Ambrose Day Bits & Pieces
Post
06/12/06, Stockwell Day, Constituency caught in winter’s icy grip, (Source).
10/12/06, Wolf Depner, Inconvenient truth spoils MP’s punch-line, (Source).
12/12/06, Bill Curry, This Day gets cold, (Source).
12/12/06, Bill Curry, Ambrose feels the heat as blunders pile up, (Source).
12/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, The green revolution that Canada's missing, (Source).
15/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, Rona Ambrose has been left to smile pretty for the cameras, (Source).
06/12/06, Stockwell Day, Constituency caught in winter’s icy grip, (Back).
Hey who knows, maybe Al Gore is right.
Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming.
All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year.
And I was begging for Big Al’s Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24. Do not despair, my fellow dwellers of the Okanagan and Nicola Valleys.
If misery loves company then we had lots of it around our province. Matter of fact, at one point in the week some 22 towns and cities had broken all-time records for paralyzing frigid temperatures.
Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this. For every hour it’s that cold, millions of those nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death.
But brace yourself. We’d need about two weeks of that brain freeze weather to kill off all those burrowing bugs.
Are you up for it?
Talking about cold places to live, the minister of native affairs along with key Inuit leaders finally settled the last major land claim of Inuit lands in Canada.
This was a sweeping agreement and a good news story for all Canadians. Funny how those kinds of items are of little or no interest to the national media.
I guess what the treaty signers should have done was to stage a fist fight at the signing ceremony. At least they would have got a headline for all their labours.
On another note, this week Prime Minister Steven Harper recognized the 25th anniversary of the Red Ribbon Campaign in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
He did that in a tangible way by increasing the federal government’s already strong commitment by an additional $140 million.
We all owe a debt of thanks to those who fight on many different fronts in that life-and-death struggle against that insidious disease.
To top off the week, Prime Minister Harper attended the inauguration of Mexico’s new President Calderone.
Mexico’s democracy is really just coming of age since they have been ruled for almost 70 years by a pseudo-democratic regime.
As with any loss of position the previous power brokers have been furiously trying to whip up mass protests in the streets to topple the new government.
Due to our long-standing good relations with the Mexican people and the mutually beneficial free trade back and forth, our PM rightly realized that his presence at the ceremony would send a positive signal that we support democracy.
The Mexican government was extremely grateful, saying “We will not forget this sign of good-will from Canada.”
And finally, talking about new federal leaders, the Liberals finally have one.
In all sincerity I wish him all the best as Opposition Leader as he works hard to bring forward ideas and initiatives that we in government might be able to embrace for the good of Canada.
And I for one will give him the credit if he does. He may soon discover that politics can be nasty and brutish, even from within, so he’ll need all the credit he can get.
10/12/06, Wolf Depner, Inconvenient truth spoils MP’s punch-line, (Back).
A column which appeared in Wednesday’s Western News from local MP Stockwell Day is a stunning combination of inappropriate jokes and scientific inaccuracies which reveal the true Conservative attitudes about climate change.
Only a portion of the column actually tries to spin readers into believing global warming is just nothing more than a piece of science fiction peddled by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
Day also tries to turn his boss Stephen Harper into the patron saint of people living with HIV/AIDS and a friend of Mexican democracy.
Never mind though that Harper snubbed the 2006 World Aids Conference in Toronto and tried to re-open the debate on same-sex marriage. Never mind that the “previous power brokers” like out-going president Vicente Fox are actually supporting Calderone whose razor-thin election win over socialist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been marred by allegations of wide-spread electoral fraud. This is why people are protesting in the streets of Mexico City. Day omits these inconvenient truths.
But these slips are almost negligible compared to the first part of the column which tries to mine global warming for cringe-inducing comedy riddled with scientific deceptions.
“Hey who knows, maybe Al Gore is right,” Day writes in his opening commentary on the recent cold snap. “Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming,” he chuckles.
“All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year,” he adds, as if to suggest that a heavy dump of snow should bury all this talk of rising temperatures.
This apparent attempt to confuse the weather — short-term changes in the atmosphere — with climate — atmospheric behaviour during longer periods — is among the hallmarks of global-warming skeptics.
But the scientific debate is over. Climate change is a fact.
