In writing about the leadership skills of our political leaders, we have borrowed the title of a 1927 Laurel and Hardy two-reel movie to explain federal conservative leader Erin O’Toole. You can just visualize Stan Laurel saying to Erin O’Toole or Oliver Hardy “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”
The fine mess is, of course, Erin O’Toole’s climate plan. His only excuse was that the conservative party drove him to it when they blindsided him by saying that there was no problem with climate change.
Figuring out what training Erin O’Toole had to become leader of the conservative party and leader of the official opposition in parliament is a different matter. O’Toole’s training is the antithesis of leadership.
From the beginning of his training at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, O’Toole was taught to salute, march in groups and do what he was told. As a navigation officer in the Canadian air force, he never got to fly the planes or helicopters.
After his military service, he went to law school at Dalhousie University. He got his bar admission in Ontario and proceeded to practice commercial law. And from that base, he went into politics. Luckily, it was conservative politics and that does not require much independent thinking.
So, what does a person trained to follow commands and laws do when he has to come up with a climate plan to match the liberal carbon tax deal—the one where the liberals give back the money to taxpayers?
You copy it, of course. In fact, the only real difference between the liberal carbon tax is that O’Toole does not call it a tax—he calls it a levy. He also gives more back to the people who spent the most on carbon producing fuels and he only gives them back the levy when they buy carbonless or reduced carbon items such as bicycles and high-efficiency furnaces.
Frankly, I am less than impressed by O’Toole’s plan. As an apartment dweller, I have no place to put a high efficiency furnace and, at my age, the wife is not about to let me buy a bicycle.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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