To paraphrase and sanitize the English wordsmith Samuel Johnson: A Tory preaching about the environment is like a dog walking on his hind legs.
It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Playing the part of a particularly flea-bitten and ungainly mongrel was Cariboo-Prince George MP Dick Harris in Tuesday`s Citizen. In what the less-than-charitably inclined would describe as a Category 3 hissy fit, the perennial backbencher stomped his feet at critics who acccused his government of not caring about the environment:
``I`ve got as much concerns about the environment as they do and so does everyone else in our government. But they seem to have this God-given exclusive which is totally false and I really get upset when I hear this theme coming from them.``
Dick Harris saying he's really upset eco-groups don`t think the Conservatives care about the environment is like Duncan Keith whining Daniel Sedin hurt his elbow.
One could understand Harris`s tender feelings if the Harper government could at least muster the feeble lip service its Liberal predecessors paid to green issues. But perhaps the only way Canada`s Tories could show more contempt for matters of flora and fauna would be if its caucus appeared in Parliament with the heads of baby seals speared on hakapiks in one hand and Wiebo Ludwig voodoo dolls burning with bitumen in the other.
According to Simon Fraser University professor Dr. David Boyd, in terms of environmental performance, in 2009 the Conference Board of Canada ranked this country 15th out of 17 wealthy industrial nations; in 2010 SFU researchers ranked Canada 24th out of 25 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development nations on the same issue; Yale and Columbia placed Canada 37th on its 2012 list.
Internationally, Canada is the equivalent of Syria when it comes to the environment. It joined the U.S. as one of the only countries on Earth to abandon the Kyoto Protocol. Since 2008, it has been derided by the Climate Action Network with `fossil` awards for its hostility to and consistent blocking of progress on solving the problem of climate change.
Worse still, the Tories have compounded those numbers and that reputation with an apparent campaign against environmentalists and scientists that is as petty as it is hamfisted.
There are unseemly shows like Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver`s McCarthyesque denunciation of eco-groups` `radical ideological agenda` to accusations a PMO official called another group an ``enemy of the state`` as the Tories interfered with the work of a funding agency. More damning still are claims that the government is muzzling federal scientists, whose work is funded by taxpapers, from speaking to the media on everything from climate change to fish stocks.
Then, of course, there`s Enbridge and the Northern Gateway pipeline project. The rights and wrongs of the project aside for the moment, the process has become so brazenly flawed that a group of six Anglican bishops recently urged the National Energy Board, which is conducting hearings into the $5.5 billion megaproject that will take oilsands bitumen through northern B.C., to show `integrity, fairness and freedom from political pressure.`
Perhaps this was what Mr. Harris was referring to when he lamented about the "God-given exclusive" right for environmentalists to be concerned about the environment..
Regardless, it was a more formal announcement of the streamlining that process and shortening it that prompted Harris`s preemptive outburst. It may be good policy and it may not but to drastically curtail the process on one side of the mouth while claiming to be any sort of green champion on the other is a Nixonesque feat even for a Tory.
So spare us the histrionics, Mr. Harris. The reality is the Conservative government could not care less when it comes to the environment.
- associate news editor Rodney Venis
