NDP offers way for 'chicken' PM to attend EU summit

[Pte_Martin]

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=35447e8e-b2cb-413a-8812-e8d1d01abc2b&k=37953

OTTAWA - The opposition has offered to sideline one of its own MPs so that Prime Minister Stephen Harper can attend a controversial meeting with European Union leaders this month in Finland without the threat of his minority government being defeated.

New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton made the offer in a speech Sunday to party officials and said there is nothing that now stands in the way of the prime minister living up to his international commitments.

Harper abruptly cancelled the planned meeting, and the first leg of a trip to Europe, last week amid suggestions that his EU counterparts would chastise Canada for abandoning its Kyoto Protocol targets to launch a plan that sets targets much further in the future.

The Prime Minister's Office said the decision to scrap the visit was based on Harper's feeling that he must look after the business of running the country, which means being present in the House of Commons for ''at least some of November.'' A visit with Finnish Prime Minister Maati Vanhanen has been rescheduled for the spring.

Harper is also attending an international meeting in Vietnam in mid-November, but that trip falls on a Commons break when MPs spend the week in their ridings.

''It seems lame to me,'' Layton said of the prime minister's excuse. ''I think for Canadians it seems like he's chicken of facing strong leaders that are meeting their emissions targets when he has effectively provided no leadership at all and is headed backwards on this issue.''
Layton explained that his idea to ''pair'' one of his own MPs with Harper ensures that he can attend the meetings in Finland and not have to worry about facing a confidence vote back in Ottawa that could topple the government.

Pairing is a parliamentary tradition that effectively levels the playing field when a member from another party is sick or otherwise unable to attend important votes in the Commons.

Harper agreed to such an arrangement with the NDP in the spring of 2005 for one of a series of confidence votes that threatened, but ultimately failed, to defeat Paul Martin's Liberal minority government. Darrel Stinson, a former Tory MP, was undergoing cancer treatment at the time, and was scheduled for surgery on the day of the vote.

Harper, then the official opposition leader, called the offer ''very generous and honourable'' at the time.

The PMO said it was not entertaining the latest offer.

The prime minister has no plans to back out of the pre-arranged second leg of the European tour, which involves a trip to Riga, Latvia, to meet with NATO leaders to talk about the war in Afghanistan.

''I think most Canadians are shaking their heads and saying, what's the matter? Why can he find time to go there and lecture the leaders at NATO about the need for them to provide troops to a war that more and more Canadians think is a bad idea, but he won't find time to talk to those same leaders about the urgent crisis of climate change?'' Layton said. ''They don't buy it.''

Layton said Harper has ''a lot to learn'' from European leaders because of the example they have set in tackling climate change and greenhouse gas pollution.
''We urge him to participate in that process, and we're ready to help pave the way for that in terms of how Parliament works,'' he said.

Once Again Jack is being an idoit, when will he learn?  I like how he says  ''I think for Canadians it seems like he's chicken..." Not only is he an expert on Afghanistan now he knows what Canadians think.


MOD EDIT: Changed the colour top make it readable.

 

[derael]

Maybe the Conservatives should come up with a way for "chicken" Jack Layton to go negotiate with the Taliban...you know since he's such a tough guy.  :

 

[a_majoor]

The Prime Minister's Office said the decision to scrap the visit was based on Harper's feeling that he must look after the business of running the country

Sounds like the Prime Minister understands where his priorities lie.

As for the NDP, well, they know Jack!

 

[Zell_Dietrich]

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/elections/election2006/

http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/results.html

This is silly.  The only way the conservatives could be defeated is if the Liberals wanted to toppel them.  I think the Libs will wait untill after their leadership race is over and untill after christmas.

Conservatives  124
Liberals          103
NDP                29
BQ                  51
Other                1

29+51+1 = 81 Not enough without the liberals.

If the Liberals and one ither party decide to knock down the government,  the Tory's can't stop them. 

Liberals plus the smallest other party is still 8 votes more than the conservatives.  Besides,  no one wants an election now.  They still need to raise funds.
103+29=132  132-124=8

 

[beach_bum]

I think if Jack knew what MOST Canadians wanted, he would be PM.  :

 

[Brad Sallows]

I was unaware the EU had met its Kyoto targets.  If they haven't...well, I wouldn't suffer myself to be lectured by them, either.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Stephen Harper has nothing to gain by going to Europe so that he can be smacked, as G.W. Bush’s surrogate, by a bunch of supercilious continentals.

