An open letter to David Suzuki… Please add to it…
David,
I was listening to you on CBC radio here in Edmonton on Friday discussing in a segment the idea of taxing vehicles based on how many occupants they have… I have also thought of this and wonder how someone in a V10 7.6L four door truck with two people total could possibly pay less people tax than someone in a 599cc, or .6L, Smart car by them selves…?
I really thing that some form of combination or revision of the type of yearly ’shaken’ the Japanese have would be a better way to tax the carbon emissions of a vehicle… The wonderful, ahem, clean air emissions testing done in Ontario does squat… Perhaps if, like in Japan, the driver of any vehicle with, lets say a 5+ litre engine, was confronted yearly by a $2500 licence fee for the privilege of polluting the air, perhaps they would think twice about all that wasted space and metal they haul around all day.
If we have the technology to digitally capture a licence plate and send a speeding ticket to a driver, or a bill for toll roads, then why is it that those tolls can’t be ‘tuned’ for the specific type of vehicle…
On the basest of levels you can compare these two cars… A dodge Viper and a Smart for two… Both are two seaters, both have very little trunk space, both get you and one person from point A to point B with lots of people looking at you… but should both be taxed equally under any emissions legislation?