Evidence of Something
Post
21/01/07, Robert Matas, Defence lawyer considered among the top in British Columbia, (Source).
22/01/07, Editorial, Dion on the Greens, (Source).
22/01/07, Brent Jang, Why WestJet's culture guru chooses to fly under the radar, (Source).
24/01/07, Richard Blackwell, Nuclear has crucial role in power supply: Lunn, (Source).
24/01/07, Neil Reynolds, Let's avoid ethanol's bridge to nowhere, (Source).
25/01/07, Bill Curry, British MP puts Ottawa on climate hot seat, (Source).
25/01/07, Gloria Galloway, Environment, Afghan war to lead Tories' caucus agenda, (Source).
26/01/07, Brian Laghi, Climate concerns now top security and health, (Source).
21/01/07, Robert Matas, Defence lawyer considered among the top in British Columbia, (Back).
Vancouver — Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie is accustomed to taking on controversial clients. He has represented Doukhobors who stripped naked in court to defend their religious freedom. He was lead counsel for Gillian Guess, who was charged with obstruction of justice for having an affair with an accused in a criminal trial while serving on the jury.
But nothing has prepared him for the Pickton case. "I don't know how many other lawyers have had the experience of 300 media people about to jump on them. I do not know any other, and I certainly haven't," he said in a recent interview.
"Basically, I'm there to do the trial before the jury in the court. The media can be a distraction. We try very hard for it not to be."
Mr. Ritchie is the lead lawyer for Robert Pickton's defence team. He is widely regarded as one of the top lawyers in British Columbia. In a recent rating by his peers in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Mr. Ritchie's legal ability was assessed as high-to-very-high. He was rated "very high" on ethical standards.
Mr. Ritchie was admitted to the bar in 1970 and worked briefly as a prosecutor with the City of Vancouver before starting a law firm with others in 1973. Although he has taken on many criminal cases, the mainstay of his practice is personal-injury matters. He has continued his personal-injury practice over the past five years while representing Mr. Pickton.
Occasionally during pretrial hearings in the Pickton case, he left to appear in other courtrooms on civil matters.
"When any lawyer does a long trial, it is very difficult for his practice," Mr. Ritchie said. "Other clients have to be understanding."
Mr. Ritchie, who does not use a computer or watch television, said he has also relied on the expertise of a team of full-time and part-time legal counsel to share the load in the Pickton trial.
In his earlier years, Mr. Ritchie was an avid competitive skier, racing on university teams, law-school teams and individually. His enthusiasm, though, was not enough.
"If I had won, I may not be a lawyer. I may be like Steve Podborski," Mr. Ritchie said wistfully, referring to the Olympic downhill medalist.
Mr. Ritchie is also known for his passion for bluegrass music. He plays guitar and mandolin in a band with friends. That's an avocation, said the dapper, white-haired lawyer, who is quickly recognizable on the street wearing a beret.
Asked if he was a better skier than a musician, Mr. Ritchie said he could "thin the crowds out doing either."
22/01/07, Editorial, Dion on the Greens, (Back).
In a gesture of perhaps foolhardy nobility, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has backed the Green Party's campaign to participate in the leaders' televised debates during the next election. "Well, I don't see why not," he declared when asked whether Elizabeth May should join the four major party leaders on the panel. "She would add her long experience on the issue of sustainability and the environment. I don't agree with her about everything. . . . But I certainly welcome her role in the public debate in Canada."
At first glance, Ms. May's participation would probably help the Liberals. As Donna Dasko, senior vice-president of Environics Research Group, notes, "From the polling data, the Greens appear to cut into NDP support more than others." Most pollsters have quietly noted that whenever the Green Party is specifically mentioned when voters are asked which party they support, Green support doubles. Almost all of the new support comes at the expense of the NDP. So perhaps Mr. Dion's willingness to raise the party's profile is actually self-serving.
Liberal insiders, however, are deeply unsettled by his statement. Who knows, they ask, what could happen if Ms. May adroitly exploits that free public platform during the campaign? Perhaps Liberal support could erode, too. Mr. Dion's gesture may come back to haunt him.
22/01/07, Brent Jang, Why WestJet's culture guru chooses to fly under the radar, (Back).