If Day finds Bush-league humour in rising water levels caused by an impending planetary catastrophe, the joke is on the millions of people who live near or along the world’s oceans like those who live in the Conservative-held ridings in and around Victoria.
A new map released by the Sierra Club of B.C. should end all the jokes swiftly.
If global warming causes ocean levels to rise six metres in the Victoria region, future premiers can trade in their automobiles for canoes if they wish to get to the legislature.
It, along with 74 per cent of Victoria, the airport, ferry terminals and the cruise ship port, will disappear completely if sea levels rise 25 metres.
Matters will not be better elsewhere. Millions of farmers across the world will see their crops wither, leaving them with few to no options for survival. Increased reports of polar bears drowning is only a preview of what will happen to animals both large and small. Pests that threaten the health of humans, animals and plants will spread into new latitudes that are currently off-limits.
How do you think the mountain pine beetle — a benign bug compared to what else looms out there — has been able to thrive?
But did not Day assure in his column that the days of the mountain pine beetle may be numbered?
“Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this,” he says. “For every hour it’s that cold, millions of these nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death,” he says. “But brace yourself,” he intones. “We need about two weeks of that brain freeze weather to kill off all those burrowing bugs. Are you up for it?”
That is almost right, but not quite.
The recent cold weather, according to experts quoted in local and provincial media, might help contain the spread. But many of the beetles have already developed their own natural anti-freeze and since the infestation is so widespread, it would be difficult to wipe out the beetle completely, regardless of current temperatures.
Yes, the Conservatives have developed their own Made-in-Canada solution to replace the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, it puts off any meaningful action until 2050. Can we really afford to wait this long?
Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals can claim a significant and substantial history of addressing what is likely the most significant issue of my and future generations. It cuts across all boundaries, whether they are lines on a map or in politics.
Day’s column may earn him a few cheap laughs among the party faithfuls. But it also makes it clear that he does not take the issue seriously.
12/12/06, Bill Curry, This Day gets cold, (Back).
Ottawa -- Stockwell Day's folksy musings about the weather in his local newspaper were spread across Parliament Hill yesterday by Liberals claiming the cabinet minister had revealed his skepticism about climate change.
Writing in his weekly column in the Penticton Western News, the Public Safety Minister said the recent B.C. cold snap didn't fit with Al Gore's dire predictions. "Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming," he wrote.
"All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year. And I was begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24. . . . Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this. For every hour it's that cold, millions of those nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death."
Even though Mr. Day's spokesman said the minister believes in climate change and that the column was clearly meant to be humorous, Liberals were fuming.
"Mr. Day clearly does not understand the science of climate change," Liberal MP David McGuinty said. "It's very concerning. He's a front-bench member of this government's cabinet."
12/12/06, Bill Curry, Ambrose feels the heat as blunders pile up, (Back).
Critics heap scorn on rookie minister leading sensitive climate-change file.
OTTAWA — She catapulted straight into a prominent cabinet spot over more experienced Albertans like Diane Ablonczy and she's graced magazine covers as the fresh face of the new Harper government.
But 10 months into the job, Rona Ambrose finds critics are seizing on the number of mistakes the rookie Environment Minister continues to make as the lead minister on the climate-change file.
"I'm astonished that once again Madame Ambrose has come before the environment committee contradicting herself, saying things that are blatantly untrue. And the question is does she know they're untrue as she said them? " said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who was in the audience yesterday as the minister got another rough ride from opposition MPs.
Ms. Ambrose was scorned by MPs for insisting repeatedly that Canada had no unpaid debts to the international Kyoto system, even though MPs said United Nations documents show that -- at $1.5-million -- Canada owes more than any other country.
Eventually Ms. Ambrose's assistant deputy minister, David McGovern, came to the table and confirmed that in fact the year-old debt has not been paid.
"I'm increasingly concerned in terms of the briefings you're getting on some of the critical issues," NDP MP Nathan Cullen told the minister after she was corrected.
The former public servant from Alberta was left with a difficult task during her first few months in office. With several Liberal climate change programs cancelled, she was a regular target in Question Period as she played for time, working behind the scenes on what would be the government's main policy announcement for the fall.
She led a media blitz in late September and early October promising that her Clean Air Act would be full of tough measures. But some of them, such as replacing voluntary rules with mandatory ones and applying them to every company and plant in the country, were largely overshadowed by the bill's targets.