A bit of background with which a majority of you will disagree but which is gospel in some Ottawa, Canberra and Washington circles:

• At it’s root, the Kyoto Accord was (it now has a life of its own) a fairly sophisticated economic attack on North America, especially the USA.  This came to pass because, after the demise of the USSR the Euros looked at the costs of integrating Eastern Europe into the EU and nearly had heart attacks.  They saw a compelling need to spend hundreds of billions over a fairly few years on environmental issues, alone – diverting that money from other, more traditional economic pursuits.  The Euros wanted the USA, at least, to share the pain, lest it take advantage of the economic slowdown which the Euros believed would come to them to take over Euro markets, etc.

• The Euros also saw that they, as leaders could (maybe even would) gain a foothold in valuable clean/green energy technology which, if they could persuade the USA to play along, they could export.

• The Euros set achievable, even modest global warming goals for themselves.

• The Euros understood that no plan to trick the USA could hope to succeed if it, in any way at all, disadvantages any developing country.  Hence: the applicability of Kyoto to a small number of developed countries only.

• Bill Clinton believed even though most of his senior advisors saw through the Euro plot.  He went to Kyoto and offered, albeit with, as he truthfully acknowledged, with no prospect that the US Congress would approve, even ‘better’ targets than the Euros proposed.

• Canadian believed, too.  The Chrétien team went to Kyoto and offered something substantially ‘better’ than the American proposal – because Canadians are always happiest when they are being ‘better’ than the Yanks at some socially worthwhile thing, or another.  There were two problems for Canada:

1. The targets were, even then, totally, completely irrational and unachievable; and

2. The government, being a Westminster style, responsible, parliamentary government could have, should have lived up to its promises.

• Chrétien wasn’t worried: he was accustomed to lying to Canadians and saw no reason to change at that late stage of his political career.  Canadians, he reasoned, are both stupid and lazy and they tend to forget Liberal lies.

Harper’s current project is to make sure that the Liberals, NDP and BQ all share the inevitable blame for any and all targets which Canada will, almost certainly, miss.  He’s going to let them totally redraft a bill in which his government has little interest and has invested even less political capital.  If (when, more likely) the NDP and BQ propose limits which will bring howls of outrage from the dual engines of economic growth: Ontario manufacturing and Alberta energy production, he will deflect all blame on to them.  He will revel in the internal fights in the Liberal Party between the economic illiterates and the minority.  He, and his ministers, will offer little except on health-related air pollution issues, for which he has some popular support.

By the way: the Euros have finished their clean up and they have built much new, green energy production.  They have, mostly - but not all - met their modest Kyoto targets which is a very good thing because greenhouse gas production throughout almost all (I think) of Europe in on the way up - at a rapid rate.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Chrétien wasn’t worried: he was accustomed to lying to Canadians and saw no reason to change at that late stage of his political career.  Canadians, he reasoned, are both stupid and lazy and they tend to forget Liberal lies.

It was my suspicion that he intended0 to have cake and eat it, too.  A) We look like good guys for signing onto Kyoto.  B) The US and Russia don't ratify, so the treaty falls.  Oh, well.  We tried, right?

The miscalculation was that Russia would not ratify.  As it turned out, their economic collapse was sufficient to turn Kyoto into a potential source of hard western currency (emissions credits).  Oops.

I agree that the opposition parties have been manoeuvred into a situation with little upside.  If they fail to produce legislation more attractive to their base than the CPC legislation, they lose.  If they produce legislation attractive to their base but visibly ruinous to the Canadian economy, they lose.  While there must surely be an effective balance which can be found, I expect the end state to be legislation which satisfies no-one and which all parties will "own" during the next election, thereby levelling the field and providing what amounts to a circular firing squad if any of the leaders tries to set his party apart.

 

[Osotogari]

The whole Kyoto wealth transfer Protocol is a scam.  Besides, even if the EU managed to meet its "targets" without some sort of accounting shell game, I would like to see the average European try to get through one of our winters without burning anything and everything they could get their hands on.