WestJet Airlines Ltd. co-founder Donald Bell quietly walks through Calgary's airport and enters the cockpit of a Boeing 737 for a reality check on the front lines.
Unbeknownst to WestJet passengers, the unassuming captain happens to be the wealthiest commercial pilot in Canada. Mr. Bell, WestJet's executive vice-president of corporate culture, owns nearly one million WestJet shares worth $14.5-million. "It's only on paper," he said in a phone interview, confirming his WestJet stake. His WestJet shares are in his own name, a family trust and a numbered Alberta company.
Mr. Bell, 51, tries to pilot a round-trip WestJet flight whenever he can, on average once a week. In doing so, he gains first-hand feedback from staff. "It's mostly to stay current and get a chance to be out on the line, watching what's going on."
WestJet chief executive officer and co-founder Clive Beddoe has been the brains behind the carrier's business plans since its launch in 1996. He has developed a high public profile after overseeing Calgary-based WestJet's expansion strategy, including aircraft orders and new routes.
By contrast, Mr. Bell has been low key over the years, and is able to walk in public unrecognized by passengers, even at WestJet's home base of Calgary International Airport. But internally, he is widely considered WestJet's spiritual leader, the "culture guru" who champions teamwork while emphasizing an upbeat mood.
He said WestJet's challenge is to maintain its reputation for peppy staff, even as the carrier plans to hire another 1,500 workers over the next three years, adding to the existing roster of 6,000 employees.
WestJet has a fleet of 63 Boeing planes, and expects to introduce another 20 aircraft by the end of 2009, Mr. Bell said.
In WestJet's lingo, employees are called "people" or "WestJetters," while passengers are known as "guests" -- words that pop up in daily conversations among airline management and staff.
"Clive has the business sense, and I focus on the people and the guest experience. It has been a good mixture of capabilities," said Mr. Bell, who also serves as chairman of the Air Transport Association of Canada.
He said WestJet has survived and prospered, despite four notable setbacks over the past 11 years: Grounding planes for 17 days during a dispute with Transport Canada in 1996, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the SARS outbreak in 2003, and a two-year court fight against Air Canada that ended in 2006.
The two airlines reached an out-of-court settlement last May, as WestJet apologized for spying on Air Canada's password-protected employee website for booking flights. "That was an unfortunate chapter in our history," Mr. Bell said.
He doesn't want to dwell on the past, saying WestJet's recovery from the court fight can be seen in its strong financial showing. WestJet's gross profit-sharing payments issued in November averaged $2,500 an employee. And 85 per cent of workers own WestJet shares.
"The more successful the company is, the more successful our people are," Mr. Bell said.
He said there are skeptics who liken WestJet's nurturing of its culture to throwing "pixie dust" at people to make them think happy thoughts. WestJetters aren't "drinking the Kool-Aid" to join some cult-like following of the carrier's feel-good attitude, but are true converts to management's mantra that friendly service translates into a profitable airline, he said.
Travel industry consultant Debra Ward said WestJet workers are "empowered" to respond to customer complaints, noting that the carrier doesn't carry the historical baggage of Air Canada, where union leaders have repeatedly clashed with management after a series of layoffs and wage cuts. She said Mr. Bell recognizes the importance of nourishing WestJet's non-union culture amid turnover in the executive suite.
There are four WestJet co-founders: Mr. Bell and Mr. Beddoe are the two remaining, in the wake of the departures of Mark Hill in 2004 and Thomas (Tim) Morgan in 2005. Mr. Beddoe, a former real estate developer who holds a private pilot's licence, controls 6.2 million WestJet shares worth almost $90-million.
A former co-owner of a software business, Mr. Bell invested seed capital in WestJet at pennies a share when it was still a private company in 1995. He also received stock in lieu of working long hours at low pay, preparing for WestJet's launch in February, 1996. The carrier's initial public offering in 1999 was priced at $2.96 a share, adjusted for three stock splits since then.
Mr. Bell's WestJet stake was once as much as 1.2 million shares, but he gradually sold down his holdings in recent years, including 123,000 shares in 2006, according to filings with securities regulators.
WestJet shares closed at $14.50 on Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange, soaring from a split-adjusted valuation of 63 cents in 1996.
24/01/07, Richard Blackwell, Nuclear has crucial role in power supply: Lunn, (Back).
