On smokescreens

The CP reports that a leaked version of the Cons' much-ballyhooed Clean Air Act is completely lacking in substance:

Environmentalists say they have obtained a leaked draft of the federal government's long-promised Clean Air Act, and they're not impressed.

The bill amounts to little more than a set of minor amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), according to a team of environmental lawyers who studied the draft.

"First they promised a made-in-Canada plan and there is no plan. Then Prime Minister Harper promised a new Clean Air Act. Now we know there isn't one," said Beatrice Olivastri, head of the Friends of the Earth Canada.

"Based on the draft reviewed, this bill is mainly housekeeping and minor adjustments in language. It shuffles air pollution and greenhouse gas provisions to a new section of CEPA."

Olivastri said the bill does not appear to enhance federal regulatory authority to curb greenhouse gases or other pollutants...

According to the environmentalists, the draft bill would give the provinces more authority over pollution, making national standards even harder to attain.

"There are no new (federal) powers and standards," said John Bennett, executive director of the Climate Action Network.

"This is a significant delay tactic," said Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada.

"Obviously, this means that there is no Clean Air Act. We're still waiting."

It remains to be seen whether the Cons actually do have something more substantive in the pipeline to be introduced later, or whether they plan to continue pretending that the mere existence of a piece of legislation called a Clean Air Act makes for real progress on the environment.

But either way, it's looking all the more certain that the Cons' supposed interest in the environment is at best nothing more than a smokescreen for further inaction at best, and at worst another feeble excuse to get the federal government out of the business of governing. And neither of these outcomes can be acceptable for the large majority of Canadians who want to see actual results in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Update: And it gets worse, as a follow-up article suggests that one of the Cons' unnecessary changes in wording may make the new bill vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.