Environmentalists gave the legislation a very cool reception, mainly because the timeline for actually reducing greenhouse gases was put off until as late as 2025. Less stringent "intensity based" targets would be put in place until then.
But even as her overall plan was rejected, details keep landing her in hot water.
During a fiery appearance before the Commons environment committee in October, she attacked the Liberals for spending $100-million on overseas Kyoto projects, listing project after project. But it became clear afterward that Ms. Ambrose was mistaken and no money had actually been spent on such credits.
Ms. Ambrose also used the October committee hearing to criticize the Clean Development Mechanism, a key method for countries to meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets under the international Kyoto Protocol. Under the CDM, countries can receive Kyoto credits by funding projects in developing countries.
Those exchanges are often criticized because they have no effect on greenhouse gases.
Over the past few weeks, Ms. Ambrose's days in Question Period have been less frequent and she twice cancelled appearances before parliamentary committees.
Though she had criticized the CDM system in October as unaccountable and possibly corrupt, Ms. Ambrose said yesterday that she would support spending federal money on such credits if they could be verified by a third party and counted toward the government's Kyoto targets.
During the meeting, Ms. Ambrose announced that she has asked the Treasury Board to audit all of the government's climate-change programs. Opposition MPs commented afterward that any review should also include the effectiveness of programs brought in by the Conservatives, such as the budget provision to offer tax breaks for monthly users of public transportation.
With all three opposition parties insisting that Kyoto's 2012 targets can still be met, Ms. Ambrose is now calling for a realistic compromise that won't disrupt the economy.
"In the real world, the emissions reductions needed in Canada to achieve the Kyoto target are not technically feasible in that time frame," she said. "That is why we need new targets and a new Kyoto framework."
12/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, The green revolution that Canada's missing, (Back).
'The first great challenge we face is the urgent need to protect our planet. . . . The threat of climate change is real and the costs of failing to act are huge."
A quote from outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan? Or maybe from former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, creator of the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth? Or perhaps the leader of a Green Party somewhere, one of those eco-nuts?
No, the quote comes from David Cameron, leader of Britain's Conservative Party and possibly that country's next prime minister. Said the leader of this free-enterprise party: "We need to champion green growth -- economic growth that helps rather than harms the environment."
Ah yes, but how? Countries such as Canada are very good at creating growth. We are not very good at creating "green growth." We still think of growth first, then tack on green as an afterthought.
An example: New Brunswick receives equalization payments. It would prefer not to receive them, but rather to stand on its own two economic feet. Along comes Irving Oil with plans for a new oil refinery in Saint John. It would be the first built in North America in a long time. It would create jobs. It could turn the port city into an energy hub, especially if a liquefied natural gas terminal came along later.
Great, except that the existing refinery emits about three million megatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It's an old refinery. The new one will presumably be better, much better. But, in all the discussion and even euphoria about the new project, almost no one asked the question: How can this baby be made green?
The economic questions -- jobs, spinoffs, multiplier effects, bringing people back from the West -- got asked. The environmental ones did not. They'll be tacked on later.
Canada is beginning to talk green, at least politically. The Green Party is rising. Stéphane Dion, a Liberal greenie, has become leader of that party. And the Harper Conservatives now recognize that their "action plan" for climate change was dead on arrival in Parliament and inadequate at almost every substantive level. That's why the government is now consulting scientists, resource economists and technology experts to try to figure out how to improve in time for the next budget.
While Canada pokes along, others are not waiting. Japan said last week that auto makers will be required to improve fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 20 per cent by 2015. These standards will be the strictest in the world. They will force auto makers to think green at the beginning of the product development cycle, rather than as an afterthought. They will keep Japanese auto makers as the world's leader.
Last week came this statement: "For us as a company, the debate about CO{-2} is over. We've entered a debate about what we can do about it." Another greenie? No, Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell. Have you heard many Canadian energy company CEOs saying this? Hello, Calgary, are you listening? Harperites, take notes.
