Awaiting responses

There's been some discussion as to how the Cons may respond to the committee amendments to Bill C-30. But while most of the talk has been about how the Cons could try to justify going to the polls over the bill, I'm still far from convinced that's the smart course of action for them.

After all, for a party which can essentially choose what issue to highlight in going to the polls, it seems far more likely that the Cons would want to focus on one of their perceived areas of strength rather than a file where they're still getting consistently slammed by public figures who even the Cons don't dare to criticize.

And the factors which always made it likely that the Cons could convince their anti-environment supporters to accept a relatively strong environmental package are only stronger now. With both the Libs and the NDP backing the C-30 amendments and the Greens not having backed off their commitment to Kyoto, the Cons can quite legitimately argue that no other party will offer a better deal, and promise to make it up to the oil industry in future corporate treatment.

Of course, if the Cons want an immediate election badly enough and the Libs decide to pass whichever crime bills the Cons label as musts, then C-30 may well be their only option. But it would put the Cons on the weakest possible footing headed into a campaign - and I have to figure Harper is smart enough not to let that be the result.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that the Cons aren't the only party which has yet to respond to the C-30 amendments. Surprisingly, the last apparent statement from the Greens regarding the committee was a press release which wrongly speculated that nothing good could come from any amendments - and a Google News search turned up nothing on point either. Which means that as far as I can tell, the Greens haven't yet said anything official about the most important development in ages on their signature issue.

It remains to be seen whether they'll eventually back the amendments...and indeed that seems likely given the party's support for the goals behind them. But the contrast couldn't be more stark between Elizabeth May's rush to congratulate Ed Stelmach for an intensity-based system, and her slow response to a set of hard targets agreed to by the federal opposition parties.

Update: It took awhile, but the Greens have announced their approval of the bill as well.