Harper Massive Environmentalist

[zero]

Haha!!

Harper just made a massive land conservation announcement in Ontario and did it in French and English and looked cool doing it. The Liberals are Fucked. They're fucked nationally, they're fucked in Ontario, they're definitely %100 fucked in Quebec. They're fucked up the Ass. Hahahaha.

Don't you dare put this in the politics forum where Hux and his cronies stroke each other back and forth.

Don't even get me going on this one. The Conservatives partnered with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited and the Canadian Land Trust Alliance to conserve 1/2 million acres of land including apparently parts of the Oak Ridges Moraine. Even Sarah Harmer's probably cumming in her hairy little claptrap right now.

Wait, why don't we get the REAL journalist, Mike motherfuggin' Knoll to explain this to us.

Mike the floor is yours. Why is this an important announcement?

What do changes to capital gains taxes have to do with land conservation?

What is an easement?

How is land conserved in Canada and what are the mechanisms by which it is conserved?

I am looking forward to hearing many of your brave and daring insights here.

Edited March 14, 2007 by Guest

[AD]

wanna post some details about the announcement? was there a press release or anything with it?

[guigsy]

what does MK have to do with this?

[zero]

He's a real journalist. I'm not. Look it up yourself.

[questcequecest?]

...or you could provide a source. i'm intrigued.

[Booche]

Well, if MK doesnt get his cut of the pie to respond to said post then I dont blame him if he remains silent.

[guigsy]

He's a real journalist. I'm not. Look it up yourself.

got it. thanks.

[kung]

Exactly.

It was on live on CTV newsnet at about 11:15. It was a massive coup for the Conservatives. Not coincidental whatsoever that it took place a day after the Quebec debate. He sounded good and fluent in French and went back and forth. Fielded a question about the debate last night. Generally looked like a rock star in a spin-free zone and everyone was laughing along with him and Baird the Transport Minister. Seriously it was a major moment and almost proves the Conservatives point that they are serious about both Environmentalism and Quebec and will likely pick up some seats in a Spring election.

This all needs to be viewed in the context perhaps of certain unease in Quebec, the rise of the ADQ and I'd respectfully suggest if you don't speak french much of this is lost on you. Or if you simply like many Anglos think that quebecers all vote uniformly or are peppers or frogs.

The announcement is re-running on Newsnet all day.

[AD]

can you post more about what he said, not so much how he said it or the ramifications? still can't find anything online.

[bradm]

I found this CBC story that says

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced $200 million in federal funding for British Columbia Tuesday to help reduce greenhouse gases and support clean energy technologies.

The funding is part of the Harper government's $1.5-billion Canada EcoTrust environmental package, a fund that allows each province and territory to develop their own technology, energy efficiency and other pollution-fighting projects.

but it deals more with money for development of new technologies than preserving nature.

Aloha,

Brad

[questcequecest?]

story - land conservation

[AD]

i don't see how this proves anything about the seriousness of the cons related to the environment. without knowing anything more than that ctv.ca article, it just seems like pre-election spending.

sure it's a good idea, but lots of good ideas have died before they've come to fruition. need more time and details

[djmelbatoast]

All these stops he has been making this week are to reannouce funding he already announed a couple of weeks ago. He is just going into the specifics, but people watching and not really paying attention think that he is rolling out all kinds of new money for the enviroment.

At his press conference yesterday in Van someone asked him something very similar to this. He said, "No that's not what were doing here." And that was the end of it. And every news show is plugging him spending "new" money on the enviroment everynight.

He is George Bush, he's got the media wrapped around his finger.

[secondtube]

Well, bush had the media .... not so much anymore.

hopefully harper doesn't get the same treatment before he too blows up in all of our faces.

[djmelbatoast]

Sorry I should have said he's Bush from 2003.

[bouche]

Is there oil in them fields?

[Freak By Night]

... Baird the Transport Minister...

Baird's not the Transport Minister. He's the Minister of the Environment.

[timouse]

225 million dollars / 500,000 acres = $450 an acre

i'd like to know more before i start bitching about steve.

Harper Massive Environmentalist

ummm...i know all those words, just never seem them in that order before.

