11 December 2009
Who wants Jim Prentice’s job these days?
With all the rhetoric, accusations and bald face distortions emanating from discussion/reporting of the COP-15 sessions in Copehagen, what’s clear is that the federal government needs to knit a federal emissions reduction policy that is aligned with Washington (whatever that might look like) and meets the diverse regional issues that always obscure the Canadian landscape like a good snowstorm. Sounds like an effort worthy of a Constitutional Conference, and we all know what that spells for political careers.
Yesterday, the Canada West Foundation released what in effect is a rebuttal (though kindly worded) of the recently released Pembina Institute/Suzuki Foundation paper “Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity.” Readers of this blog know where I stand on the original paper, which in essence suggested that a) we can make and meet commitments to major GHG emission reductions while living happily ever after, and b) that if anyone hurts, it will just be Alberta and Saskatchewan and, as the CWF concludes, that’s just “tough luck.”
The CWF paper “Sharing the Load” (www.cwf.ca) looks at the Pembina/Suzuki assumptions and predicted economic effects and turns roundly on the negative regional effects so blithely dismissed in the original report.
CWF President Roger Gibbons made news with the reported statement that any national climate-change plan must “acknowledge and accommodate regional differences” or we’re going to be “mired in a swamp of regional and interprovincial conflict.” Sounds like the eighties all over again! Not only does Minister Prentice have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and climate-heating rhetoric) in Copenhagen, he has to take whatever direction is agreed upon in Denmark, hold it up with Washington’s plan to the cold light of day, and then sell the outcome to Canadians. Nothing brews harmony like a good debate over investment, punitive taxes, and wealth transfer. Or turning the thermostat down. Or walking. Anywhere.
And speaking of wealth transfers, especially those of the size and consequence contemplated by the still-born Green Shift and the Pembina/Suzuki advocates, has anyone addressed how Alberta can continue to make large transfer payments (as one of a few so-called “have provinces”) while massively moving wealth to acquire carbon credits — probably outside Canada?
But that’s a topic best left for another day.
