Angry in the Great White North

Jane Taber interviewed Elizabeth May on CTV's Question Period today. In the course of the discussion, the issue of what the Throne Speech said about the Kyoto Protocol came up. As you recall, Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, said that the Conservatives did not deserve to be thrown out of office over what the Throne Speech said about Kyoto Protocol. Of course, this raised a lot of eyebrows concerning Elizabeth May's conflicting commitments to the environment and to her allies in the Liberal Party.

Well, in her explanation, Elizabeth May made a bit of a mistake:

It said the truth, unfortunately, given all the years of inaction it is likely impossible to reach our Kyoto targets.

She lingered a moment on "all" so I rendered it in italics in my transcipt.

Now that can't possibly be true, of course. Clearly, all of the inaction happened during the Conservative watch, which has lasted only 19 months. Not even a full two years. If you were to take her words literally, and assume she meant "all the years" as at least two years and almost certainly more, then she would be saying that Stephane Dion, currently leader of the Liberal Party but then the environment minister under Paul Martin, was also guilty of inaction.

If Elizabeth May did accidently let slip that the Green Party holds Stephane Dion in part responsible for missing the Kyoto targets (perhaps more responsible, since any engineer will tell you that the longer you delay fixing a problem, the harder it is, so in all fairness the Greens would have to concede that the Liberals under such a scenario left the Conservatives with a far more difficult task), then it calls into question the Green Party wisdom in naming Stephane Dion as the environmentally best choice for prime minister.