[MK]

Zero - I wasn't there and I didn't get the release. I'm now done work for the day.

Are you patronizing me?

[kung]

I'm curious if you understand this issue's complexity, yes in a somewhat patronizing way.

I know a lot about land conservation because the love of my life was/is the Executive Director of the Ontario Farmland Trust. She has fought and apparently won concessions from the Conservative government around issues surrounding donating ecologically or agriculturally significant lands as a private citizen. Currently or previously you would have had to pay a capital gains to donate land- which is clearly proposterous. The Conservatives apparently realized this. I'm not aware that this announcement in King City today so much is pork barrel spending as prudent partnering.

[AD]

a media story about harper cutting a key group that shapes climate change policy. who knows what's really happening.

Tories disband climate-change group

By ALEXANDER PANETTA

OTTAWA (CP) - The Conservative government has eliminated a section of Environment Canada that played a key role in shaping climate-change policies now being announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, The Canadian Press has learned.

Frustrated bureaucrats said the move is an example of the government's zeal to wrest control from public servants over an increasingly politicized issue.

A memo sent to Environment Canada officials this month announced a new organizational structure for the department - and it no longer includes the Climate Change Policy Directorate.

The memo came just as the prime minister embarked on a national tour to announce a series of green initiatives that were largely prepared by the division now being dismantled.

The directorate consisted of a handful of experts responsible for implementing new policy, co-ordinating climate-change efforts among different government departments, and analyzing their potential impact.

Government spokespeople said the number of officials working on climate policy will not decrease. They cast the change as a simple structural move aimed at greater efficiency.

"The work (on climate change) has not stopped. It has continued and is ongoing," said departmental spokesman Mark Colpitts.

"The number of people working on the file has not decreased."

But a pair of Environment Canada bureaucrats said they don't even know who's responsible for climate change policy anymore.

They said the now-defunct directorate was specifically in charge of overseeing all new climate-change policy, and that its 10 employees are being reassigned to various quarters.

"Even the people working here say, 'Who's really accountable for making climate change policy anymore?' They don't even know," said one bureaucrat who requested anonymity.

"Right now we don't know who's accountable."

Another government spokesman said there are scores of bureaucrats at Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and other departments still working on climate-change projects.

But departmental sources suggested the structural shift is motivated by a political desire: stripping power from a group of civil servants and consolidating it in the Prime Minister's Office.

"People who used to work on climate change policy are all being regrouped - some into stakeholder engagement, some went into economic analysis. They're all being farmed off," said the bureaucrat.

"The (policy) work now is being done by a very small handful of people under the direct supervision of (the Privy Council Office) and PMO."

Harper has toured the country in recent days announcing transfers from a $1.5-billion national fund for climate-change initiatives.

He has also promised to announce hard targets for greenhouse-gas reduction within a month, and was in Ontario to make an unrelated $225-million pledge Wednesday to help preserve ecologically sensitive lands.

But bureaucrats said many of the new measures were already in place under the previous Liberal government and were designed in large part by the office that's now being disbanded.

Some of the measures include:

-An east-west power grid linking Manitoba to Ontario, for which Harper announced $586 million in funding at an event in Toronto last week.

-$156 million in federal funding for carbon disposal in the Alberta oil sands, announced by Harper in Edmonton last week.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said even Wednesday's announcement was a rehash of a plan to create a $200 million Pierre Elliott Trudeau Nature Conservation Foundation when he was environment minister.

The Liberals called the structural change just another rebranding exercise from a government that recycles old ideas and passes them off as its own.

"They're pursuing a campaign of propaganda like we've never seen before at the federal level," said Liberal environment critic David McGuinty.

"They're trying to simply discard all of the former climate change programming . . . and trying to deny that there was a previous government."

In a March 1 e-mail to staff from Environment Canada deputy minister Michael Horgan, the former head of the policy directorate - Alex Manson - was introduced as a new special advisor to the assistant deputy minister.

McGuinty said the move will demoralize bureaucrats who worked on innovative or popular programs, like the One Tonne Challenge.

One of the bureaucrats who spoke on background agreed.

"Almost word for word, everything being set up was already negotiated and ready to go. It's just being repackaged.

"These are the same announcements being rolled out."