Is it just me or has the reporting on the Conservative climate change plan been just terrible? I continue to read that the Conservative plan will meet Kyoto targets by 2025. No, it will not. Kyoto targets are based not on reductions from greenhouse gas levels from today (i.e. 2007), but rather on reductions from greenhouse gas level from 1990. The Conservative plan calls for a 20% reduction from today by 2020. That actually represents a 5% increase from 1990 levels, not the 25% reduction from 1990 levels that Canada has committed to. The charitable explanation is that the Conservatives are trying to “spin” their plan as meeting Kyoto only a little late. But that’s patently false. They are in fact, lying; their plan does not meet even our 2020 targets (let alone our 2012 targets which are virtually unattainable).

It’s hard not to see this plan as anything but political cover. The defense is at once brilliant and underhanded, demonstrating that the Conservatives have never stopped campaigning and will not stop until they get their majority government. The Conservative defense? We can’t be blamed for Liberal inaction. In other words, its not our problem that the Liberals didn’t do anything. There’s no question that the Liberals didn’t get it done. But the Conservatives aren’t getting it done either. And they are using the Liberals inaction to cover for their own inaction. Yes, it’s bizarre. You can see that the purpose is not to reduce greenhouse gases, but rather to demonstrate that the Liberals couldn’t get it done (which is true). It’s merely fodder for the next election campaign — political football. Meanwhile, we aren’t reducing our greenhouse gases.

The fact is, the Conservatives are not committed to reducing greenhouse gases — indeed, the Conservatives own numbers show that Canada will be 5% above 1990 levels. They fail to understand the vast untapped jobs and economic benefits of developing and exporting green technologies. They fail to understand that Canadian companies that emit less will gain a competitive advantage over their American counterparts.

The thing is — somebody always pays for pollution. It doesn’t just go away. The Conservatives, however, have decided that polluters don’t need to pay; in the Conservative plan, consumers and taxpayers will pay. It’s all well and good to encourage consumers to buy more efficient, low-emissions vehicles and ask them to replace incandescent light bulbs and older energy-consuming appliances with more efficient alternatives. But if you look at the numbers, these are tiny fractions of our CO2 emissions. We’re not dealing with the giant 300-pound gorilla in room — which is this: one-third of our carbon dioxide is produced by just 10 coal-fired power plants, 7 of which are in Alberta and 2 in Ontario. In total, 40% of Canada’s greenhouse gases are generated from by the power industry. The sum total of every house and apartment in Canada is at best 4%. So even if every single house and apartment in the country improved its energy efficiency by 25%, that would only result in a mere 1% reduction in greenhouse gases.

Quite simply, the Conservatives are giving the richest industries — the oil and gas industry and the power business — a free pass at our expense. The Conservative plan has no hard carbon dioxide targets for industrial polluters. Instead, the more producers pollute, the more they are allowed pollute (on a per unit of production basis) — this is what they mean by “intensity-based targets”. That means that those 10 big coal-fired plants that produce one-third of Canada’s carbon dioxide will be allowed to pollute more, not less. Instead, we need to put a price on pollution and every producer given hard targets. If producers pollute less, they can sell their unused allowance to companies that pollute more than their fair share. What does this do? It gives green producers a competitive advantage and punishes those that pollute. That’s what a cap-and-trade system does. It’s a market-based system that is a highly effective. How do we know? We used it to combat acid rain back in the 1980s.

That’s the cold hard truth about the Conservative climate change plan. The question is whether Canadians will be fooled or not.

Canadians are often proud that their political processes are not dominated by the vast amounts of money spent to influence voters in the United States. But Canadians would also be naive to think that money doesn’t influence performance here in Canada. So while our campaign finance laws limit the total money spent, it still plays a big role.

I will offer one example. Take a look at what was arguably the most competitive province in 2006 — British Columbia. Here is a comparison of the average money spent per riding and the average votes received per riding.

