From true-blue to costly green
The Clean-Air Act promises to regulate even snowmobiles and vending machines. How far will this government go?
Terry O'Neill - February 12, 2007
A series of storms hit Vancouver's Stanley Park in December and January, the worst on Dec. 15, knocking down more than 3,000 much beloved trees, with winds measuring over 100 kilometres per hour. It was not the first time the bayside park was blasted by big winds, and it won't be the last. Storms have been hitting Canada's Pacific coast and shattering trees for eons. The park was as badly hit in 1962 by typhoon Freda.
For newly minted federal Environment Minister John Baird, however, the devastation he saw during his Jan. 8 tour of Stanley Park was more than a predictable, albeit rare, act of nature. It was a "wake-up call"--an expression he used at least a half-dozen times during his first major public foray since assuming the environment portfolio four days earlier. Baird showcased his conviction that Vancouver's unusually windy winter and eastern Canada's then mild weather were somehow linked to man-made global warming, and the government must now surely do something about it--notwithstanding scientific uncertainty over the extent and causes of the Earth's warming, the Conservative party's previous skepticism, and widespread warnings of the adverse economic impacts of any Canadian attempt to manage the global climate.
Baird's Stanley Park tour was explained only by its political optics in the face of public dissatisfaction with the Tories' previously prudent environmental record. Such dissatisfaction was evident in the results of last November's London North Centre byelection, when Green party Leader Elizabeth May (see story, page 27) took 26 per cent of the vote, beating Tory candidate Dianne Haskett to second place behind Liberal winner Glen Pearson. That result may have registered on the political Richter scale in the Prime Minister's Office.
Five weeks later, a Decima Research survey found 74 per cent of respondents thought the Tories were doing a "bad job" in dealing with environmental issues, a six per cent drop since September--and this, even though the government had introduced its showpiece Clean-Air Act shortly after that byelection spanking. The wide (but possibly weak) disapproval rating may have been significant, since that same poll found the environment had eclipsed health care, the economy and Afghanistan as "the most frequently mentioned preoccupation of Canadians." Those results might equally suggest that Canadians no longer have any pressing issues, but B.C. Tory MP James Moore concluded the environment has become Canadians' new health care: a motherhood issue that politicians dare not question.
Alberta MP Rona Ambrose, who championed the Clean Air Act, was removed from the environment portfolio, having been branded by the media as fumbling global warming, though under her watch, the government committed to cutting the country's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45 to 65 per cent by 2050. But now, with Baird in the warming seat, the Tories seemed ready to generate new momentum on the environment file, bringing forward the concrete emissions regulations promised in the act.
Observers such as National Post columnist Andrew Coyne suggested the politically adroit Baird was being tasked by Harper merely to stickhandle the issue into a corner--before his minority government is forced again to the polls, possibly this spring. But it quickly became apparent the Tories have their sights set higher.
Baird would not comment directly on where he was aiming. In a brief interview with the Western Standard, he would say only, "We have to do more, there's no doubt about it. And we're committed to doing that. I've already started my briefings with officials and reaching out to some environmental leaders and with my colleagues in other parties." True to his word, in the days after his Stanley Park photo op, Baird met privately for 45 minutes with one of the world's most strident global warming activists, Vancouver's celebrity conservationist David Suzuki, and then with NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen.
The latter meeting had especial importance. It followed by less than a week Ontario MP Wajid Khan's Jan. 5 decision to bolt the Liberals for the Conservatives, a floor-crossing that now permits a Tory-NDP alliance to fend off Grit or Bloc attempts to bring down Harper's minority government. Significantly, NDP Leader Jack Layton said he would support the Tory environmental agenda, only if they made concrete efforts to implement the Kyoto accord, adopted by the Liberals in 1997. Kyoto committed Canada to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. "We want to see compulsory controls and limits on the pollution from the major industries," Layton said on Jan. 8. "We think that should be happening now."
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