In the U.S., Democrats are moving into key positions in Congress. The new head of the Senate public works and environment committee is Barbara Boxer of California, home to the strictest measures against greenhouse-gas emissions in the country. She is replacing Republican Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma knuckle-dragger who once described global warming as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
Said Ms. Boxer: "Nowhere is there a greater threat to future generations than the disastrous effects of global warming." One of her priorities, she affirmed, will be to bring to the Senate floor a bill to cut greenhouse gases. She had already co-sponsored a bill that would have cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.
Nothing moves quickly in Congress. A key House committee is led by Michigan's John Dingell, protector of the car industry. Democrats won't have the 60 per cent needed to prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate by the likes of Mr. Inhofe.
But that good senator and his friends must eventually deal with their party's front-runner for the presidential nomination, John McCain, who believes serious action is required against global warming.
The world, dear Canada, is moving.
15/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, Rona Ambrose has been left to smile pretty for the cameras, (Back).
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is twisting in the political wind. Her agony will only cheer those who enjoy watching pain.
Ms. Ambrose is likely living her final weeks or days in that portfolio. Her performance in Ottawa has become now the subject of a kind of death watch.
Ms. Ambrose has been in some ways a disappointment as Environment Minister, but that disappointment has not all been of her own making. She inherited huge and complicated files about which the Conservatives had given insufficient thought while in opposition.
One environment file, climate change/global warming, caught the entire government by surprise, for which she carried the can.
What does any minister do when a bunch of caucus members don't believe the science of climate change? Similarly, what does a minister do when the Prime Minister in a highly centralized regime doesn't think the issue terribly critical?
Climate change exposed the ill-preparedness of the Harper government, which for some strange reason 11 months after the election, keeps calling itself “Canada's new government.”
The Harperites in opposition knew what they opposed, the Kyoto accord, but not what they favoured. They reckoned the issue would bubble along, of interest largely to environmental lobby groups who seldom vote or persuade anyone else to vote Conservative.
So they had time on their side. A rookie minister would have time on her side, too.
But Ms. Ambrose was not just any rookie minister. She was a woman, and an attractive one, in a world, especially a media world, where a certain amount of sexism regrettably remains.
Soon after Ms. Ambrose's appointment, Maclean's magazine put her on the cover pointing to her attractiveness. Other publications took the same angle. She was asked humiliating and grossly inappropriate questions about why she and her husband did not have children.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. She had landed early in cabinet, before others from her city of Edmonton, in part because she was a woman in a cabinet and party woefully short of them.
From a job as a mid-level civil servant in Alberta, with only a short stint in opposition in Ottawa, Ms. Ambrose landed a portfolio that the government thought would be relatively minor, but turned out to be a political firestorm. She burned through chiefs-of-staff and a deputy minister (although that deputy had previously alienated just about everybody in the civil service), and obviously began struggling.
She was sent abroad and got hammered by some other countries and, of course, environmental groups. She only spoke the truth — that Canada could not meet its Kyoto targets because the Liberals had been so negligent — but like the entire government, she had nothing new to announce.
She had nothing to put in the place of fulfilling Kyoto, because the government had no policy. And while it frantically tried to produce one, she was left to be politically assaulted.
The Prime Minister's Office, media control freaks who worry incessantly about the government's “message,” came to see her as a weak communicator, although in contrast to some other ministers, she wasn't bad.
Ms. Ambrose's problem, among others, was that she did not ad lib very well. She sometimes could not hide her lack of attention to details of files. She hadn't learned, alas for her, the art of political fog-making, something a few politicians learn at their mother's knee, but most take years to develop.
Now, of course, the PMO has taken over the environment file, including beefing up the climate-change policy that landed dead-on-arrival in Parliament. Ms. Ambrose has been shouldered aside.
Even the old political crooner, former prime minister Brian Mulroney, is calling the government's climate proposals a “work in progress” and warning that the issue could decide the next election. Mr. Mulroney, whose adage used to be that all must sing from the same hymn book, was obviously talking the government's newly discovered line.
That political importance of the environment explains why Mr. Harper has now begun identifying himself with the issue, relegating Ms. Ambrose to the shadows.
Last week, Mr. Harper himself made an announcement about regulating chemicals, which should have been made by the departmental minister, given its modest importance.
Ms. Ambrose attended and did what all ministers in the Harper government must do at photo-ops: nod enthusiastically for the cameras.