Resources minister points to Ontario, which gets half its energy from that source.
TORONTO -- Nuclear energy will have an important place in Canada's future power mix, especially if new technology can help reduce the amount of radioactive waste the industry generates, federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said yesterday.
In a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto, Mr. Lunn said that "purely from an environmental perspective, we must look at nuclear energy as a key source of energy in Canada. We know it's clean, it produces zero emissions, [and] it produces no greenhouse gases."
He noted that Ontario has been using nuclear energy for more than 40 years, and the province now generates more than half its power from that source.
"As a nation of energy consumers we must be prepared to have an open discussion about nuclear power," he said, adding that a "fourth generation" of reactors will extract more energy out of nuclear fuel to minimize the storage of radioactive waste.
Mr. Lunn emphasized the provinces will have to make the individual decisions on whether to expand or adopt nuclear technology, "but we will be there to support them."
After his speech, Mr. Lunn was challenged by Greenpeace Canada's energy co-ordinator Dave Martin, who asked the minister how he can define nuclear as a "zero emission" energy source, and where he proposed to dispose the waste it generates.
Mr. Lunn said he was impressed with how carefully the industry currently stores its waste, and said there will be federal help to conduct research into new storage technologies, although he offered no details. "There will be specifics of the exact storage. . . but you're going to have to wait."
Later, Mr. Martin deemed Mr. Lunn's comments "pie in the sky," because the nuclear industry is only now developing a third generation of nuclear reactors, and the fourth generation is years down the road.
"To suggest that [a fourth generation of reactors] are any kind of solution to any of our energy problems, even in the medium term, is wishful thinking at best," Mr. Martin said.
He described the Conservative's approach to nuclear power as a "major change in federal climate-change policy." The previous Liberal government excluded nuclear power from its approach to dealing with climate change, but the environmental initiatives announced by the government in the past week clearly embrace nuclear as an option, he said.
Mr. Lunn told reporters after his speech that he also supports the idea of using a nuclear reactor to replace the natural gas that is currently required to generate power and steam used in the extraction of petroleum from the Alberta oil sands.
24/01/07, Neil Reynolds, Let's avoid ethanol's bridge to nowhere, (Back).
OTTAWA — Newt Gingrich has devised an innovative approach to dealing with American dependence on imported oil. The government, he says, need not prescribe the solution. Rather, the government should establish a $1-billion (U.S.) prize "for the first affordable car to get 500 miles per gallon of gasoline."
At the same time, he says, a second prize -- $2-billion -- should be created "for the first affordable car to get 1,000 miles per gallon." These are astute proposals. Lucrative prizes engage the human imagination with extraordinary force. They speed discovery and invention. They invite participation from people around the world, removing institutional and bureaucratic barriers to competition. They work.
It was the $25,000 Orteig Prize that induced Charles Lindbergh, the American barnstormer, to make the first transatlantic flight, New York to Paris, in 1927. (Why Paris? The patron, French-born Raymond Orteig, had moved to New York at age 12 in 1888, got a job as a bus boy, worked hard, got rich -- and bought, among other things, the Lafayette Hotel in Greenwich Village.) It was Lindbergh's flight that inspired the $10-million Ansari X Prize for the first private spacecraft to make repeated suborbital flights. (Microsoft's Paul Allen, who didn't need the money, financed SpaceShipOne, the craft that won the prize in 2004.) In the beginning, of course, it was Jules Verne's fictional English gentleman, Phileas Fogg, who first circled the world in 80 days to win £20,000 .
It was Newt Gingrich who wrote the Republican Party's Contract with America in 1994 and who used this manifesto to end 40 years of Democratic control of Congress. For this, Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1995. He went into self-imposed exile in 1999 amid an ethics controversy, but he's back now, preparing for a presidential candidacy. He would make a formidable challenger because of his enthusiasm for ideas and his Reaganesque optimism.
Here's his energy platform: Create lavish financial prizes for cars "that will return the Middle Eastern oil supply to being a petrochemical feedstock." These cars, he says, will probably run more on ethanol than gas. They will probably have electric motors -- to plug into chargers overnight, capturing the 40 per cent of electricity production lost from the grid at night. And they will probably incorporate the technology of the next-generation Boeing 787 airliners. To win the billion-dollar prize, the car would cost less than $30,000 to manufacture and would equal gasoline-powered cars in performance.
