Now they’re talking green…
One of my biggest frustrations following the federal election in Canada earlier this year is seeing hardly any discussion regarding Kyoto, pollution, energy efficiency and renewables. Then the party that spoke the least about it — i.e. said nothing at all — ends up getting elected.
That party, the Conservatives, is now playing games with Kyoto and there doesn’t appear to be a heck of a lot going on in Canada federally on the green file, aside from promises of some kind of “made-in-Canada” solution to Kyoto, whatever that means. But alas, as the tail-under-their-legs Liberals try to regroup and find a new leader, those leadership hopefuls are suddenly talking big about the need to save the environment. Michael Ignatieff is calling for a carbon tax (though he doesn’t explain what he means by it), and Gerrard Kennedy is talking about heavily taxing SUVs and eliminating the GST (a federal tax, for you non-Canadian readers) on hybrid vehicles.
This past week the federal NDP has also been talking green, despite being negligently absent during the election debates. The party released a Green Communities Strategy, Greener Transportation Strategy and Greener Homes Strategy, as examples of what should be part of any “made-in-Canada” plan being devised by the Harper government. The NDP apparently has two more green strategies to announce over the coming days to complete its “5-point Green Agenda.”
This is all fine. Great ideas guys. But it would have been nice to hear your voices a few months ago… or, in the case of the Liberals, a few years ago. Talk is cheap.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
