The Harper government is blunt about the environment. To them, it just doesn’t matter.
They boast about sabotaging international efforts to deal with Climate Change.
Repeatedly in Parliament, Conservatives say Canadians have to choose between a strong economy OR a clean environment. According to them, we cannot have both. The environment and the economy are mutually exclusive – that’s the Conservative position.
They’ve threatened environmental advocates with the cancellation of their tax benefits. And they’ve compromised the integrity of environmental review procedures.
Recently, some Harper Ministers have even suggested that those who argue for environmental protection are enemies of the state. Pretty extreme stuff.
On the other side, the NDP seems to buy the notion that economic development and environmental protection are incompatible. For example, their simplistic solution to concerns about the oil sands is just to shut them down – never mind the consequences.
Surely, neither of these Parties is responding to what Canadians want or need.
We WANT to generate the prosperity that can flow from the development of our natural resources, but we NEED to do so in a manner that’s environmentally sound. Canadians resent being told they have to pick one or the other. We want and need both.
This is a good illustration of political polarization doing Canada a disservice.
The focus should be on bringing legitimate meaning to the principles of “sustainable development”. It must be more than a slogan. It should point the way to successful economic development with the least possible environmental footprint. It should result in new jobs and major investments in new technologies in western Canada.
Making development sustainable is as much an economic imperative as it is an environmental one. As we learned in the forestry sector 10 years ago, sustainability has huge implications for consumer choices and market access.
We ignore it at our peril.