There's nothing wrong with Mr. Gingrich's premise that the technology now exists for more efficient cars. Competitions of this kind abound -- from NASA to the Discovery Channel. Yet his assumptions show why it's better that Washington sponsor contests than design automobiles. He may be right on electric motors. He may be right on Boeing's titanium-enhanced 787 Dreamliners -- which eliminate millions of rivets and screws, lighten the aircraft by 40 tons and reduce fuel consumption by 20 per cent.
But, along with almost every other politician in North America, Newt Gingrich is wrong on ethanol. Why? Fill the tanks of U.S. cars and trucks with ethanol and you'll increase -- not decrease -- the consumption of Middle Eastern oil.
Writing in the January issue of Scientific American, New York Times science writer Matthew Wald calls ethanol "a bridge to nowhere." You can't produce ethanol in North America, he says, "without increasing natural gas imports from outside North America." (It takes 36,000 BTUs of natural gas to produce a gallon of ethanol.) U.S. and Canadian natural gas production combined, he says, can't meet the current demand for subsidized ethanol. For every million BTUs of ethanol, he says, you need 740,000 BTUs of oil, natural gas or coal.
"Ethanol," he says, "is largely a product of fossil fuels." And greenhouse gases? Ethanol delivers as many pollutants as fossil fuels.
This assessment of ethanol goes beyond the simple calculation of BTUs. People know that a gallon of ethanol moves cars only two-thirds as far as a gallon of gasoline. The U.S. has set off a boom in ethanol production, Mr. Wald says, equivalent to the Pennsylvania oil rush of the 1850s. Canada is now setting off its own boom. It will be ironic indeed if, in our rush to ethanol, we increase North America's reliance on oil reserves of foreign dictators.
You rarely solve epochal challenges with conventional wisdom -- a fact that recalls the words of Henry Ford, a radical innovator, who once said that if he had given people what they wanted, he would have given them faster horses.
25/01/07, Bill Curry, British MP puts Ottawa on climate hot seat, (Back).
Blair's envoy urges Canada to help craft post-Kyoto plan in time for G8 meeting.
OTTAWA — Canada and the other major sources of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions must lead the way toward a new, post-Kyoto climate-change deal or risk economic and environmental disaster, says British Prime Minister Tony Blair's special envoy on global warming.
Elliot Morley met with Environment Minister John Baird in Ottawa Wednesday to encourage Canada to do more at home and internationally. Specifically, the Labour MP and former British environment minister is pushing for Canada and 11 other countries that join Britain in a group known as “G8 plus five” to craft a climate-change plan for this year's G8 meeting in Germany. The plan would then be finalized at the next meeting in Japan for 2008.
It would include the G8 countries as well as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, which combined account for 75 per cent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.
Representatives from all 13 countries will meet next month in Washington to discuss the plan with senior U.S. senators and congressmen.
Progress at the United Nations is moving too slowly, and without leadership from countries such as Canada and the United States, Mr. Morley said, the Kyoto-based climate-change battle will fall apart.
“There is a real danger of failure,” he said. “It will be a complete disaster for the global economy and the global environment if that was the case, and that's why there has to be a step change in progress from the major powers.”
Several of the countries, such as the U.S., China, India and Brazil, are not part of the international Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The eventual plan, which calls for each country to commit to legislating domestic limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, could become the basis of a second phase of the Kyoto plan. Mr. Morley said the plan would bring all major emitters into the international fold without “looking backward” at records on climate change.
The senior British parliamentarian has been travelling constantly to each of the 12 countries and delivered a blunt assessment of how Canada's new government is doing on the issue.
“I think when the Canadian government was elected, the present one, their intention was to kick the whole climate-change issue into the long grass, basically,” Mr. Morley said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail. “And I think they underestimated Canadian public opinion, the strength of the opposition parties, who kind of united around this particular issue, and I think they've now come to the conclusion that they've really got to do something.”
In changing environment ministers earlier this month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canadians expect his government to do “a lot more” on climate change, but he continues to draw fire from the opposition for saying Canada's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol are out of reach.
Canada has committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels when emissions from the years 2008 to 2012 are averaged out.
