New Media

Canada’s House of Commons has voted to force the Conservative minority government to create a plan over the next 60 days for Canada to meet it’s commitments to Kyoto.

This isn’t a bad thing. The Conservatives have been reluctant to embrace the new environmental dogma of Kyoto for fear of putting Canadians out of work with Soviet-style economic management.

But now they can – and should.

The Conservatives ought to include in the plan draconian measures like shutting down the Albertan oil sand projects without delay and closing any factories in Ontario that don’t meet newly-drafted environmental standards.

Such a plan will of course have no chance of actually being made into legislation. But it will force Canadians and our elected representatives to think about what kinds of sacrifices they truly are prepared to make. When Conservatives force Liberals and NDP partisans on to the defensive, it might just swing public policy back into realism.

It’s time to get past the rhetoric and partisanship. Per capita, Canadians are the worst offenders to Mother Nature on the planet. It’s time to turn ideas into action.

A Quebec journalist’s overnight jump into the arms of the Parti Quebecois is feeding speculation about journalistic integrity and media bias.

Whether former Radio-Canada reporter Bernard Drainville was objective in his coverage of Quebec society, or slanted towards separatists, doesn’t really matter in the big picture, though. The main question is why Quebec separatists are allowed to even have political representation in the form of the Bloc and Parti Quebecois.

If home-grown neo-nazis ever magically morphed into a successful mainstream political party representing a white, Anglo-Saxon homeland in rural BC and Alberta, most Canadians outside of that area would rightly condemn it. The international community would have a fit.

Of course, such a scenario is only possible in fiction – and badly written fiction, at that. But in Quebec, a political movement that is essentially run on the same principle of volkish nationalism is seen as politically legitemate. Quebec separatist politicians not only get the respect of their constituents – their paychecks are funded by Canadian taxpayers.

The latest media bomb from Afghanistan about Canadian troops abusing prisoners is not good.

The facts as they’ve been reported thus far don’t seem to merit the attention the incidents are getting. Taliban prisoners who were being “non-compliant,” “extremely belligerent” and “totally unco-operative” received injuries including “lacerations on L and R eyebrows; contusions and swelling of both eyes; lacerations on L cheek; lacerations center of forehead; abrasions on chin; multiple contusions on both upper arms, back and chest.”

It’s not on the same scale as the Somalia Affair. It’s barely on the same scale as Mike Tyson’s ear-biting incident with Evander Holyfield.

But incidents like this don’t lose wars. The new American proposal on opium eradication in Afghanistan might.

Canadians ought to be protesting this strategy in the streets, since it (and our current policy) is putting Canadian soldiers’ lives at risk. The current strategy of eradicating poppy crops and going after drug smugglers that fund the Taliban only alienates the vast majority of farmers in Afghanistan and takes military resources away from fighting the main enemy.

Allowing Afghan farmers to grow opium, letting NATO countries or the Afghan government buy the crop and sell it to pharmaceutical companies to process cheap Aspirin for the developing world is a win-win-win situation. This idea has been bandied about for at least six months now. It would win the hearts of people on the ground, bankrupt the Taliban and literally take some of the pain out of living in a developing country.

All the Conservatives, neocons and shills for the oil companies who are denying global warming can go suck on an exhaust pipe.

Frankly, I’m embarassed so many Conservatives in Canada are still shouting from the rooftops (or slightly less noisily on the Blogging Tories forum) that global warming is all just propaganda and junk science. The funny thing is that our Conservative Prime Minister has belatedly signed on to the cause, but far too many of the party membership seems stuck in a 2002-era time warp.

Get with the program, people. We’ve got a planet to save.

Vancouver environmental educator and Canadian icon David Suzuki has challenged Canadians to give their input about how they would help the country to deal with global warming if they were Prime Minister.

Calling Vancouver my home town as well, I could hardly ignore the voice of Canada’s leading environmental scientist. My contribution to the dialogue is posted above. Enjoy.