The Minister for the Environment prior to Stephane Dion's turn at the job was David Anderson. David Anderson was minister from 2003 through 2004 for Prime Minister Paul Martin. Keep those dates in mind.
Anderson was a long time cabinet minister. Back in 1996, he spent a year as Minister of Transport for Prime Minister Jean Chretien. He had a chief of staff by the name of Randy Pettipas.
Randy Pettipas left government service and went on to become CEO of Global Public Affairs, a high-powered lobbying firm. He holds that position to this day.
As a lobbyist, he worked for the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions:
The Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions represents business organizations, industry associations and consumer advocacy groups that support a Made in Canada solution to deal with this important global issue.
The organizations listed here are representative of the widespread support for a Made in Canada solution.
The organizations listed major petroleum, industrial, chemical, and transportation associations. This group is engaging in "astroturfing" -- appearing to be green, but not really, or so say the environmentalists. Not surprisingly, the CCRES is no fan of Kyoto:
If Canada ratifies the Kyoto Protocol, any greenhouse gas emissions created by residents or businesses in this country that exceed Kyoto's aggressive target will have to be paid for by purchasing "emissions credits" from other countries. These credits are essentially transfers of money out of Canada to other jurisdictions - many of whom will have excess emissions capacity to sell since they have no targets to meet. This transfer of wealth could instead by spent in Canada, developing technologies that fight greenhouse gases and that can be sold around the world.
Canada faces an overall reduction task of between 25 -30 per cent of current emissions in order to meet its target of reduced emissions by 2012. The price of energy (especially for coal and oil) may rise to induce conservation, energy efficiency, fuel switching, and the development and deployment of new technologies and energy forms. The price of manufactured goods may also increase due to higher production costs - a combination of higher energy prices and the cost of making production more environmentally friendly.
Under a Kyoto policy environment, there is expected to be growth in small sectors of the economy, such as environmental technologies. However, very few experts expect this growth to offset the losses to larger parts of the economy for many years into the future.
Documents prepared by government officials in September 2002 for the federal cabinet show losses of up to 200,000 jobs if the Kyoto Protocol is implemented. The same documents show these job losses will come as a direct result of $16.5 billion in lost economic growth for the Canadian economy.
Pettipas worked for the CCRES from October 2002 through April 2004. That's right -- exactly when his former boss, David Anderson, was environment minister.
So instead of whimpering about the difficult task of setting priorities, perhaps Stephane Dion could get in touch with David Anderson and Randy Pettipas and ask them just how priorities were being set those first two years after Jean Chretien signed Kyoto.
The issue is not that Randy Pettipas became a lobbyist or that he lobbied his former boss. That sort of thing happened all the time before the new rules came into place that kept people out of the lobbying game for five years after leaving office -- rules put in by Stephen Harper's Conservative government. It is that the Liberal Party, so committed to Kyoto to the point of potentially wrecking the economy (or more accurately put, to the point of demanding that the Conservatives wreck the economy, which of course they'll refuse to do, and so give the Liberals the pretext to claim the environmental mantle) has high-level members who are currently being paid to lobby aggressively against Kyoto and other environmental initiatives. That lobbying happened throughout Stephane Dion's tenure as minister of the environment, those years when prioritizing was such a difficult chore, and it continues today.
It does not reflect well on the claim that the Liberals are holding a principled stand on the issue of Canada's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.
We have Nicole Foster Woollatt, still registered as a lobbyist for the Alberta-based petroleum industry and while at the same time president of the National Liberal Women's Association.
We have John Duffy, senior Liberal strategist and a former lobbyist for the bromine industry, only ending that relationship a few weeks ago, even as he had been for months proclaiming through his website that the Liberal Party was the only party capable of saving the planet from global warming.
We have Randy Pettipas, who lobbied the Environment Minister, and his former boss, on behalf of the anti-Kyoto CCRES, and who since then has represented the interests of Teck Cominco, a major player in the oil sands, and did so until June 2006. After that, Pettipas became a lobbyist for such anti-Kyoto organizations as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Alliance Pipeline Limited Partnership, and the Canadian Energy Infrastructure Group.
Pettipas remains listed as a lobbyist for these firms today. This even as Pettipas participated in the Liberal leadership convention as a strategist for Bob Rae (who in an interview with the CBC, said he would "re-commit" Canada to Kyoto if he became prime minister).
Are petroleum firms and others lobbying the Conservatives? Of course. But the Conservatives have always been upfront about their skepticism about climate change in general, and about Kyoto in particular. In the case of the Liberals, petroleum and industrial chemical concerns are paying money to senior well-connected Liberals to argue against a strict environmental regulatory regime. Senior Liberals who are all current party members, all of whom have a lot of influence in the party, and all of whom seem more than willing to take the money, even as the Liberal Party proclaims its green credentials.
So on the one hand you have the Liberal Party proclaiming that Kyoto targets must be respected by this Conservative government. On the other hand, you have senior Liberals being paid to roam the halls of government, setting up meetings between government officials and anti-Kyoto industry representatives, lending their skills to help deliver the message that Kyoto would be a disaster for Canada.
Stephane Dion said it was difficult to set priorities while he was in cabinet. Well, he's not in cabinet now, so maybe he'll find it easier to prioritize. He might consider setting as a priority an evaluation of links between the Liberal Party and anti-Kyoto organizations. As I see it, his ability to put his pro-Kyoto stamp on the Liberal Party is being undermined by these party members. But then the real question is this: Is he a strong enough leader to stand up to these paid lobbyists and make them choose between his Kyoto platform and Liberal Party membership?
