Don Martin in Ottawa
National Post
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Deep in the bowels of government, they're working on Operation Dusty Shelf. OK, so that's not the actual name of this huge bureaucratic undertaking. More like the code word for its future destination.
When a Liberal-ordered bill forces a Conservative government to plan ways to implement the Kyoto protocol, let's just say this is not a motivational exercise for federal bureaucrats. They know their strategy will be stillborn.
Sources say Environment Minister John Baird regrets his initial dismissive bluster against the Kyoto-enforcing private member's bill, which passed through the Commons last week and now awaits a rubber stamp after being debated in the Liberal- dominated Senate.
But it hasn't dimmed his government's disdain for a bill that gives them 60 days to produce an action plan to deliver on the Kyoto target of cranking down Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels.
"It's not enforceable, not economical and not even constitutional," fumes a senior official in the Environment Ministry. "But we're working on something to deal with it."
This much is certain. The cost and consequences of Kyoto's implementation will not be sugarcoated by this government. The intention is not to deliver warm and fuzzys on ways to meet our international obligations, but to pour cold water and hard realities on the folly of aggressively trying to meet the 2012 target.
Sorting through the possibilities of emission caps, reduced pollution "
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