The Greens easily had the best bang for the buck spent — with each vote costing just $1.30. This differs considerably from the other three major parties, which ranged from about $2.98 for the NDP to $3.88 for the Conservatives. The Liberals were in the middle at $3.34 per vote.

Put another way — the Conservatives spent 21 times what the Greens did and received 7 times more votes. The NDP spent over 12 times more and the Liberals spent over 13 times more and both received about 5 times more votes.

It really begs the question: how well would the Greens do if they were as well funded as the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP?

According to Angus Reid Strategies, the Conservative attack ads on Stephane Dion didn’t work.

Before viewing the ads, 40% of Canadians said Dion would make the best Prime Minister of Canada, while 36% selected Stephen Harper. After viewing the spots, the percentages remained almost identical, with Dion at 39% and Harper at 36%.

Anybody know how much money the Conservatives wasted on these ads?

With the Conservatives set to unveil American-style personal attack ads that portray Stephane Dion as a weak leader and a weak environment minister, I wonder how Canadians will respond? The old Liberals certainly dished out their fair share of attack ads, but it seems to me that they attacked the Reform/Alliance/Conservative ideology, portraying it as too right-wing for Canadians rather simply attack Stephen Harper as a person.

Having lived in the U.S. for a while, the single most repugnant aspect of American politics is the absolute lack of policy debate. In the U.S., genuine policy debates have been entirely replaced with personal attacks and mudslinging. Canadian politics has traditionally been different — it has been possible to debate different approaches to different issues, whether it be health, the environment, trade, child care, education, etc. Canadians should be wary of any party that resorts to personal attacks. Is it fair game and an effective strategy to attack your opponents’ policies? Yes. Is it fair game and effective to use personal attacks? Despite the claims by party insiders, personal attacks usually end up driving as many people away as they attract. The Liberal attack on Cheri DiNovo backfired (despite claims by koolaid-drinkers that internal polling went up after they launched their attacks). PC attacks on Dalton McGuinty in 2003 proved impotent. And Conservatives know how well attacking Jean Chretien’s facial disability worked. At very best, personal attacks are a net zero. Most importantly, they send a message that you afraid to debate your opponent on substance. If Canada follows the American lead down the path of personal attacks, our public policy debates will suffer. Of that, there is no doubt. I hope Canadians won’t allow this to happen.

Was Dion an effective environment minister? I don’t know. Why? Because he never had the chance to implement his climate change plan because Paul Martin was paralyzed by the perpetual threat of an election and his own personal inability to set priorities and act upon them. He wanted to be everyone’s friend, and by doing so, he was nobody’s friend. Lots of promises, but few results. What I do know is that people who know the environment file — like Green Party leader Elizabeth May — deeply respect Dion and the work he did hosting the Montreal climate change conference and putting together a plan with teeth; she told me so herself. Would I trust an opposition party leader who is an internationally respected environmental advocate over an opposition party leader who has a history of denying the existence of climate change? You bet.

Is Dion an effective leader? Again, I don’t know. He has just been elected Liberal leader, after all. If leadership is about setting priorities and achieving results — qualities that Stephan Harper has (even if his priorities may not be highest on my list) — then I think Dion displays strong leadership. Unlike Martin, there is no doubt as to what Dion’s priorities are: 1) Economic Prosperity, 2) Social Justice, and 3) the Environment — and, importantly, the interrelationship of these three priorities. Dion must prove, however, that he is results-driven, not merely plan-driven. But he is surrounded by people like Gerard Kennedy, who are will push for results every chance they get (as Kennedy often says, “we will be judged not by what we say, but what we do”). So there is reason to hope that the New Liberals will do what they say they will.

Time will tell whether the Conservative attacks on Dion will pay dividends for Harper. I can’t help but think that launching a personal attack on an opposition leader when we aren’t even in the midst of an election campaign shows that the Conservatives are worried. How do you think Canadians will react?

