On forward thinking

While the first week of Parliament has by and large been a successful one for the NDP, the one obvious problem (aside from the usual outright lack of any attention on some stories) has been the degree to which the NDP has been portrayed as agreeing with the Cons. Which makes Jack Layton's response to the Cons' Kyoto discussion the right one:

NDP Leader Jack Layton said part of the blame (for the Cons' conclusion that Canada won't meet its Kyoto targets) falls on the Liberals, who ratified Kyoto without a plan on how to meet the targets.

But Layton said the Conservatives are tossing in the towel too early, because there is still six years to meet the targets.

There's still plenty of frustration to go around with respect to the Libs' failures in office. But contrary to Harper's apparent assumption, spending the entire time in government screaming "They had 13 years!" isn't an effective use of the opportunity...and with the Libs still in denial about their own record, the NDP is the only national party which is able to point out that there's a lot which can - and must - be done.

The more time the Cons spend pretending they're still in opposition, the less likely they are to turn around any of the Libs' governmental failures. And Layton's position nicely highlights what has to be a popular desire to actually make positive changes, not only to assume that what the Libs broke can't be fixed.