Friday, January 24, 2014

Why Do Trudeau and Mulcair Want to Govern Canada?

If they don't want to tackle the major challenges of the day, why do they seek to govern our country?  I'm not speaking of Stephen Harper, he's a dead loss, a total waste of keystrokes.  I'm talking about Trudeau the Lesser of the Conservative-Lite Liberals  and Tommy Boy Mulcair of the Latter Day Liberal New Democrats.

Both of these hucksters want to take over from Harper and both think that proposing to do a few things slightly differently is enough.  It's not, not nearly enough, yet that is all they're putting on offer.

As BCL reminds us, Trudeau (like Mulcair) is a bitumen booster.  Trudeau openly backs Keystone XL and the Kinder Morgan expansion.  He wants to send Enbridge back to the drawing board on the Northern Gateway which is a far cry from just saying no.

In other words, Trudeau backs plans for the massive expansion of Athabasca production and dilbit export.  Now I presume Trudeau is aware of the Harper government's recent report to the U.N. admitting that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions will soar by 38% by 2030 largely due to Tar Sands expansion.   Where the rest of the world is demanding GHG cuts and while the EU is committing to 40% cuts by 2030, Canada is set to go, full bore, in the opposite direction.  And Trudeau, by endorsing these pipelines, will happily be complicit in that.

Either you believe the scientific consensus that, unless we find some means of keeping warming under 2C to avoid tipping points triggering runaway global warming or you don't believe it.

Either you believe that our hope of staying within that 2C limit will necessitate that we leave 80% of our known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, unburned, or you don't believe it.

Either you believe that our only hope of staying within the 2C limit means opting for the cleanest, lowest-carbon fossil fuels and ditching the highest carbon products - coal and high-carbon petroleum, or you don't believe it.

If you support Keystone XL and the expanded Kinder Morgan and possibly a redesigned Northern Gateway, it admits of only two possibilities.  Either you don't believe any of those three statements given above or, far worse, you do realize they're true but you're willing to give on those points for pure political expedience.

As David Suzuki recently pointed out, people like Trudeau and Mulcair are harming us by debating what's the best way to do something when it's something that shouldn't be done period.

7 comments:

LeDaro said...

I was looking for the definition of a politician and I came across this one:

"One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence thereafter."

It looks NDP and Liberal leaders are not much different than the current regime. While ago Mulcair was interviewed on Atlantic CTV. He said that the pipeline from Alberta to Saint John, NB will bring a lot of prosperity. Go figure. There is a lot public opposition to this pipeline.

The Mound of Sound said...

The thing is, LD, these two jokers are giving us all the reason we could ever need to have no confidence in them and the election is more than a year off.

Lorne said...

I think you can anticipate my answer to the question, Mound. JT and TM want to be Prime Minister because, well,they both think they should be.

Sam Gunsch said...

Donald Gutstein's book explains Mulcair and Trudeau's choices.

Not a conspiracy theory: How business propaganda hijacked democracy.

The Mound of Sound said...

Hi Sam. Can you tell me a bit more about Gutstein's book?

Sam Gunsch said...

http://sfu.collegestoreonline.com/ePOS/form=robots/item.html&item_number=9781554701919&store=472&design=472
In Not a Conspiracy Theory, Donald Gutstein skilfully documents one of the most important but least recognized political developments in the last thirty years: the prolonged propaganda campaigns mounted by business to influence our opinions on fundamental issues of social and political life. Think tanks with impressive names and populist-sounding agendas - churn out research that purports to be both independent and free of bias. But peel back the curtain and what do you find? Big business with its big bucks and anti-democratic agenda, maximizing and maintaining profits no matter what. Independent and free of bias?

===========
So as we're all aware, taxes, big government inefficient bureaucracies/programs, red-tape/regulations are core elements in the demonization of government by the decades of business propaganda that got rolling in the 1970's as a counter-attack to the outbreaks of democracy in the 1960's... e.g. civil rights, anti-poverty, environmentalism.

Gutstein's work connected a lot of dots for me.

So Mulcair and Trudeau and their political strategists know they can't ignore the core political realities/boundaries that have been created or they know they'll lose like Dion did with the Green agenda.

The Mound of Sound said...

Hi, Sam. Thanks for that. I'll check it out.