P.S. Here’s one of the ads:

Andrew Coyne has an interesting piece up this week about the state of conservatism in Canada. A few quotes:

“After a year of Conservative rule, it is now clear, conservatism isn’t just dying — it’s dead. And it’s the Conservatives who killed it.”

“The more the party has chased the middle, however, the faster it has seemed to recede; with each abandonment of its principles, the opposition and the media, those arbiters of the status quo, simply yawn and move the goalposts a little further down the field.”

“Quebec, missile defence, China, health care, regional development: it’s very hard to tell what the Conservative position is any more, or how it differs from the Liberals, or what it will be a week from now. And the result? 31% in the last poll. Sell your soul, you’d think you’d at least get paid.”

What do you think? Is Conservatism in Canada dead?

“Innocent Canadians are suffering an economic bloodbath today because they believed the Prime Minister,” interim Liberal leader Bill Graham told MPs. “He gave his word. Canadians acted on his word. He then broke his word.”

Another Conservative election promise broken. The cost? $20 billion, at minimum. The consequences? Here, here, here, here, here, here.

Garth Turner has the rare opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. With his removal from the Conservative Party caucus (ostensibly because he was too vocal), Turner now has the opportunity to invigorate Canadian democracy with the same kind of openness and democratic populism that he has demonstrated on his own website, the Turner Report. As I share Turner’s view that an MP should be loyal first and foremost to his or her constituents (and secondly to his or her party), I believe the Conservative Party made a critical error in judgment in removing Turner. MPs like Turner are the future of Canadian democracy — open and engaging, using technology to connect with constituents. Sadly, the Conservative Party doesn’t see it that way — they see only someone who couldn’t be bent to their discipline. Effectively, Turner’s Ontario caucus colleagues trumped the will of people in Halton — both Conservative Party members who democratically nominated Turner as their candidate, and the wider electorate who elected him. Turner today reports that, contrary to what the Conservatives said yesterday, the vote in Ontario caucus was not unanimous and there was no national caucus vote whatsoever. The plot thickens…

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Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy today asked Stephen Harper to stop profiteering off of the current misery in Lebanon and Israel.

“Dear Prime Minister:

Sincerely,
Gerard Kennedy
Liberal Leadership Candidate, 2006″

This is a test of Harper’s leadership. Given the ruthless control he has over his party members, Harper cannot escape being tarnished as a war-profiteer if he continues to stand by as his party attempts to politicize the Middle East crisis for partisan purposes. He cannot plead ignorance. He cannot say that he doesn’t have the authority to stop organizers.

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I wonder what kind of reward Stephen Taylor is getting from the PMO for his uncritical assessment of recent events, claiming — and I laughed out loud when I read it — that “it seems that every time [Harper] goes overseas, his hero-factor goes up,” a sad attempt to show the “Harper cares about Lebanese-Canadian people”.

Taylor does not even entertain the possibility that, as many on the ground have said, the PMO has impeded the evacuation (by not allowing people in Lebanon to do their job, and by diverting resources to organize Harper’s Cyprus “hero” visit); instead, he points the finger at the usual suspects — the NDP for its opposition to military investments and, everybody’s favourite scapegoat, the Liberals, because of, you guessed it, “13 years of Liberal mismanagement and neglect.” Taylor! The Tories are in government now. Opposition rhetoric doesn’t fly when the buck stops with you. Quit making excuses - you wanted to be in charge. Now act like it and take responsibility. Sure, there are reasonable reasons for the delay, but some are failures of government and leadership (why were our chartered ships detained several times by Israeli ships? the failed communication between Canadian and Israeli officials played a role here). France and Sweden chartered ships far faster, and got their citizens out of harm’s way far sooner, without having to make excuses.

While Taylor is not alone, this kind of empty noise represents the worst of the blogosphere — indeed, if blogs cannot do anything other than uncritically trumpet their partisan rhetoric then it’s a communication vehicle soon to be replaced with more credible analysis. Taylor is not always so mindlessly partisan, but this post struck me as vapid.

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