Sorry Prime Minister, the honeymoon is over. It is time to decide whom to please and whom you are going to piss off. And you can hardly please both the pipeline people who want to push tar sands’ bitumen to our ocean shores and those who care about our planet. Look at what sucking up to the pipeline people got Stephen Harper. His name is being scraped from the doors to history’s honours. He has become a nonentity overnight. You defeated him. Why would you now want to make the same mistakes?
Harper harpooned us with the European nations because of his anti-environmental stands. He was seemingly uncaring when he annoyed both President Obama of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia. He preferred making war to love. He ignored Canada’s provincial leaders and our First Nations. He showed that he cared nothing for our world’s fragile environment.
And Canadians saw you, Mr. Trudeau, were different. They gave you their trust. They raised you from a third party nobody to Prime Minister in one election. You have to be faithful to them.
But you can hardly keep the faith by standing up in Vancouver and saying to environmentalists “The choice between pipelines and wind turbines is a false one.” You cannot have it both ways.
And now the provinces are defying you to price carbon emission. The provinces are seeing profit in taxes in carbon pricing and Cap and Trade. They will fight for control as long as there is money involved. A week or six months from now, the provinces just want the money.
But the real fight is to curb carbon emissions in Canada and around the world. Canada must be a leader, not an equivocator. Leave the bitumen in the ground for a time when our planet is dying and the pollution will not matter. The energy will be needed to take our progeny to other worlds.
Mr. Trudeau, you took a large delegation to the Paris Conference shortly after you were elected Prime Minister. You talked the talk and walked the walk but just how much was rhetoric and how much was commitment? You and your ministers and the provincial leaders who joined you made a commitment to the world. Canadians expect you to live up to that commitment.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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