Opposition unite to say ‘Wake up Mr. Harper’

A HaltonDoesCopenhagen Blog Entry

With news of a 5 country deal that does not include Canada, we wait to hear if Canada will be included in any deal at all – either in addition to the current one or in a secondary deal of some kind. Neither of us are particularly surprised at seeing the government come up empty handed. We’ve run into a number of interesting Canadians at this conference, the vast majority of whom are unhappy with Canada’s position. Among them are prominent members of Canada’s two main opposition parties – the Liberals and the New Democrats. These parties have extremely different views on a number of issues, but on the government’s record on this climate file they both believe it has been an enormous failure.

The Liberal Party critic for Environment and Energy, Mr. David McGuinty sat down with us and discussed how little Canada was bringing to the table. We arrived in Copenhagen with very little of substance. We have vague targets that we aren’t even really committed to meeting and we have absolutely no plan for making it. We plan to follow the United States but don’t have even an outline of how pricing carbon might work to present and negotiate with the United States. Our presence at this conference really was little more than a photo opp, and this is extremely disappointing. Mr. McGuinty gave us a brief message of optimism about the talks that was recorded before he left home on Thursday morning. His optimism seems to have been correct for some of the world, but we still await any news on an agreement from Canada. Mr. Harper, the world is watching and waiting.

We ran into Jack Layton and Olivia Chow at a meeting of mayors from around the world run by ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability). Mr. Layton was kind enough to talk with us and echoed Mr.McGuinty’s concerns – that our government seems to be involved in intentional foot-dragging. He notes that our government ‘really has its foot on the brake when it comes to the issue of climate change’. Note from Matt that he apologizes about the stumbling and bumbling at the beginning of this video – we bumped into Mr.Layton mere moments before a presentation was to begin and had little to no time to prepare for the interview.

A common theme seems to be that we need to be leaders and not followers on this file and that the government has failed significantly at this. The fact remains that climate change is a scientific issue and not a political one and it is a shame that the government has made it an issue of partisanship.