Mulroney says improve the spin, not the situation

Brian Mulroney steps in it, commenting on the ineffectual “Clean Air Act” being promoted by Rona Ambrose and Stephen Harper:

“And I think there is more work to be done on that, both substantively and ‘presentationally’, and my guess [is] that is where the government is heading,” he said. CBC – Environment key to courting middle-class vote: Mulroney

When voters go next to the polls they’ll have to decide whether they believe that the current crop of Conservatives actually believe, and care, about climate change – beyond how the issue effects their electoral results.

The track record on the issue of those who control the party – largely ex Canadian Alliance and Reformers like Stephen Harper – underscores clearly that it was those same folks who have fought any attempt to a) recognize that there is an issue and b) create policies and legislation and a cultural / political climate where change could be made possible. But climate-change denial is not strictly a western conservative trait, and here we have Mulroney exhorting the current crop of Conservatives to change the optics of the situation, rather than make substantive change.

Entrusting Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, Canada’s new government, on the climate change file is truly like putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.

It should also be noted that Harper is hell-bent on weakening the federal government in every way imaginable (taxation, private property legislation, the so-called triple E senate) in order to make Canada’s federal government impotent on such issues of national importance.

In the next election there will be four federal parties (Green, Liberal, New Democratic, and Progressive Canadian (‘PC Party’) parties), plus the Bloc Quebecois, who truly support policies aimed at turning around Canada’s sorry record on environmental and climate change issues. The Conservative Party, my party, won’t be one of them, but they certainly will try to spin the situation and fool voters into believing they are.

I am a Conservative who hailed from the Progressive Conservative Party and have always championed environmental issues as my colleagues will attest to. But there are too few voices like mine within the party to make a difference. The only reason the Conservative leadership is talking about these issues at all today is because public opinion is forcing them to – they would much prefer to ignore the climate change file completely.

The leadership of the Conservative Party – kowtowing to Alberta oil interests and manufacturers in Central Canada – is not likely to change the anti-environmental course they’ve been on since Preston Manning and Stephen Harper started the Reform Party. Change will be skin deep, not transformational. That’s simply not good enough.