Mr. Harper's position on Kyoto is shaping up as a major battleground in the coming weeks, as opposition MPs seek to turn the government's Clean Air Act into a law forcing industry to comply with Kyoto beginning next year.
Business leaders warn the opposition's approach would wreak economic havoc and force them to spend billions on overseas Kyoto credits.
Conservative MP Bob Mills and Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert have been representing Canada at the G8-plus-five legislative talks, which are expected to gather momentum at a major meeting next month in Washington.
The work of the politicians from the 13 countries flows into separate meetings among the country's cabinet ministers, and ultimately the meetings of G8 leaders.
Before entering Wednesday's meeting with Mr. Baird and Mr. Morley, Mr. Mills predicted that Canada will be playing a bigger role in the talks.
“You must involve China, India, Brazil, Mexico,” Mr. Mills said. “You must involve those countries. They are part of G8-plus-five dialogue, and the British of course are putting the big push on that and I see us playing a much bigger role in that.
“I'm opposed to Kyoto because I don't see it doing much. It's not a matter of opposing action on climate change. I just think we need to do a lot more than Kyoto ever would have accomplished.”
The G8-plus-five dialogue was launched by Mr. Blair in July, 2005, when the G8 met at the Gleaneagles Hotel in Scotland. It will be taken up this year by Germany, which is expected to make climate change a priority.
Mr. Wilfert, who has attended meetings in London and China at the expense of the British-led group, said Canada should start by paying the cost of participation, such as travel expenses, for MPs.
“The first thing they could do is ante up with a cheque,” he said. “It's pretty embarrassing.”
The G8-plus-five legislators are scheduled to present “initial policy papers” when they meet Feb. 14 in Washington.
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz will speak at the event, as will Republican senator and presidential hopeful John McCain.
25/01/07, Gloria Galloway, Environment, Afghan war to lead Tories' caucus agenda, (Back).
Issues pose both 'threat and opportunity' as party meets to talk policy, pollster says.
OTTAWA -- Afghanistan and the environment are the priorities today as Conservative members of Parliament gather in Ottawa to chart their government's course for the coming session.
Although the three-day caucus meeting opened last evening with regional conclaves, an agenda obtained by The Globe and Mail suggests the real work begins this morning when the Conservatives will split into two groups: one to discuss guaranteed limits on health-care waiting times and the other to debate the Wheat Board -- a potentially explosive issue for western politicians.
At midmorning, new talks will begin on telecommunications and the gun registry, which the party has been unable to abolish in its entirety. The early afternoon meetings will focus on aboriginal issues and rural mail delivery.
Then the Conservatives gather in one room to deliberate where to take their government on climate change and the war in Afghanistan that cost the lives of 37 Canadians last year.
Conservative MPs say the mood in their caucus meetings is overwhelmingly collegial and it is rare for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to hear vigorous dissension. But there could be divisions, particularly on the environment, which pits the government directly against the Liberals and their new leader, Stéphane Dion.
The party will also have to handle the Afghanistan file with delicacy, trying not to lose much-needed support in Quebec where participation in the war is less popular than it is in other parts of Canada.
Afghanistan and the environment "are two areas of both threat and opportunity" for the Conservatives, said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel, a research firm that does polling for The Globe and Mail.
The Conservatives were not prepared for the sudden interest that Canadians have taken in the environment, Mr. Gregg said. And although Mr. Harper will not commit Canada to achieving the greenhouse-gas emissions called for in the Kyoto agreement on climate change, the party must be seen to be taking some action, he said.
On Afghanistan, Mr. Gregg said, the Conservatives will also lose support if they don't have a firm direction.
But Canadians are divided over the conflict and "I don't think that Afghanistan is as huge a loser for Harper as a lot of the conventional wisdom has suggested."
The Conservatives declined to comment on the agenda for today's meeting.
But Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said it is not surprising that government MPs will be discussing Afghanistan.
"There are a whole lot of questions here about what appears to be the total lack of balance between the military component of the mission versus the development aid component of the mission versus the diplomacy component of the mission," Mr. Goodale said.
As for the environment, he said: "I think they will need to discuss among themselves and then explain to Canadians why they have suddenly had this remarkable epiphany. It was only in December when Mr. Harper was referring disparagingly to 'so-called climate change.' "
Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the NDP caucus chair, said the agenda for the Conservative meeting seemed like "damage control."
"They are clearly having to rethink a number of issues where their original strategies are just not working and I would consider Afghanistan to be clearly front and centre on that score. What they said could be achieved is not being achieved," Ms. Wasylycia-Leis said.
And "on the environment," she added, "I wish I was a fly on the wall in that caucus room. Here this group has gone from being representatives of the Flat Earth Society to suddenly understanding climate change.
"So I think they have a lot of explaining to do to each other."
26/01/07, Brian Laghi, Climate concerns now top security and health, (Back).
OTTAWA — Anxiety about environmental change has climbed so quickly within Canadians' consciousness that it now overwhelms terrorism, crime and health care as society's greatest threat, says a poll that kicks off a major Globe and Mail examination of the issue.
The Globe and Mail/CTV News survey delivers a number of messages for politicians, including a warning that the government not abandon Kyoto and a desire that Canada make a significant contribution to resolving global warming.
But the overarching finding is the speed with which Canadians have accepted that global warming is a large problem. The issue will also have a profound effect on the next election, as voters decide which party has the best plan to fix the problem.
“It's developed a top-of-mind salience the likes of which we've never seen before,” said Allan Gregg, chair of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the survey. “In 30 years of tracking, we've never had over 20 per cent saying they think this is the most important issue.”
According to the poll, 26 per cent of Canadians say the environment is the most critical issue facing the country, up from 12 per cent in July, and up from 4 per cent one year ago. By contrast, health care was chosen by 18 per cent of voters, terrorism by 6 per cent and crime by 3 per cent. Other issues of great importance in the past also place well below the environment. Government corruption, for example, was chosen by 1 per cent of respondents, down from 8 per cent.
“Canadians are convinced that it's real because they touch it,” Mr. Gregg said. “Secondly, people know that the life of conspicuous consumption is out of control. They've been hearing it long enough.”
The results foreshadow an election in which global warming will be a deeply contested issue that could end up realigning the left-of-centre vote.
The poll finds, for example, that 20 per cent of Canadians are very likely or somewhat likely to vote for their local Green Party candidate when the next election rolls around, compared with 4.5 per cent who voted Green last time. Another 27 per cent believe the Greens have the best plan for the environment, compared with 16 per cent for the Liberals, 12 per cent for the Conservatives and 9 per cent for the NDP.
Ironically, potential support for the Greens could end up benefiting the Tories, depending upon who the Greens steal support from.
Currently, 30 per cent of New Democrats and Liberals surveyed say the Greens have the best plan for the environment, said Mr. Gregg, while 36 per cent of Bloc voters pick the Greens. The Tories appear to have the least to lose to the Greens, with only 20 per cent saying they have the best program.
“It has the potential to split the vote of everyone but the Conservatives,” Mr. Gregg said. “In a perverse way, lots of activity on this issue may not hurt the Tories, even though they're the least competitive on it.”
The rising importance of the Greens may also mean that denying Green Party Leader Elizabeth May a spot in the national election debate will be extremely difficult.
The poll may also be somewhat troublesome for Mr. Harper's decision to separate his government from the Kyoto Protocol.
On that issue, 63 per cent of respondents say the country should continue to try to achieve targets under the accord, to which Canada is a signatory. Another 30 per cent say the government should stick with the Tory promise to pursue a “made-in-Canada” plan that the Tories promoted in last year's election.
“I think that what this is picking up is that it's wrong for us to turn our backs on targets,” Mr. Gregg said.
Given the figures, opposition parties would do well to support Kyoto on the election trail while “pillorying these guys for being quitters.”
Mr. Gregg said it may be difficult for Mr. Harper to re-embrace Kyoto lest it appear an insincere effort to win votes.
But the Prime Minister might have some success by fixing on other methods to reduce greenhouse gases in an effort to convince Canadians that he cares about the issue. It is a tactic he has already begun to employ.
It's still unclear, however, whether Mr. Harper's appointment of John Baird as Environment Minister is part of a plan to fix the issue, or whether the Prime Minister has appointed the intensely partisan Mr. Baird to undermine the credibility of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, a former environment minister.
