Has Liberal Leader Stephane Dion been missing the news lately? Did he miss the story last week about Magna International permanently laying off about 400 workers, or 25 per cent of its workforce at Formet Industries in St. Thomas beginning in September because of the impact of soaring gasoline prices on the auto parts sector?

Did he miss the recent announcement by Air Canada that it's cutting 2,000 jobs and slashing seven per cent of its flights because of a fuel bill which is expected to grow by $1 billion this year alone?

Was he out of town when General Motors announced earlier this month that it plans to close its truck plant in Oshawa and put 2,600 workers out of their jobs? Why? Because high gasoline prices have killed the market for big passenger vehicles in North America.

Is Dion unaware of the latest Statistics Canada figures showing the number of jobs overall in auto assembly and parts manufacturing at the end of the first quarter of this year dropped by 6,000 jobs, or seven per cent, over the same period last year, "the lowest level since 1994." And it's mainly because of gas prices.

So what is Dion's solution to the issue which more than any other has Canadians grumbling each time they drive up to the gas pumps or pay their electricity or gas bills at home?

Easy, he says. Let's impose a $15 billion "carbon tax" to make energy even more expensive than it is.

Your correspondent - admittedly not a big fan of Dion - thought that the hapless Liberal leader his a low point last year when Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered on his election pledge to cut the GST that a Liberal government might put the tax back on.

So who knew that Dion's political insanity was just getting started when he promised higher consumption taxes through the GST? Who knew he would actually run on a policy of - as Harper indelicately, but accurately put it - "screwing" Canadians on energy prices.

Yes, yes, we know. Dion claims that his new megatax on energy won't bump up the price of gasoline - sure, it won't - although he does say it will put jet fuel up - really good news for struggling airlines - because when he redistributes all that extra cash from his megatax (minus, of course, the megacost of setting up a new bureaucracy to collect it) it will in the end be "revenue neutral."

Oh please. Having covered politics for more than four decades, your correspondent can't tell you how many times we've heard politicians say a new tax would be "revenue neutral" - the GST is one famous or infamous example - and it has yet to happen.

Politicians don't propose radical new taxes and take the political heat for it just so they can have the same amount of your money to play with. No, they do it so they can have even more money in the hopes they can better use your money to buy your votes come the next election. That's the way it works.

In addition to being an enormous burden on Canadians - and its' the middle class who will take the biggest hit - Dion's mad scheme might even be acceptable in some quarters if there was any reason to believe it would achieve its' stated goal of cutting back on pollution. But it won't. And even if it did a little bit, it would be totally lost in the reality of a world where the biggest polluters of all - i.e. China, Russia and India - have no incentive and certainly no inclination to cut back on their pollution.

The Liberals, no doubt hoping to deflect thoughts from the sheer madness of Dion's plan, are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that Harper supposedly used "inappropriate" language in saying it would "screw" the country.

For those who forget what has gone before - Pierre Trudea's famous "fuddle duddle" is one example - the claim is that Harper has brought public debate to a new low. He hasn't. What he has done - and it's about time - is actually show some genuine passion for an issue he obviously feels very strongly about.

But the issue isn't what word Harper uses to describe it. The issue is how much damage such an enormous energy tax would do to our day-to-day lives.

In case the Liberals haven't noticed, this is a cold and big country. We need energy, lots of it. And to suggest that taxing the energy companies would not end up being passed on to consumers is, well, beyond reasonable belief even for politicians.

It may be that Dion's political fortune was shortterm anyway. Now he's guaranteed his own quick demise.

Unbelievable.