(Back)
10/12/06, Wolf Depner, Inconvenient truth spoils MP’s punch-line, (Source).
12/12/06, Bill Curry, This Day gets cold, (Source).
12/12/06, Bill Curry, Ambrose feels the heat as blunders pile up, (Source).
12/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, The green revolution that Canada's missing, (Source).
15/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, Rona Ambrose has been left to smile pretty for the cameras, (Source).
06/12/06, Stockwell Day, Constituency caught in winter’s icy grip, (Back).
Hey who knows, maybe Al Gore is right.
Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming.
All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year.
And I was begging for Big Al’s Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24. Do not despair, my fellow dwellers of the Okanagan and Nicola Valleys.
If misery loves company then we had lots of it around our province. Matter of fact, at one point in the week some 22 towns and cities had broken all-time records for paralyzing frigid temperatures.
Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this. For every hour it’s that cold, millions of those nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death.
But brace yourself. We’d need about two weeks of that brain freeze weather to kill off all those burrowing bugs.
Are you up for it?
Talking about cold places to live, the minister of native affairs along with key Inuit leaders finally settled the last major land claim of Inuit lands in Canada.
This was a sweeping agreement and a good news story for all Canadians. Funny how those kinds of items are of little or no interest to the national media.
I guess what the treaty signers should have done was to stage a fist fight at the signing ceremony. At least they would have got a headline for all their labours.
On another note, this week Prime Minister Steven Harper recognized the 25th anniversary of the Red Ribbon Campaign in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
He did that in a tangible way by increasing the federal government’s already strong commitment by an additional $140 million.
We all owe a debt of thanks to those who fight on many different fronts in that life-and-death struggle against that insidious disease.
To top off the week, Prime Minister Harper attended the inauguration of Mexico’s new President Calderone.
Mexico’s democracy is really just coming of age since they have been ruled for almost 70 years by a pseudo-democratic regime.
As with any loss of position the previous power brokers have been furiously trying to whip up mass protests in the streets to topple the new government.
Due to our long-standing good relations with the Mexican people and the mutually beneficial free trade back and forth, our PM rightly realized that his presence at the ceremony would send a positive signal that we support democracy.
The Mexican government was extremely grateful, saying “We will not forget this sign of good-will from Canada.”
And finally, talking about new federal leaders, the Liberals finally have one.
In all sincerity I wish him all the best as Opposition Leader as he works hard to bring forward ideas and initiatives that we in government might be able to embrace for the good of Canada.
And I for one will give him the credit if he does. He may soon discover that politics can be nasty and brutish, even from within, so he’ll need all the credit he can get.
10/12/06, Wolf Depner, Inconvenient truth spoils MP’s punch-line, (Back).
A column which appeared in Wednesday’s Western News from local MP Stockwell Day is a stunning combination of inappropriate jokes and scientific inaccuracies which reveal the true Conservative attitudes about climate change.
Only a portion of the column actually tries to spin readers into believing global warming is just nothing more than a piece of science fiction peddled by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
Day also tries to turn his boss Stephen Harper into the patron saint of people living with HIV/AIDS and a friend of Mexican democracy.
Never mind though that Harper snubbed the 2006 World Aids Conference in Toronto and tried to re-open the debate on same-sex marriage. Never mind that the “previous power brokers” like out-going president Vicente Fox are actually supporting Calderone whose razor-thin election win over socialist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been marred by allegations of wide-spread electoral fraud. This is why people are protesting in the streets of Mexico City. Day omits these inconvenient truths.
But these slips are almost negligible compared to the first part of the column which tries to mine global warming for cringe-inducing comedy riddled with scientific deceptions.
“Hey who knows, maybe Al Gore is right,” Day writes in his opening commentary on the recent cold snap. “Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming,” he chuckles.
“All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year,” he adds, as if to suggest that a heavy dump of snow should bury all this talk of rising temperatures.
This apparent attempt to confuse the weather — short-term changes in the atmosphere — with climate — atmospheric behaviour during longer periods — is among the hallmarks of global-warming skeptics.
But the scientific debate is over. Climate change is a fact.
If Day finds Bush-league humour in rising water levels caused by an impending planetary catastrophe, the joke is on the millions of people who live near or along the world’s oceans like those who live in the Conservative-held ridings in and around Victoria.
