Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is not going to be served well by the assertion by Jean Chretien that Canada was on track to meet Kyoto commitments until Paul Martin took over as prime minister in December 2003. Paul Martin quickly put Stephane Dion into his cabinet as environment minister in July 2004. Dion served in that role until the fall of Paul Martin's government nearly two years later in February 2006.

If this is true, then Canada's inaction on Kyoto during the years of Liberal power is really a backsliding under Stephane Dion's stewardship:

However, in Jean Chretien, My Years as Prime Minister, he blasts Martin's handling of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas reduction and accuses him of lying to the Liberal caucus.

Chretien writes that when he left office, Canada was on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto accord.

"Unfortunately, whether for political or ideological reasons, my successors succumbed to the fears and threats of the anti-Kyoto forces and did serious damage to Canada's progress and our reputation in the process."

But according to the excerpts we've seen, the blame is being put on Paul Martin.

Indeed, Jean Chretien recalls Stephane Dion as...likeable:

"Before long I became closer to him than to any other minister. I had always followed Trudeau's example of never showing preference for one colleague or clique in the cabinet. . . . But Dion proved an exception."

So how do we reconcile these two recollections?

On the one hand, Paul Martin and his environment minister, Stephane Dion, failed to take advantage of the good start provided by Jean Chretien and allowed Canada's progress towards meeting Kyoto commitments to be squandered. Not only that, Jean Chretien accuses Paul Martin of lying to his caucus about the environment file. If so, why did Stephane Dion allow the lie to stand? Surely as environment minister he would have known if Paul Martin was being untruthful. Of course, I wouldn't for a moment suggest Stephane Dion participated in a lie. Perhaps he was out of the room getting Paul Martin a coffee when the lies were told.

On the other hand, Stephane Dion was a favoured minister and colleague of Jean Chretien's, at least for a time. Certainly Jean Chretien would not want Stephane Dion caught up in a controversy.

I don't have the answer. I have a theory though. I wonder if Jean Chretien's dislike of Paul Martin is so intense that he is willing to attribute all problems directly to him. This goes beyond the responsibility all leaders have for what goes wrong on their watch. But in Jean Chretien's mind, the ministers around Paul Martin dwindle into insignificance in order to make certain that Paul Martin bears all the responsibility, including the responsibility that goes with being the prime actor in the misdeed.

So according to Jean Chretien, Canada was on its way to meeting Kyoto commitments at the end of 2003, then Paul Martin takes over, and just over two years later Canada is completely off the rails.

Note that I don't actually care if this is factually true. I'm just looking at the story as it is told by Jean Chretien.

So Canada drops to Kyoto ball, and Paul Martin is the culprit because he personally controlled the Kyoto implementation decision-making process, and when he tells the caucus about progress on Kyoto, what he tells them is untrue. Stephane Dion, the minister of the environment, is not mentioned, not developing policy or tracking progress or issuing reports or anything.

Huh?

A more reasonable scenario has Paul Martin simply repeating to caucus what his minister of the environment was telling him at cabinet meetings when reporting on Kyoto. Reasonable, yes, but then it would diminish Paul Martin's culpability. Jean Chretien is not cutting Paul Martin any slack. Instead, we are expected to believe that Paul Martin personally caused Canada's failure to keep up with the Kyoto schedule, and that he was so aware of what was going on in this particular ministry on this one subject that he was able to fashion a deliberate yet plausible lie to cover up the problem. Stephane Dion doesn't seem to show up in the Kyoto narrative during the Martin years.

But for Stephane Dion today, this presents a problem:

1. Stephane Dion can accept the version of events as told by Jean Chretien, which then leaves him open to questions about just what it was he was doing as environment minister if Paul Martin could somehow take control of the implementation of the Kyoto programs , mess it up, then hide the failure from fellow Liberals like a sneaky puffin hiding a particular malodorous pile of...you know the rest.
2. Stephane Dion can take responsibility for the problems described by Jean Chretien, including the lies to caucus, and relieve Paul Martin of the blame. Then Dion can get back to getting people to like him by just letting them get to know him.
3. Stephane Dion can come down squarely on the side of Paul Martin, and declare that Jean Chretien's entire story is a fabrication, and that Canada was on track to meeting Kyoto through both Chretien's and Martin's administration, or at least through Paul Martin's.

You'd think the last option was the most palatable, but then that means Dion would be in a confrontation with his mentor, Jean Chretien. Reporters could then ask Jean Chretien about Stephane Dion's denials, and the back and forth could continue. It would also mean Stephane Dion would have to align himself with Paul Martin's faction in the Liberal Party. Given that Jean Chretien won three majorities, while Paul Martin was in the driver's seat when the Liberal Party was driven off the cliff, it would seem to me to be a poor choice.

Most likely, of course, is that Stephane Dion will deflect any questions. Questions about performance as environment minister will not be directly answered, but comments about the Conservatives and their Bush-style policies will be offered up as a smokescreen.

Eventually the story will die, remembered only when reporters and columnists recall Stephane Dion's troubles to date, and list the Jean Chretien memoirs right after the John Manley appointment and just before what happens on this Tuesday coming.

But for today, and maybe tomorrow, it'll be interesting to see what comes of this bit of the memoirs.