Naught for All

Stephen Harper had something to say about the Minister of Environment in a clip about the upcoming cabinet shuffle played on CBC last night:

Minister Ambrose has had what turned out to be the most difficult portfolio; it's very challenging.¹

What he is talking about here is the difficulty Minister of Environment Rona Ambrose has encountered in selling the Clean Air Act to Parliament and Canadians in general. He's apparently planning to replace her with someone who can convince us all that the Clean Air Act is great. Shouldn't be so hard, really. The Clean Air Act is an 'intensity-based' initiative that will reduce pollution (ahem, per unit) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (shh, per unit).

Units? What units? So, what happens with an increase in these 'units'?

*silence; uncomfortable glances*

Isn't this sort of a solid, official loophole to make sure that no one will be forced to innovate, scale back operations or change their habits? Waaait... Are you doing this for businesses?!

*clearing of throats; rolling of little balls of paper*

Doesn't this whole thing sound like a load of crap? What is the goal here? Didn't we just back away from our Kyoto commitments? Weren't we sort of the chair for that Kyoto shindig back in May?

*shuffling feet; humming*

Where did all that funding for this stuff go? Why is the 'Environment' section of the budget down from 25 pages to a paragraph? Hey! What ever happened to the One Tonne Challenge?!?

The Government of Canada Climate Change site is currently unavailable. / Le site Web sur les changements climatiques du gouvernement du Canada est actuellement non disponsible.

This rant has, as usual, gone on longer than intended. I'll conclude.

With Canadians placing environment and pollution issues second in importance only to health care², you'd think something called the Clean Air Act would gather more support, eh? Why exactly is it so hard to promote?

Harper, it seems, blames the Minister of Environment.

I think he should blame Canadians in general. We're clearly not stupid enough.