A new map released by the Sierra Club of B.C. should end all the jokes swiftly.
If global warming causes ocean levels to rise six metres in the Victoria region, future premiers can trade in their automobiles for canoes if they wish to get to the legislature.
It, along with 74 per cent of Victoria, the airport, ferry terminals and the cruise ship port, will disappear completely if sea levels rise 25 metres.
Matters will not be better elsewhere. Millions of farmers across the world will see their crops wither, leaving them with few to no options for survival. Increased reports of polar bears drowning is only a preview of what will happen to animals both large and small. Pests that threaten the health of humans, animals and plants will spread into new latitudes that are currently off-limits.
How do you think the mountain pine beetle — a benign bug compared to what else looms out there — has been able to thrive?
But did not Day assure in his column that the days of the mountain pine beetle may be numbered?
“Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this,” he says. “For every hour it’s that cold, millions of these nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death,” he says. “But brace yourself,” he intones. “We need about two weeks of that brain freeze weather to kill off all those burrowing bugs. Are you up for it?”
That is almost right, but not quite.
The recent cold weather, according to experts quoted in local and provincial media, might help contain the spread. But many of the beetles have already developed their own natural anti-freeze and since the infestation is so widespread, it would be difficult to wipe out the beetle completely, regardless of current temperatures.
Yes, the Conservatives have developed their own Made-in-Canada solution to replace the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, it puts off any meaningful action until 2050. Can we really afford to wait this long?
Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals can claim a significant and substantial history of addressing what is likely the most significant issue of my and future generations. It cuts across all boundaries, whether they are lines on a map or in politics.
Day’s column may earn him a few cheap laughs among the party faithfuls. But it also makes it clear that he does not take the issue seriously.
12/12/06, Bill Curry, This Day gets cold, (Back).
Ottawa -- Stockwell Day's folksy musings about the weather in his local newspaper were spread across Parliament Hill yesterday by Liberals claiming the cabinet minister had revealed his skepticism about climate change.
Writing in his weekly column in the Penticton Western News, the Public Safety Minister said the recent B.C. cold snap didn't fit with Al Gore's dire predictions. "Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming," he wrote.
"All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year. And I was begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24. . . . Rather than feeling badly for yourself, picture this. For every hour it's that cold, millions of those nasty ravenous pine beetles who are destroying our forests are having their pesky little heads and jaws frozen, literally to death."
Even though Mr. Day's spokesman said the minister believes in climate change and that the column was clearly meant to be humorous, Liberals were fuming.
"Mr. Day clearly does not understand the science of climate change," Liberal MP David McGuinty said. "It's very concerning. He's a front-bench member of this government's cabinet."
12/12/06, Bill Curry, Ambrose feels the heat as blunders pile up, (Back).
Critics heap scorn on rookie minister leading sensitive climate-change file.
OTTAWA — She catapulted straight into a prominent cabinet spot over more experienced Albertans like Diane Ablonczy and she's graced magazine covers as the fresh face of the new Harper government.
But 10 months into the job, Rona Ambrose finds critics are seizing on the number of mistakes the rookie Environment Minister continues to make as the lead minister on the climate-change file.
"I'm astonished that once again Madame Ambrose has come before the environment committee contradicting herself, saying things that are blatantly untrue. And the question is does she know they're untrue as she said them? " said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who was in the audience yesterday as the minister got another rough ride from opposition MPs.
Ms. Ambrose was scorned by MPs for insisting repeatedly that Canada had no unpaid debts to the international Kyoto system, even though MPs said United Nations documents show that -- at $1.5-million -- Canada owes more than any other country.
Eventually Ms. Ambrose's assistant deputy minister, David McGovern, came to the table and confirmed that in fact the year-old debt has not been paid.
"I'm increasingly concerned in terms of the briefings you're getting on some of the critical issues," NDP MP Nathan Cullen told the minister after she was corrected.
The former public servant from Alberta was left with a difficult task during her first few months in office. With several Liberal climate change programs cancelled, she was a regular target in Question Period as she played for time, working behind the scenes on what would be the government's main policy announcement for the fall.
She led a media blitz in late September and early October promising that her Clean Air Act would be full of tough measures. But some of them, such as replacing voluntary rules with mandatory ones and applying them to every company and plant in the country, were largely overshadowed by the bill's targets.
