Part of the Conservative party campaign against Stephane Dion's declared — though unspecified — policy of a carbon tax is a website that calls the policy the Dion Tax Trick.

The website looks like the work of independent anti-tax rebels but the fine print on the lower left corner says "Authorized by the Registered Agent for the Conservative Party of Canada."

For the reader not quite certain what a "tax trick" might be, there are a number of examples.

Among them is the federal income tax introduced in 1917 as a temporary measure. Another is the deficit fighting corporate surtax of 1987 and a third is the GST promised to be revenue neutral when passed into law in 1990.

What do those "tax tricks" have in common?

Well they were all introduced by Conservative ministers of finance, the latter two by the man Prime Minister Stephen Harper named ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson.