Posted on 09/16/2002 10:32:37 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
There was a great scene last month - great for Canada - at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. There was our prime minister, being wildly cheered by all those Third World delegates, mostly from African nations.
Was Jean Chretien afraid of the Americans? He was not. His country was right under their noses. That didn't matter. He would defy them. He would sign the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions before the year was out - with or without the consent of the province that would almost singly have to bear the effect of what he was doing.
Loud cheers. Chretien beamed. At last he was a hero. These people had one thing in common with him. They also hated Americans.
In fact, the only other speaker at the conference who drew more applause than Jean Chretien was Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, fresh from several thousand murders and the expulsion without compensation of the whites from lands their families had been farming for generations. So it was Chretien and Mugabe, heroes of Johannesburg.
When the party was over, each went back to the business of government, Mugabe to murder and torture a few more hundred people, Chretien to torture and murder the oil and gas industry and the economy of Canada. Here are a few other facts and contentions that have emerged since he got back:
- By the latest industry estimate, the Kyoto treaty - we should think of it as the Chretien Memorial, enshrining himself as "Canada's greatest environmentalist" will result in job losses somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000. It's started already, of course. I know two young guys waiting for jobs on the rigs so they can work this year to earn fees for post-secondary education. They waited all summer because the drilling program has been arrested while the industry discovers the cost of the Chretien Memorial.
This is only a faint beginning. We can expect mass layoffs at Calgary and Edmonton. But what do those places matter anyway? They're not part of "real Canada." Can you imagine this happening if the target were the automobile industry and the layoffs centered on Windsor, Oakville and Oshawa? Not on your life.
- Canada will be the only country in the Western Hemisphere - in fact probably the only country in the entire world - to suffer seriously because of the treaty. The Americans refuse to sign it. Russia, eastern Europe, China, India, and Latin America aren't covered by it. Britain has abandoned high-emission coal in favor of North Sea gas. France relies on nuclear power, Germany can comply easily because the collapse of industrial output in the old East Germany cut its emissions so sharply Germany easily meets the quotas.
- One of the chief victims will be investment in the tar sands, or so industry spokesmen say. Think about that. If Muslim radicals take over the government of Saudi Arabia - not entirely unlikely - this will create an energy crisis in the whole western world.
There's huge oil reserves in the tar sands, but its development depends on constantly improving technology and steady investment. The Chretien Memorial will gravely threaten that investment, and therefore the security of the whole free world. Which, of course, raises the role currently being played by his Edmonton sycophant, Anne McLellan, now minister of health. One senior Syncrude officer actually signed an election ad for her. What is she doing for them now?
She might note that Paul Martin described Chretien's insistence that we sign this treaty without first calculating the cost as a major error. Martin, a Liberal who comes from Montreal, was prepared to speak out. Why isn't McLellan, who comes from Alberta? And where's Alberta's government? Premier Klein says he's going to take Ottawa to court. Bully for him. A survey of Supreme Court decisions over the last 10 years that affected provincial rights showed that the provinces lost all of them.
If Klein really wants to stop it, he should go to the people. But will he? That's the real question.
Unfortunately, it appears that a majority of Canadians approve of him.
Sic semper tyrannis
Yes they do. We should all keep this in mind
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