright's company started accumulating immediately after Stephane Dion and his staff decided that the Liberals had the right to any name the saw fit to assign to their tax scheme.