Environment Minister No-Show

Town Hall Meeting With(out) Rona Ambrose

Earlier this week a conservative, knowing my environmental policy interest, whispered in my ear about a town hall meeting with Environment Minister Rona Ambrose being organized by South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale MP Russ Hiebert for Saturday November 4th in Crescent Beach’s Beecher Hall.

Despite being in the riding earlier in the day, Ambrose is said to have bailed in order to return to Ottawa and prepare for an upcoming meeting in Nairobi, a meeting she’s known about for months. Judging by the groans heard in the room, nobody bought this lame excuse and shows disrespect to all those who made the effort to come from across the lower mainland to attend.

Also present were a small contingent of voters, several of which identified themselves as Conservatives (I saw their cards), who were there to grill any MP present on the income trust debacle. To this smaller group, Warawa after the meeting admitted that his office had indeed been getting a lot of calls on the income trust policy flip-flop.

Having run off to hide, Ambrose’s Parliamentary Secretary, Langley MP Mark Warawa, was left to face the assembled crowd of at least seventy who had filled the room to standing room only.

Local riding MP, Conservative Russ Heibert, and Warawa ran the show. Hiebert started off by delivering a predictably partisan “look at the promises your new government has kept”, while conveniently forgetting to discuss broken promises like the Income Trust promise made repeatedly by the Conservative Party during the last election. Your correspondent made sure both he and the crowd were reminded of that. Once the MP’s had finally finished giving us the Conservative Party commercial, the Q+A session was about as predictable, with Warawa’s responses generally falling in these categories:

• we believe this is a problem and we are working at it; we’ve already done more than those Liberals ever did (without defining what “done more” means)
• our plan is better than “their” plan (without defining exactly how)
• no, I can’t give you any specifics (when asked repeatedly)
• no, I can’t, or won’t, tell you who the government is consulting with; who this “national roundtable” is composed of
• by the way, did I mention that our plan is better? (when in doubt, repeat yourself)
• and through it all, Warawa stressed over and over “we want to get your ideas, work with you” (yeah…right)

This last point left Warawa and the Minister of Environment’s office wide open open for justified criticism, for a number of environmental groups were present including one which had been in contact with the environment minister’s office repeatedly, sending legal and environmental briefs to plead their case.

At issue: opposition to the expansion of port facilities in Delta, which Ambrose’s office announced was approved and going ahead as of last Friday. According to this one group, the government isn’t listening to their own experts. A story worth following up on.

Response from the environment minister’s office? Nothing. Well almost nothing. After about six months of trying they got a form letter back thanking them for their correspondence, promising that the environment minister’s office would review all such correspondence. A form letter and nothing more.

So much for consulting with and working with the public and environmental groups, and you could see the air pop out of Warawa and Hiebert’s balloon as those assembled there had their primary concern – that the “new government” was going to steamroll its agenda forward without consulting with environmental groups – confirmed. The rest of the meeting grew increasingly combative, in that relatively polite Canadian way, as participants decided that the stooges in front were not going to be part of any meaningful solution.

Ironic observation of the meeting: For a gathering co-chaired by supposed champions of the environment, their true colours were revealed in that they picked a venue which has a) no easy to access transit service and b) required that most all who attended drive great distances to c) meet a Minister who decided to abandon us along with Kyoto. The coup de grace were the styrofoam cups (which can’t be recycled) provided for the coffee. Unsurprisingly, most present refused to use them.