Environmentalists gave the legislation a very cool reception, mainly because the timeline for actually reducing greenhouse gases was put off until as late as 2025. Less stringent "intensity based" targets would be put in place until then.
But even as her overall plan was rejected, details keep landing her in hot water.
During a fiery appearance before the Commons environment committee in October, she attacked the Liberals for spending $100-million on overseas Kyoto projects, listing project after project. But it became clear afterward that Ms. Ambrose was mistaken and no money had actually been spent on such credits.
Ms. Ambrose also used the October committee hearing to criticize the Clean Development Mechanism, a key method for countries to meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets under the international Kyoto Protocol. Under the CDM, countries can receive Kyoto credits by funding projects in developing countries.
Those exchanges are often criticized because they have no effect on greenhouse gases.
Over the past few weeks, Ms. Ambrose's days in Question Period have been less frequent and she twice cancelled appearances before parliamentary committees.
Though she had criticized the CDM system in October as unaccountable and possibly corrupt, Ms. Ambrose said yesterday that she would support spending federal money on such credits if they could be verified by a third party and counted toward the government's Kyoto targets.
During the meeting, Ms. Ambrose announced that she has asked the Treasury Board to audit all of the government's climate-change programs. Opposition MPs commented afterward that any review should also include the effectiveness of programs brought in by the Conservatives, such as the budget provision to offer tax breaks for monthly users of public transportation.
With all three opposition parties insisting that Kyoto's 2012 targets can still be met, Ms. Ambrose is now calling for a realistic compromise that won't disrupt the economy.
"In the real world, the emissions reductions needed in Canada to achieve the Kyoto target are not technically feasible in that time frame," she said. "That is why we need new targets and a new Kyoto framework."
12/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, The green revolution that Canada's missing, (Back).
'The first great challenge we face is the urgent need to protect our planet. . . . The threat of climate change is real and the costs of failing to act are huge."
A quote from outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan? Or maybe from former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, creator of the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth? Or perhaps the leader of a Green Party somewhere, one of those eco-nuts?
No, the quote comes from David Cameron, leader of Britain's Conservative Party and possibly that country's next prime minister. Said the leader of this free-enterprise party: "We need to champion green growth -- economic growth that helps rather than harms the environment."
Ah yes, but how? Countries such as Canada are very good at creating growth. We are not very good at creating "green growth." We still think of growth first, then tack on green as an afterthought.
An example: New Brunswick receives equalization payments. It would prefer not to receive them, but rather to stand on its own two economic feet. Along comes Irving Oil with plans for a new oil refinery in Saint John. It would be the first built in North America in a long time. It would create jobs. It could turn the port city into an energy hub, especially if a liquefied natural gas terminal came along later.
Great, except that the existing refinery emits about three million megatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It's an old refinery. The new one will presumably be better, much better. But, in all the discussion and even euphoria about the new project, almost no one asked the question: How can this baby be made green?
The economic questions -- jobs, spinoffs, multiplier effects, bringing people back from the West -- got asked. The environmental ones did not. They'll be tacked on later.
Canada is beginning to talk green, at least politically. The Green Party is rising. Stéphane Dion, a Liberal greenie, has become leader of that party. And the Harper Conservatives now recognize that their "action plan" for climate change was dead on arrival in Parliament and inadequate at almost every substantive level. That's why the government is now consulting scientists, resource economists and technology experts to try to figure out how to improve in time for the next budget.
While Canada pokes along, others are not waiting. Japan said last week that auto makers will be required to improve fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 20 per cent by 2015. These standards will be the strictest in the world. They will force auto makers to think green at the beginning of the product development cycle, rather than as an afterthought. They will keep Japanese auto makers as the world's leader.
Last week came this statement: "For us as a company, the debate about CO{-2} is over. We've entered a debate about what we can do about it." Another greenie? No, Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell. Have you heard many Canadian energy company CEOs saying this? Hello, Calgary, are you listening? Harperites, take notes.
