blevkog

Rona Ambrose, who has managed to hold onto her job as Environment Minister, has interpreted the recent attack on her job as an attack on the government's stand on Kyoto. She is partly right, but only partly - the immediate concern was her refusal to appear before the House of Commons' environment committee, which she is supposed to do from time to time as minister. The fact that she has done nothing but cut existing programs and replace them with platitudes about "made in Canada" solutions surely doesn't help. Yesterday, instead of answering a question in the House, she challenged the Opposition to run an election campaign based on the issue of global warming. She actually said "Bring it on", apparently oblivious to the recent success of this phrase.

For his part, in commenting on things environmental, Stephen Harper said that his government's problem with the Kyoto Protocol is that it "does nothing to control smog". Big deal, it does nothing about cancer, either, but that does not mean we should get rid of it - it's purpose is to reduce the largest component of greenhouse gases, not cure all of our polution ills. It is part of a strategy, but only part.

If this is how well our current government understands environmental issues, yes, let us indeed run an election on environmental issues - we will soon be talking about the extinction of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Bring it on, indeed.

Posted by kevvyd on Friday, June 23, 2006 at 11:01 AM | Permalink