With unprecedented wildfires as a warning, it’s hard not to be worried about future generations.
Political parties operate with polls and focus panels to tell them what voters want.
The Trudeau Liberals have long known that the environment and the fight against climate change are priorities for the vast majority of Canadians.
The Liberal organizers remember, on the other hand, the crushing defeat of Stéphane Dion when he based his campaign on this subject in 2008. They therefore want us to talk about the environment, but… not too much!
A pro-oil prime minister
With Justin Trudeau, for eight years, they have found the best of both worlds.
A Prime Minister who knows the jargon of the environment. Who recruited an ex-environmentalist as minister. But who goes to Texas to get a standing ovation saying that leaving our billions of barrels of oil in the ground is out of the question!
That’s the kind of prime minister the Liberals want: an environmental bluffer, who knows how to get elected, but who won’t do anything afterwards.
The fact that the Sustainable Development Commissioner says Trudeau has never met our international obligations goes 10,000 feet over the head of the average voter. People want, at least, politicians who say it’s important to act.
It’s been like that for eight years. How can you lose when your main opponent, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, insists on campaigning against one of the only concrete measures taken by the Liberals since they came to power: the carbon tax?
Poilievre is dangerous
Pierre Poilievre is no fool, despite his best efforts to convince us otherwise. He is, on the other hand, a dangerous populist demagogue caught in a vice that he himself has tightened!
By organizing a putsch against his former leader Erin O’Toole who had committed the unforgivable by saying the obvious, namely that we must put a price on carbon, Poilievre can now no longer back down.
Like a losing poker player at the end of the game, he will go “all-in” denying the climate emergency.
Poilievre denies that he is a Holocaust denier, but he IS… a Holocaust denier!
He pretends to be Cartesian and pretends to be based on facts.
But in the same way that he provided donuts and coffee to science-denying crackpots during the pandemic, he keeps close to people who espouse conspiracy theories against climate change science.
All is relative
Trudeau never achieves the results promised by Canada, but compared to Poilievre, he is on the side of the angels in this existential file.
The wildfires, with their tragic consequences for thousands of families, were a real and palpable warning.
Talking about megatons of greenhouse gases is abstract for many people. Seeing entire municipalities being evacuated is very real and impactful.
Voters will no longer accept elected officials who deny or pretend to act.