In the U.S., Democrats are moving into key positions in Congress. The new head of the Senate public works and environment committee is Barbara Boxer of California, home to the strictest measures against greenhouse-gas emissions in the country. She is replacing Republican Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma knuckle-dragger who once described global warming as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
Said Ms. Boxer: "Nowhere is there a greater threat to future generations than the disastrous effects of global warming." One of her priorities, she affirmed, will be to bring to the Senate floor a bill to cut greenhouse gases. She had already co-sponsored a bill that would have cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.
Nothing moves quickly in Congress. A key House committee is led by Michigan's John Dingell, protector of the car industry. Democrats won't have the 60 per cent needed to prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate by the likes of Mr. Inhofe.
But that good senator and his friends must eventually deal with their party's front-runner for the presidential nomination, John McCain, who believes serious action is required against global warming.
The world, dear Canada, is moving.
15/12/06, Jeffrey Simpson, Rona Ambrose has been left to smile pretty for the cameras, (Back).
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is twisting in the political wind. Her agony will only cheer those who enjoy watching pain.
Ms. Ambrose is likely living her final weeks or days in that portfolio. Her performance in Ottawa has become now the subject of a kind of death watch.
Ms. Ambrose has been in some ways a disappointment as Environment Minister, but that disappointment has not all been of her own making. She inherited huge and complicated files about which the Conservatives had given insufficient thought while in opposition.
One environment file, climate change/global warming, caught the entire government by surprise, for which she carried the can.
What does any minister do when a bunch of caucus members don't believe the science of climate change? Similarly, what does a minister do when the Prime Minister in a highly centralized regime doesn't think the issue terribly critical?
Climate change exposed the ill-preparedness of the Harper government, which for some strange reason 11 months after the election, keeps calling itself “Canada's new government.”
The Harperites in opposition knew what they opposed, the Kyoto accord, but not what they favoured. They reckoned the issue would bubble along, of interest largely to environmental lobby groups who seldom vote or persuade anyone else to vote Conservative.
So they had time on their side. A rookie minister would have time on her side, too.
But Ms. Ambrose was not just any rookie minister. She was a woman, and an attractive one, in a world, especially a media world, where a certain amount of sexism regrettably remains.
Soon after Ms. Ambrose's appointment, Maclean's magazine put her on the cover pointing to her attractiveness. Other publications took the same angle. She was asked humiliating and grossly inappropriate questions about why she and her husband did not have children.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. She had landed early in cabinet, before others from her city of Edmonton, in part because she was a woman in a cabinet and party woefully short of them.
From a job as a mid-level civil servant in Alberta, with only a short stint in opposition in Ottawa, Ms. Ambrose landed a portfolio that the government thought would be relatively minor, but turned out to be a political firestorm. She burned through chiefs-of-staff and a deputy minister (although that deputy had previously alienated just about everybody in the civil service), and obviously began struggling.
She was sent abroad and got hammered by some other countries and, of course, environmental groups. She only spoke the truth — that Canada could not meet its Kyoto targets because the Liberals had been so negligent — but like the entire government, she had nothing new to announce.
She had nothing to put in the place of fulfilling Kyoto, because the government had no policy. And while it frantically tried to produce one, she was left to be politically assaulted.
The Prime Minister's Office, media control freaks who worry incessantly about the government's “message,” came to see her as a weak communicator, although in contrast to some other ministers, she wasn't bad.
Ms. Ambrose's problem, among others, was that she did not ad lib very well. She sometimes could not hide her lack of attention to details of files. She hadn't learned, alas for her, the art of political fog-making, something a few politicians learn at their mother's knee, but most take years to develop.
Now, of course, the PMO has taken over the environment file, including beefing up the climate-change policy that landed dead-on-arrival in Parliament. Ms. Ambrose has been shouldered aside.
Even the old political crooner, former prime minister Brian Mulroney, is calling the government's climate proposals a “work in progress” and warning that the issue could decide the next election. Mr. Mulroney, whose adage used to be that all must sing from the same hymn book, was obviously talking the government's newly discovered line.
That political importance of the environment explains why Mr. Harper has now begun identifying himself with the issue, relegating Ms. Ambrose to the shadows.
Last week, Mr. Harper himself made an announcement about regulating chemicals, which should have been made by the departmental minister, given its modest importance.
Ms. Ambrose attended and did what all ministers in the Harper government must do at photo-ops: nod enthusiastically for the cameras.
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