Soft answers to hard questions

2006–11-07 (Tracy Holmes, The Peace Arch News) Soft answers to hard questions

Environmentalists disappointed minister a no-show on Clean Air meeting

Environmentalist Roy Strang called the meeting “a bit of a bust.” “I’ve never heard so much talking with so little content in my life,” White Rock’s Dan Mick said. “If they had brought this act out in 1996, I’d really applaud them,” Glenda Bartosh said. “But it’s not 1996, it’s 2006, and this act should be doing so much more.”

“I felt the spirit of co-operation. We heard a number of suggestions (Langley Conservative MP Mark Warawa’s) going to bring back to the minister,” [Conservative MP Russ Hiebert] said. Hiebert suggested criticism came largely from political adversaries.

But at least one Conservative was “really disappointed.”

Mike Watkins traveled from Vancouver-Kingsway for [the] opportunity to meet Ambrose. Instead of answers from the minister, he says he “got a lot of platitudes.”

Watkins described the proposed act as “just a refinement of the existing act (with) nothing really binding on a government.”

“The Kyoto agreement actually says very, very specific things. There’s actual provisions for penalties and it’s something we’ve agreed to do in front of the whole world,” Watkins said.

If the Clean Air Act is passed, “there’s no way or mechanism for anybody in Parliament to have any impact on when targets are set.”

Consulting with industry on such targets is “kind of like letting the foxes decide how to guard the chickens.”

Warawa and Hiebert lied to the crowd that day, using the age old tactic of lies by omission. Everyone, especially Conservatives, ought to demand plain truth, the full truth, when discussing policy issues.

On another note, Warawa, noting a “De-Elect Emerson” button I held up mid-way through the meeting, looked at me and said “its just politics”. He’s wrong. The Emerson issue is all about democracy, which Warawa and other Emerson apologists trivialize by their complicity and silence on the issue.

At the end of the meeting I personally assured Warawa and Hiebert that, come next election, they can expect voters in their ridings to be reminded of this in a compelling way.