Tom Mulcair’s call for environmental responsibility hits nerve in the West

When Tom Mulcair, then a prospective NDP leader, wrote in an influential magazine last winter that Alberta’s oilsands have artificially driven up the Canadian dollar and hurt manufacturing in central Canada, his remarks received scant notice.

Mulcair was largely adding his voice to a view espoused by Premier Dalton McGuinty and a number of commentators and analysts.

When he repeated an abridged version of his Policy Options argument on the CBC last weekend, the reaction in western Canada verged on the hysterical.

Stephen Harper surrogates in right-wing media and think tanks joined Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in hurling invective at the NDP leader, accusing him of trying to divide the country, demonizing the West, pandering to Quebec and misunderstanding history and politics.

It appears that in a matter of a few months two things had happened to turn an op-ed piece in a policy magazine into a civil war.

First, Mulcair’s performance since assuming the NDP leadership appears to have convinced the federal Conservatives and those surrogates that they are facing a formidable opponent.

But the reaction also shows emotions in an environment versus economy debate unfolding in this country are coming to a boil and trumping logic in some cases.

It’s not even a debate that should be happening in 2012, but it takes no sleuthing skills to see how this has been building.

In the U.S., TransCanada Pipelines has reapplied for its licence to build the Keystone XL pipeline around a Nebraska aquifer, reigniting a U.S. debate that has always spilled over into this country.

When Barack Obama put the Keystone project on hold, Harper made energy exports to Asia a “national priority,’’ upping the stakes in the $5.5 billion Enbridge Northern Gateway project through British Columbia.

British Columbia New Democrats, seen at this early point as the province’s government-in-waiting, unanimously oppose the pipeline, backed by First Nations communities whose territories would be traversed by the pipeline.

At the same time, the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline on the west coast is facing opposition in Vancouver.

In Ottawa, the Conservatives have refused to separate an overhaul of environmental regulations and sweeping new cabinet powers to approve megaprojects from a 245-page budget implementation bill.

In the meantime, they have been busy demonizing environmental organizations as “radicals” and “money launderers” while auditing a Vancouver-based environmental organization to determine whether it had overstepped tax rules limiting foreign funds used for political purposes.

The Conservatives have drawn international attention for their withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and are increasingly seen as a global environmental pariah.

Then Tuesday, Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan reported the Conservatives have no plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and instead of its stated goal of reducing levels to 17 per cent below the 2005 levels, current trends indicate they will be 7.4 per cent higher.

Environment Minister Peter Kent, he of the “money-laundering” charge, retorted that the government had already moved one-quarter toward the 2020 goals under a sector-by-sector plan to reduce emissions.

South of the border, a report by the Rhodium Group, an economic research group, says the U.S. is on track to make the same target by 2020 (and by fluke of a record warm January, actually already met it this year).

Mulcair was arguing that an artificially high amount of U.S. cash has flowed into Canada, bumping up the dollar, because the cost of oilsands clean-up has never been built into the cost of the product.

He made the case again Tuesday, saying the argument for sustainable development is as germane to the export of raw logs as the oilsands, applies to all regions and cannot be labelled “divisive.’’

“It’s a vision,’’ Mulcair said, “that opposes that of the Conservatives, which is hell-bent-for-leather to develop as quickly as we can, irrespective of the environmental degradation and the clean-up that we’re going to leave to future generations.

“The debate is actually about sustainable development, one vision for the country.’’

In the daily question period, Harper accused him of leading the “No Development Party” and Conservative MP Brian Jean facetiously charged the NDP would have all is huddled for warmth living inside caves.

So, who exactly is debasing the argument?

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tim Harper