So much of being a politician today involves engaging in magical thinking.

By magical thinking, I mean basing one's political views on what one might wish to be true, as opposed to what is true.

The thought occurred to me as I was reading a letter from Willowdale Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay (pictured) in Friday's Sun, criticizing reader Ron Cundell who had expressed skepticism about Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's proposed carbon tax.

As Findlay and the Liberals put it, there is "nothing to fear" from a carbon tax because: "We will cut taxes on things Canadians want more of - income, innovation, savings and investments - while shifting those taxes towards the things we want less of - pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, smog and waste."

Let's leave aside that this argument isn't original. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was making it, as well as the Liberal one that a carbon tax involves a "tax shift" rather than a "tax increase," back when Dion was opposed to a carbon tax.

Let's leave aside that Dion has changed his mind on this issue only as he struggles for a way to define himself politically with voters. After all, politicians, like anyone else, are entitled to change their views.

Instead, let's simply examine what the Liberals are saying, out of their own mouths.

Read Findlay's words again. Their logical and inescapable inference is that Liberals now believe taxes on income (to say nothing of innovation, savings and investments) are undesirable, even bad.

That is absurd. Wealth redistribution based on graduated income taxes - the more you make the more you pay, so that government can redistribute the money to lessen social inequality - is the Holy Grail of liberalism and is a concept accepted, to a greater or lesser extent, by all governments today, including conservative ones.

If the Liberals have suddenly decided they no longer believe in it, they must explain what led them to this startling, 180-degree conversion on the road to Kyoto.

As NDP Leader Jack Layton has rightly observed, a carbon tax impacts disproportionately on the poor, who seldom have the means, resources or even the choice to lower their carbon emissions.

While we haven't yet seen details, the Liberals assure us they will make provision for the poor in their carbon tax. Even beyond that, in her letter to the Sun, Findlay assures us tax shifting will "lift many Canadians out of poverty."

The logical inference of this claim is that the Liberals have found a way to make a carbon tax a more efficient redistributor of wealth than income taxes.

That will be a wonderful achievement, if true, especially since, as the Liberals also promise, and indeed as Findlay pledges in her letter, a carbon tax as planned by the Liberals "involves no more net tax."

So, according to their own words, the Liberals have devised a carbon tax which, for the same overall amount of money we now pay for income taxes, will lessen social in-equality, to say nothing of all its environmental benefits.

If true, then one must logically ask, why didn't anyone think of this before?

Let's look at the bad things Findlay says in her letter that a carbon tax will discourage - "pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, smog and waste."

All except one - man-made greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change - long predate the issue of global warming.

One more question

If the Liberals have invented a new tax that is a more efficient redistributor of wealth than income taxes, one that will not only reduce social in-equality but, as Findlay also promises "help the middle class," for the same amount in overall taxes we now pay, while simultaneously reducing "pollution ... smog and waste" then we are left with another logical question.

Why didn't they bring it in during the 12 years they were in power from 1993 to 2006, regardless of the issue of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming?

Martha Hall Findlay is a highly accomplished and intelligent individual, as indeed, are many Liberals, including Stephane Dion.

For that reason, one must ask: Why have they substituted magical for logical thinking?  Source