TORONTO — The Conservatives’ new environmental platform is a “complete and total fraud” that is “designed to mislead the Canadian people,” former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said Saturday.The former Vice President called the plan a shocking abdication of Canada's moral responsibility at a consumer environmental show in Toronto today. Suzuki button-holed John Baird fleeing the same show, and scolded him like a rather dim student who has turned in a half-assed effort before the Minister for the Environment managed to slip away in the crowd.
The plan, that I dismissed as a fraud here a few days ago, may be as dead on arrival as the original Green Plan. Once again the Conservatives have under-estimated where the Canadian people are on the issue of the environment. Their already static poll numbers are about to find a new cellar.
Update: Impolitical points out that Al may have just been trying to be preemptive, Baird has a history of falsely claiming Al Gore's support for the Cons environment plans.
Update 2: Baird responds. Sort of.
5 comments:
Cliff--
This morning on 'The House' Nathan Cullen made an interesting point about another fraudulent aspect of the thing and that is that it can be amended not in the House, but rather in Lobbyville.....errrr....Cabinet.
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This might not be the gift it looks like. Canadians aren't too keen on Americans telling them how to conduct their affairs. And no, that doesn't just apply to republican Americans.
Also, people may wonder just how much Gore actually knows about the conservative environmental platform. Did he study it, or did he just parrot what some green Canadians were saying? People won't be impressed if it wasn't the former.
For many Canadians Al Gore will just sound partisan. Bash the republicans in the U.S., bash the conservatives in Canada.
Yeah rabbit, if Gore's opinion is so useless to the Canadian discussion on the environment, why was Baird so eager to deceptively claim the Cons had him onside for the 'Green Plan'?
Considering the history of this government actively distorting the former Vice President's views on the environment, his statements today are a completely appropriate act of self defense. Baird would have been claiming Gore loved this embarrassing gift to the energy lobby disguised as an environmental plan before long otherwise.
I don't know what goes on in Baird's mind, and don't really wanna know. I do, however, have a pretty good idea how most Canadians think, and that's what I was addressing.
Although Gore may seem like an enviro-god to many greens, to the average Canadian he looks like a rich, jet-setting, celebrity American telling everyone what to do.
Course the average Canadian drives a 400 HP Ram pickup truck with grill work up to your neck, with an unused crew cab and a box too small hold groceries. Or am I being cynical?
The latest issue of Frank magazine has a hee-larious account of Baird's personal position on toxic emissions and environmental pollutants.
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