Guardian Exposes Harper's War on the Environment

Steve Harper said he'd put Canada on the map and he has, in spades.  Harper has drawn plenty of world attention to Canada.   Regrettably,  it's uniformly bad.

The Guardian has chronicled Harper's devious schemes to gut environmentalism in Canada, beginning with extensive spending cuts.  It would be one thing if that Born Again bastard was man enough to admit what he's doing and defend his actions.   But the lard-assed authoritarian with his beach blanket bingo hairdo simply lies about what he's up to behind the backs of the Canadian people.

As the newspaper points out, Harper is slashing budgets at Environment Canada even as he's determined to squander $30-billion on dodgy fighter aircraft.

"Among the first acts of the Harper government was to cut our funding to zero," said Hannah McKinnon of the Climate Action Network Canada(CAN Canada), an environmental NGO that used to get some government funding prior to the 2006 election.

CAN Canada has obtained some funding from its more than 80 member civil society organisations. It acts as the coordinator on climate issues, and once worked with government to improve programmes and policies for the benefit of all Canadians. Now has become the de facto watchdog on government promises and actions to tackle climate change.

 Instead of actions, the Harper government makes promises and pushes propaganda that the economy is more important and that protecting the environment comes at too high a cost, she said. The only action being taken is at the local and provincial level, McKinnon added.

"If there is a need to reduce the federal budget deficit, why is Canada continuing to give the oil and gas industry 1.4 billion dollars (1.3 billion U.S.) in subsidies every year?" she asked.

Harper promised to end these government subsidies in 2009. The International Monetary Fund, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations and many others have called for an end to such subsidies to the world's most profitable industry.

"Canada can't afford to pay scientists but we can line the pockets of big oil? That is totally backwards," McKinnon said.