A difficult working environment

Quebec Environment Minister Claude Bechard makes life all the harder for the federal Cons, arguing against any national standards for clean air and asking for support as Quebec pushes to reach its Kyoto target:

Quebec Environment Minister Claude Bechard says the federal government must tailor its long-awaited clean air plan to provincial priorities, including Quebec's determination to comply with the Kyoto Protocol...

Bechard said Quebec has not been consulted on the plan, but he has discussed it informally with federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, who has promised consultations.

He said a clean air act with legally binding air quality standards, like that in the United States, would not work in Canada...

Bechard hopes the federal measures will reinforce Quebec's Kyoto compliance plan, introduced in the spring.

"For sure we want to influence the federal plan. We would like Quebec measures to be included in the federal plan. Our plan aligns directly on Kyoto, it is based on concrete measures, simple measures.

"The objective we had in tabling our plan before the federal government and the other provinces was to show that it's possible and the demystify the struggle against greenhouse emissions."

The national standards idea which Bechard dislikes actually may not be a bad one, as long as it's coupled with measures to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and other issues rather than focusing on smog to the exclusion of all else. But Bechard's stand turning the environment into a federalism issue will not only make it all the more difficult for the Cons to sell their seeming plan, but also seems likely to raise expectations in Quebec for some movement on Kyoto. Which will once again place Harper squarely in the middle of another tug of war between his base and the voters he'd need to pick up to wins any more seats than his party holds now.