Black thumbs

Another day, another couple of asinine Con comments on the environment. First, there's federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, who doesn't think environmental progress is worth bothering with if a single business can find something to complain about in the effort:

Protecting the environment is important, but it shouldn't come at the cost of Canadian businesses, says federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn...

"You have to be pro-environment, but it's also necessary to go ahead in a flexible, measured manner so that businesses don't start an uproar," Blackburn told The Canadian Press.

The minister, who is from Quebec, cited the current crisis in his home province's forestry industry as an example of excessive conservation.

Last week alone, eight Quebec sawmills closed, cutting more than 1,600 jobs.

Blackburn said the industry is suffering from the effects of a 2004 decision by the Quebec government to reduce the size of logging areas, made following a campaign led by Quebec singer Richard Desjardins.

I'm not sure that admonition against ignoring the "log in your own (eye)" has ever been quite this appropriate. But the Cons' contempt for the environment can be readily seen in their willingness to make it a scapegoat for job losses which can be directly traced to their own war against the Canadian lumber industry. (And it's worth noting that the job losses have extended far beyond Quebec, meaning that Jean Charest's forestry policy doesn't do a thing to get the Cons off the hook based on even a cursory look at actual evidence.)

Meanwhile, it's also rather curious that the business uproar against Con strongarming apparently isn't a problem for Blackburn. But then, the appearance of machismo may well be the one thing that trumps even the almighty dollar for PMS.

Also today, Rona Ambrose appeared on Question Period...but it's not quite clear just what question she thought she was answering:

Ambrose revealed few details, but promised (the Cons' Clean Air Act) will contain measures to regulate greenhouse gases for industry and said there is a direct link between GHGs and global warming.

"They're not separate issues. When you attack global warming, you attack greenhouse gases. You can't separate the two of them from each other," Ambrose said.

The problem, of course, is that absolutely nobody with a shred of credibility has suggested otherwise. In fact, the closest thing to such a claim has come from the Cons themselves, who have gone out of their way to answer questions about global warming by changing the subject to smog, Lib inaction, or any other topic they can think of which will distract the listener from the Cons' unwillingness to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Which means that Ambrose's answer is at best an acknowledgement that she's had no idea what she's been talking about ever since taking office. And at worst, it sounds like an attempt to pretend that there's actually some need to argue against the position that global warming should instead be addressed through, say, a deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan - or perhaps another round of interminable consultations.

In sum, even PMS' notoriously-whipped cabinet doesn't seem able to avoid showing its disdain for both the environment in general, and the current state of knowledge about it in particular. And we can only hope that means that the environmentally-conscious Canadian public will vote to put a more responsible party in charge before the Cons manage to go downhill even further.