Angry in the Great White North

Elizabeth May has said something quite shocking. It involves Stephen Harper, climate change, and Nazi Germany:

Green leader Elizabeth May is standing by her comments over the weekend that condemn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's stance on climate change, comparing it to "a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis."

This was an unforced error. She offered up this comparison on her own, and not because of a leading question from a reporter.

It deserves some analysis.

What was bad about Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy? Well, it allowed the Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to build up the armed forces of Germany and to expand the areas under Germany's control, in particular, the Sudetenland. But the appeasement policy was rejected, and history (led by Britain's Winston Churchill) chose a course that led to World War II, the modern nuclear age and mass global industrialization, and finally to the climate change debate we're having today.

What Elizabath May is saying is that appeasement was a better choice than having Stephen Harper dealing with reducing the 2% of greenhouse gas emissions Canada is responsible for. She would rather have had history select appeasement in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland if it meant Stephen Harper would not be prime minister of Canada in 2007.

She would trade Stephen Harper and today's Conservative government for a Third Reich conquering Eurasia unopposed by the world's major powers, and presumably remaining in power today. Jewish extermination in the Holocaust, enslavement of the Slavs, a philosophy of racial purity, and the policy of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing in order to create Liebensraum for the chosen race -- sounds horrific, but according to Elizabeth May, tolerable and even acceptable in return for less greenhouse gas from Canada.

The Royal Canadian Navy lost 24 ships and 2,000 sailors in the Battle of the Atlantic, protecting the convoys from the Nazi U-boat threat. But they succeeded, despite the losses, paying that price because Canada chose not to appease the Nazis. Here is a photo from the National Archives of Canada (PA-145577) showing Canadian seamen raising the White Ensign above German sub in St. John's, Newfoundland:

According to Elizabeth May, that was the wrong choice to make.

Many of the voters in Central Nova are the children and grandchildren of these sailors. Thanks to a deal struck between the Liberal Party and the Green Party, the Liberals will not run a candidate in Central Nova, and instead want Liberal Party voters in Central Nova to give their support to Elizabeth May. I can only imagine that many of them will not be taking that advice.

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