Canada’s NDP Leader Delivers Obama’s America A 21st Century Vision For The Future

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If the opposition party of federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is – as the party hopes Canada’s ‘government in waiting’, then Canadians may soon have a government that joins U.S. President Barack Obama in believing that climate change is one of the most serious issues we humans on this planet face in the 21^st century.

And wouldn’t that be a striking contrast from a Conservative Stephen Harper government that treated climate change and environmental issues as a joke right up until a few months ago, when Obama one a second term of office and gave climate change prominence in his January 21 Inaugural Address with these words; “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” Obama added.

The Harper government in Canada, faced with the loss of U.S. Republican presidential contender and kindred spirit Mitt Romney, who surely would have ditched climate change and related environmental issues had he bumped out Obama, has been scrambling ever since with a phony campaign aimed at convincing the U.S. administration it cares about the environment – all of this orchestrated to win U.S. approval for the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry crude from the tar sands of Alberta to oil refineries in Texas.

But the record continues to show that this Canadian Alliance/Reform/Conservative Party of mostly angry, aging white people, who have never much seen environmental protection regulations as anything more than a blood clot for their free-wielding market friends, doesn’t have coming to terms with a climate change challenge in their DNA. To put it bluntly, Harper and company could not have given a rat’s turd for this issue until a few months ago when they knew they would have no choice but to deal with a second-term President Obama who has promised to action on climate change, and who also has the final say on saying yes or no to Harper’s tar sand friends.

Harper sent one of the cabinet ministers he has used as an attack dog against environmentalists to the United States this month to try to convince the U.S. administration that the Harper government cares about environmental protection. This particular attack dog – federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has demonized the likes of David Suzuki, accused American environmentalists who oppose the Keystone sphincter of being enemies of Canada, gutted world-class environmental regulations like the Canada Fisheries Act, and muzzled Environment Canada scientist. Yet there he is trying to tell Americans that Canada’s government is “very responsible from an environmental point of view.”

For all those angry old white people out there who think climate change is a joke, what a bunch of methane gas or cow farts (because this is what so many Harper supporters think any greenhouse gases are all about) this is. Thank God there is a federal election in Canada in 1215 where we can finally blow away these 19^th century industrial dinosaurs in an election.

Meanwhile, the good news is that the opposition leader for Canada went to Washington, D.C. this March and delivered a speech at the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Center that sheds our country in a more 21^st century light.

That leader was federal NPD leader Thomas Mulcair who began his talk to influential people in the U.S. capital by saying; “It’s an honour to be here with you today to discuss how our two countries can work together to build a balanced, sustainable North American economy in the 21st century.”

Mulcair went on, during his address, to say the following. Please give his words a chance, and then wade in with your view.

“New Democrats believe that Canada’s natural resources are a tremendous blessing.

They can be a source of wealth and prosperity for our country for generations to come.

But the future of Canada’s natural resource sector will be based on our access to global markets and Canada’s access to global markets will be based, in turn, not only the demand for our resources, but on the world’s assessment of how we develop them.

The question that faces us now is whether that development will be sustainable development.

I believe that, in the next century, that question will shape the world community’s global trade relationships more than any other.

Will using the air, the soil and the water as an unlimited free dumping ground be considered acceptable business practice or an unfair trade advantage?

In the global, 21st century economy, there can be simply no excuse for failing to internalize environmental costs.

And those who fail to recognize that reality will fail to thrive.

In Canada, it was the New Democratic Party that first raised the issue of climate change in the House of Commons in 1983.

As Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development in Quebec, I introduced North America’s first comprehensive sustainable development law.

I amended our province’s Charter of Rights to include the right to live in a healthy and bio-diverse environment.

My predecessor as Leader of the New Democratic Party, Jack Layton, pushed legislation through the House of Commons to mandate binding carbon emissions targets—a cap and trade plan—across all Canadian industries.

In an unprecedented move for an initiative of such importance, this bill was killed in Canada’s unelected Senate, much in the same way that ground-breaking climate change legislation was killed in your Senate a few years ago.

Though the end result may be the same, at least you can take solace in the fact that your Senate is elected.

Ours acted without even a mandate from voters.

Last month, President Obama spoke eloquently in his State of the Union address about the need take real action in the fight against climate change—for our children and for our future.

Contrast that with the fact that our government is the only government in the world to have withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol.

But what I can say to the millions of Americans who are committed to the fight against climate change is that there are millions of Canadians who stand with you.

In Canada, leaders of all political parties acknowledge that climate change is real and must be addressed.

The Canadian public supports basic principles like polluter pay at near universal levels.

Even industry leaders realize that they can no longer ignore these principles and still hope to profit.

Forward-thinking business leaders know that their industries can only flourish when they have, not only a regulatory license, but a social license as well.

That means adhering to the basic rules of sustainable development.

It means full and public consultations with communities impacted by natural resource development.

And it means working in partnership with Canada’s First Nations to ensure our resources are developed responsibly.

It’s difficult to perceive Canadian resource development as a sustainable endeavor when our government guts the very environmental assessments Canada relied on to ensure a basic level of sustainability.

To an unthinking investor, this sort of regulatory blank check may seem like a windfall.

But it is, in fact, a poisoned chalice.

In the wake of President Obama’s State of the Union, your Ambassador to Ottawa David Jacobson gave Canadians his own frank assessment.

He said that American acceptance of projects like Keystone-XL would only be moved by progress addressing the impact that development will have on issues like climate change.

That’s a warning we’ve have taken to heart.”

Amen. This message from Canada’s NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is so in keeping with that of the first progressive minded U.S. president of the 21^st century. It is one that leaves the old farts supporting a Harper regime stuck to the coal, kerosene and strip mining past out of any kind of 21^st century loop that includes a vision for the future.

We have yet to hear what Liberal leadership contender or whoever else may lead that party has to say on this important matter. Whatever Liberals say, Mulcair is speaking for the future and a 2015 election in Canada could not come soon enough.

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