Canadian Minority PM Abandons Environmental Protection, Embraces Neocon Ideology & Tactics

One of Harper’s first moves was to renege on Canada’s commitment to Kyoto, and he did so in the typical neocon weaselly way: Rather than withdrawing, he simply announced that the extremely modest baby-step Kyoto targets to stem global warming were ‘completely unattainable’, and so his government would not even try to meet those targets. Fifteen Kyoto programs that were in place have already been scrapped by the new government. A scientist who has written a novel on the dangers of global warming was prohibited by Harper from launching it, because he works for the Department of the Environment. Gag rule.

Instead, Harper has joined a toady US/corporatist group which promotes technology-change-only solutions — in other words, pollute all you want until someone comes up with a better pollution control technology, and then adopt it voluntarily. This is not only irresponsible, it is inconsistent with his party’s election platform. The lies have begun.

While Harper fiddles, critical environmental issues in Canada keep burning, and are now likely to be ignored completely. As I’ve reported before, the Alberta Tar Sands project is nothing less than an environmental holocaust, and is almost entirely ‘self-regulated’ by the Big Oil companies clearcutting huge swaths of Northern Alberta forests and leaving behind toxic swamps. Regulations over forestry in all five Canadian provinces with significant forestry industries are woefully inadequate. Last week the Sierra Legal Defence Fund published the results of its survey of municipal sewage treatment — Montreal and Vancouver, two of Canada’s three largest cities, are decades away from proper treatment, and Victoria & St. John’s, at opposite ends of the country, continue to have no treatment at all, dumping a combined 67 billion litres per year of raw sewage into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans respectively.

A recent special study covered extensively last week in the Toronto star showed the average Canadian has in their body 28 carcinogens, 24 hormone disruptors, 18 respiratory toxins and 46 reproductive and developmental toxins, in quantities significant enough to have an adverse effect on health. Most of the test subjects in the study had no known work-related exposures to these toxins — this chemical soup is in all our bodies.

And don’t even get me started (again) on Canada’s disgraceful animal welfare, hunting and fishing laws and regulations.

As the environment and public health are abandoned, Harper instead is dutifully doing the bidding of the Bush neocons, introducing new ‘protocols’ even before he starts enacting regressive legislation. In his most shameful act, Harper has prohibited government buildings from lowering flags to half-mast when Canadians are killed in the futile war in Afghanistan, and has prohibited the media from attending or reporting on military funerals. The Canadian media, not used to strongarm tactics from our governments, are likely to meekly obey the new restrictions. They have already acceded to the new, more restrictive, formal, ‘spin’-focused contact protocols Harper has mandated between media and federal ministers. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” if and when we have something to tell you, is the message.

And, also as I predicted, with each new bill he introduces (starting, of course, with tax cuts) Harper is openly daring the opposition to bring down his minority government, in the hopes that Canadians, fed up with too many recent elections, would give him a majority if they were forced to the polls again. He is wrong. Unfortunately the leaderless opposition Liberals are in such disarray that they are likely to allow Harper to continue this brinkmanship politics to introduce more and more neocon ‘protocols’, deficit-producing handouts to rich friends, and non-enforcement of regulations (you know, the Bush way), until the Liberals’ leadership convention in December.

An ideological extremist, even with a minority government, can do a lot of irreparable damage in six months.Oh Canada, what have you done?