Baird Says Canadian Tories Ready To Face Election Over Environmental Collision Course

[hatrack]

OTTAWA–The Conservative government and opposition parties are on a collision course over the environment that threatens to trigger a federal election. The Tories insist only their climate change plan will reduce greenhouse gas emissions while protecting jobs, but the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois say the Kyoto Protocol – with a few nips and tucks – is good enough.

An appearance yesterday by Environment Minister John Baird at the Commons committee on environmental and sustainable development only offered more proof that the two sides could not be further apart. "I am prepared to face the electorate," Baird told reporters, referring to a number of government plans, including fighting climate change.

The opposition parties have proposed scores of amendments to the Conservatives' Clean Air Act – amendments that would put into law the Kyoto Protocol's emission targets, which the government says are unachievable.

Both sides are keenly aware the environment is top of mind for Canadians and want to be seen as doing more than the other side to protect the environment. "If he wants an election on Kyoto, we are ready anytime," Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe told reporters.

EDIT

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/195266

[Pab Sungenis]

1. Maybe now Jack Layton will shut the hell up

and bring down the Government he helped create.

[gasperc]

2. well, if the new Atlantic hurricane predictions are accurate

which leads to a greater chance of hurricanes entering the gulf which in turn will get super-heated and become monsters, then the Tories won't have much time to back track.
On top of that, part of the Antartic are now looking to be warmer than previously predicted even though vast portions are protected by super cold temperatures. Should a sizable ice shelf break off in the near future so will support for the Tories. It seems that Tories and conservatives in general are succuming to the belief that global warming is happening but that it would be far more cost effective to manage it, like building walls or dikes to keep out the water and the like. I don't think they realize that the Ocean can rise several meters in just a few years and there is no way we can build shit that fast.

[Kagemusha]

3. I'm no friend of greenhouse gases but.. bringing a govt down over this..

that is not going to help the opposition parties at the polls much. The Canadian electorate had an election only one year ago and has little stomach for another so soon. To have an election called over environmental issues (and mind you, there are other issues to wage an election over) will strike many people as frivolous, totally in spite of what committed environmentalists think. There's a lot of committed environmentalists in Canada, but not enough to compensate for general societal revulsion at an election grind over what would be seen as a weak excuse.

That's the world we live in, not the world we wish we lived in.