Welcome Back Chris.........

The muscle car premier?

By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD

Getting back to work here at Queen's Park after two weeks sampling the divine liquid pleasures of Provence, I got the feeling I'd returned to a world turned upside down.

First, Premier Dalton McGuinty -- the guy who wants to go down in history as the Education Premier -- was talking tough over school board spending. His next statement had me shaking my head and wondering if I was still under the influence of one too many bottles of French wine.

Asked about plans by federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose to meet with reps of the auto industry to discuss what they can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, McGuinty sided with the auto industry.

Yep, you heard right. A tough-talking Liberal leaped to the defence of big business to protect an industry from a bunch of tree-hugging, eco-warrior Tories.

"One thing we will not abide is any effort on the part of the national government to unduly impose greenhouse gas emission reductions on the province of Ontario at the expense of our auto sector," McGuinty said.

"I think anyone who has paid any attention of any kind to this auto sector knows that we are being challenged. That is a continental challenge."

He said Ambrose should sit down with people from the oil and gas sector in Western Canada to address climate change.

Whoa. Them's fighting words. I guess he's not just the Education Premier, he's the Muscle Car Premier, too.

Just a few short weeks ago, he and then economic development Minister Joe Cordiano were at the GM plant in Oshawa, pegging the future of the industry in this province on the sleek back of the new Camaro.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm with McGuinty on this one. The auto industry is the backbone of this province. Tinker with it, impose arbitrary controls and restrictions at your peril.

All the same, it would show foresight on the part of GM --and the government, which is supporting the company -- if they tied their future economic viability to, say, a hybrid vehicle.

You have to wonder why McGuinty deflected blame for our dependence on fossil fuel to the oil producers rather than the oil consumers. After all, as long as those of us in this province continue to snap up those gas guzzlers, oil companies in the West will continue to feast on our foolishness. (And isn't it ironic that it's the corpses of dinosaurs that are feeding our own slow march to extinction?)

All the same, the timing was unfortunate, since Environment Commissioner Gord Miller released a scathing report yesterday that took McGuinty's government to task for its neglect of the environment and pondered a "perfect storm" that's brewing, with inadequate laws controlling water source quality, waste diversion and climate change.

Miller quoted an engineer who pointed out to him recently that our infrastructure is inadequate to handle the flooding that occurs with the frequent heavy storms that have become commonplace.

The kind of storm we saw once every 100 years happened three times this year, the engineer pointed out to Miller. Miller noted that of every operational dollar spent by the province, only $0.035 goes to improve the environment.

"I use the rhetorical expression, shouldn't we spend a penny on the environment?" Miller said. "A penny would be almost a tripling of their budget."

A topsy-turvey world, for sure, when Liberal McGuinty decries a federal Tory for being too green. Then again, after three years in power, it could just be that the provincial Liberals are wrestling with the pragmatism of government.

Spending more money doesn't equate to a better education. You can't close all the coal-fired electricity plants. Sometimes the only way to pay for health care is through the private sector.

Don't worry, though. One thing you can count on: They'll hike our taxes to pay for it all.

Just too bad they didn't say that in the last election.