Dion Has Kyoto In His Corner And An Un-namedPussy

Partisanship poisons clean air
Don Martin in Ottawa
National Post
Friday, February 02, 2007

While the environmental frenzy goes global today with the release in Paris of an early autopsy on our warming atmosphere, the climate hasn't changed one bit in Ottawa.
Amid the alarming cries from MPs about the "crisis" and "catastrophe" confronting the Earth, the usual poisoned, partisan and unproductive air has engulfed the House of Commons in political smog.
More than 60 questions on climate change were fired across the centre aisle in the House of Commons this week, most of them rooted in smears, exaggerations and rabid distortions of the other side's iffy track record on going green.
Liberal MPs, sporting green lapel ribbons, elevated their attacks to a new level yesterday when the environment was up for a day-long debate.
Leader Stephane Dion is no longer content to label Prime Minister Stephen Harper as merely a Canadian doubter, but warns that he is out to destroy the Kyoto protocol on a global scale.
He accused Mr. Harper of sabotaging international conferences in Bonn and Nairobi last year and figures Environment Minister John Baird will go down the same destructive path when he arrives in Paris today for the scientific report's release. Good grief.
The Liberals now chant "climate change denier" whenever the Conservatives discuss the problem, their choice of words being no accident as they frame environmental doubt on par with questioning the Holocaust.
The best shot the Grits took all week was The Letter, a 2002 fundraising pitch from Mr. Harper giving his candid assessment of the Kyoto accord as an unscientific, money-sucking jobkiller.
Now before moving beyond that letter, a bit of background on how it fell into Liberal hands. The party's research guru, a fine fellow named Kevin Bosch, had signed up his now-deceased cat as a Canadian Alliance member in 2000, the better to anonymously monitor the party's mailouts.
The cat died, but party correspondence kept coming, including Mr. Harper's anti-Kyoto rant, which Mr. Bosch carefully preserved for use at the appropriate time. Which came this week. That'll teach Mr. Harper to trust felines. In this case, the cat came back and got his tongue. I digress.
Conservative shots at the Liberals are just as wild. They're gleefully quoting with almost biblical fervour old attacks on the Liberals from the commissioner on the environment, the very same official whose body is still twitching from her axing this week by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser.
Sitting in the middle of the debate wearing looks of wide-eyed disgust are the New Democrats. And while this praise doesn't come easily to me, there's not much doubt they're the honest brokers of the debate. They've pushed for speedy action on the government's bill and have proposed a series of amendments to expedite it along.
"It is like a pantomime between Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton," cracked New Democrat MP Denise Savoie as she watched accusations of climate-change inaction being exchanged between Liberal and Conservative MPs.
Thing is, the Liberals actually dread the prospect of popular Canadian action being taken against greenhouse-gas emissions.
If the Conservatives' Clean Air Act passes with the New Democrats as parliamentary partners, it will be impossible for Mr. Dion to polish his Mr. Clean credentials and market Mr. Harper as an environmental knuckle dragger in the next election.
He'll have trouble even if the act is unsuccessfully rewritten. With the threat of an election fading for another year, Mr. Harper has considerable luxury to give his record an upgrade.
If he's seen as responding to voter concerns, his late conversion to the science will be forgotten, and he will be judged on his accomplishments. If that means the Liberals can only seethe at Conservatives for stealing their ideas, well, nobody cares who came up with the idea, only who delivers.
But in the short term, this week ends with an all-talk on a Liberal motion to enshrine the Kyoto protocol in Canadian law, an idea that's moving nowhere despite all the frantic talk of a slightly warmer sky falling on Canada.
Perhaps former Liberal MP David Anderson, the first environment minister I felt was a true believer in the science, had it right three years ago.
"Goddammit ? no country's planned more than Canada. This planning thing is a red herring and I'm tired of hearing it," he fumed in 2004. "When that's an excuse for doing nothing, that is really an outrageous misuse of language."
That's the defining assessment of political climate-change activity in Canada, but nobody's quoting him these days. Sadly, for a public braced to make an environmental sacrifice, Canada's words will speak louder than its action for a long time to come.
Global warming denier becomes a believer. Plus cartoon, A10