The recent Conservative government disbanding of an expert group on climate change plays like a déjà vu. The Climate Change Policy Directorate, once in charge of overseeing all new climate-change policy and co-ordinating climate-change efforts among different government departments, has gone up in a cloud of smoke, much like equality's disappearance from the Status of Women Canada mandate. At that time the Tories reminded us that “the problems of women are well known through myriad reports and research projects.” Of course, this is undoubtedly true of environmental issues too - and whatever research continues to be done is being handled by “a very small handful of people under the direct supervision of (the Privy Council Office) and PMO.”
Stephen Harper does like to keep his eyes on things, doesn't he. Funny that many of his new green measures were “already in place under the previous Liberal government” and were designed in large part by the defunct Climate Change Policy Directorate. Stéphane Dion said “even Wednesday's announcement was a rehash of a plan to create a $200 million Pierre Elliott Trudeau Nature Conservation Foundation when he was environment minister.”
Apparently some Environment Canada bureaucrats have complained that they no longer know who's responsible for climate change policy. But isn't the Harper government's recycling of old Liberal policies the ultimate in green? Maybe that secret ops group of researchers operating under Harper's keen gaze isn't even necessary.
I hope the Tories are at least planning to send the Liberal's a thank you card for all their legwork. In the meantime, Status of Women Minister Bev Oda will be leading an effort to bake the boys cookies and iron shirts. So ladies, don't go thinking the Conservatives don't appreciate your contribution to society.
C. K. Kelly Martin
likes to write things down and is a firm believer in the John Lennon quote, "If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal." She's written a middle grade sci-fi and multiple young adult books including I KNOW IT'S OVER, YESTERDAY, and DELICATE. Her most recent novel, released under the name Cara Martin, is a sci-fi centring around a young Canadian woman cryogenically frozen during a global pandemic and then reanimated to find herself and the rest of the world drastically changed, and Canada under threat.
