Carole James fails CBC reality check on carbon tax

CBC Radio is running an election feature called Reality Check, where they try to verify things politicians say on the campaign trail. Last Friday, they skewered Carole James’ claim that the carbon tax wasn’t doing anything to reduce carbon emissions.

In fact, James said that carbon emissions increased last year by four per cent. In a stinging rebuke, CBC proved her wrong, and gave her a very bad rating for her dishonesty.

They checked her sources, and found them to be measuring the wrong things. And they checked with Environment Canada, which measures the right things, but found that reports tracking Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Canada are always behind by about 18 months, so numbers are not yet available to show if emissions have gone down.

CBC’s conclusion?

“What did we find when we looked under the microscope? The NDP claim that emissions have gone up four percent since July 2008 is mostly false.”

Told you so. James is making it up as she goes along, desperately shilling for rural votes. And now she’s been outed, again, for her dishonesty.

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

What IS the NDP's candidate screening process?

With another NDP candidate being ridiculed by media this week, we were going to write a blog entry about the very poor choices the NDP is making in selecting candidates that it thinks should run our economy in troubled times. We were going to make pithy comments and ridicule them, but why should we, when the media and Carole James herself are already doing it for us?

James is quoted in a CBC story yesterday saying the controversy of disgraced candidate Ray Lam’s racy Facebook photos forcing his resignation as a candidate in Vancouver False Creek reflects “the reality of the new media.” She goes on to add:

“It will be interesting to watch politics over the next 10 to 15 years when you have an entire generation of young people who grew up with their lives public on Facebook.”

Boy, can’t wait to see what kinds of photos other NDP candidates will show us! Imagine, going into politics and having their whole lives made public. These are the kind of people who would have their hands on the levers of power in a $35 billion operation. Really confidence-inspiring, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, saving us from having to come up with commentary about this whole thing is The Province’s respected columnist, Michael Smyth. His story yesterday, headlined “Big holes in NDP's candidate-screening process; Latest in party's parade of wingnuts for elected office,” added up Lam’s Facebook faux pas with Mable Elmore’s anti-Zionist comments, and throws in some federal NDP candidates predicaments to conclude that the NDP don’t know how to screen candidates.

“The NDP promised to do better. Instead, it seems "why stop there" has become the theme song of the NDP's wingnuts-for-office parade…”A lack of judgment," NDP Leader Carole James explained yesterday, Gee, do ya think?”

But the best line Smyth’s newspaper article – and really, we couldn’t have made up this stuff better ourselves:

“But it's worse than that for the NDP: This kind of pattern can plant serious doubts in the minds of people wondering if the party and its candidates are fit to run the province.”

Do we even need to say it? Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.