Canadians are also surprisingly bullish on the size of the contribution their country can make toward reducing global warming, Mr. Gregg said. The poll found that 44 per cent believe the country could play a significant role, while 46 per cent said it would be a minor one.
“One of the hallmarks of Canada, historically, was the belief that not only does the world not affect us very much, we didn't affect the world,” he said.
He said the numbers suggest that, even if larger nations such as the United States and China aren't part of Kyoto, Canada must take an international role.
The poll surveyed the opinions of 1,000 Canadians between Jan. 11-14 and is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
(Back)
22/01/07, Editorial, Dion on the Greens, (Source).
22/01/07, Brent Jang, Why WestJet's culture guru chooses to fly under the radar, (Source).
24/01/07, Richard Blackwell, Nuclear has crucial role in power supply: Lunn, (Source).
24/01/07, Neil Reynolds, Let's avoid ethanol's bridge to nowhere, (Source).
25/01/07, Bill Curry, British MP puts Ottawa on climate hot seat, (Source).
25/01/07, Gloria Galloway, Environment, Afghan war to lead Tories' caucus agenda, (Source).
26/01/07, Brian Laghi, Climate concerns now top security and health, (Source).
21/01/07, Robert Matas, Defence lawyer considered among the top in British Columbia, (Back).
Vancouver — Defence lawyer Peter Ritchie is accustomed to taking on controversial clients. He has represented Doukhobors who stripped naked in court to defend their religious freedom. He was lead counsel for Gillian Guess, who was charged with obstruction of justice for having an affair with an accused in a criminal trial while serving on the jury.
But nothing has prepared him for the Pickton case. "I don't know how many other lawyers have had the experience of 300 media people about to jump on them. I do not know any other, and I certainly haven't," he said in a recent interview.
"Basically, I'm there to do the trial before the jury in the court. The media can be a distraction. We try very hard for it not to be."
Mr. Ritchie is the lead lawyer for Robert Pickton's defence team. He is widely regarded as one of the top lawyers in British Columbia. In a recent rating by his peers in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Mr. Ritchie's legal ability was assessed as high-to-very-high. He was rated "very high" on ethical standards.
Mr. Ritchie was admitted to the bar in 1970 and worked briefly as a prosecutor with the City of Vancouver before starting a law firm with others in 1973. Although he has taken on many criminal cases, the mainstay of his practice is personal-injury matters. He has continued his personal-injury practice over the past five years while representing Mr. Pickton.
Occasionally during pretrial hearings in the Pickton case, he left to appear in other courtrooms on civil matters.
"When any lawyer does a long trial, it is very difficult for his practice," Mr. Ritchie said. "Other clients have to be understanding."
Mr. Ritchie, who does not use a computer or watch television, said he has also relied on the expertise of a team of full-time and part-time legal counsel to share the load in the Pickton trial.
In his earlier years, Mr. Ritchie was an avid competitive skier, racing on university teams, law-school teams and individually. His enthusiasm, though, was not enough.
"If I had won, I may not be a lawyer. I may be like Steve Podborski," Mr. Ritchie said wistfully, referring to the Olympic downhill medalist.
Mr. Ritchie is also known for his passion for bluegrass music. He plays guitar and mandolin in a band with friends. That's an avocation, said the dapper, white-haired lawyer, who is quickly recognizable on the street wearing a beret.
Asked if he was a better skier than a musician, Mr. Ritchie said he could "thin the crowds out doing either."
22/01/07, Editorial, Dion on the Greens, (Back).
In a gesture of perhaps foolhardy nobility, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has backed the Green Party's campaign to participate in the leaders' televised debates during the next election. "Well, I don't see why not," he declared when asked whether Elizabeth May should join the four major party leaders on the panel. "She would add her long experience on the issue of sustainability and the environment. I don't agree with her about everything. . . . But I certainly welcome her role in the public debate in Canada."
At first glance, Ms. May's participation would probably help the Liberals. As Donna Dasko, senior vice-president of Environics Research Group, notes, "From the polling data, the Greens appear to cut into NDP support more than others." Most pollsters have quietly noted that whenever the Green Party is specifically mentioned when voters are asked which party they support, Green support doubles. Almost all of the new support comes at the expense of the NDP. So perhaps Mr. Dion's willingness to raise the party's profile is actually self-serving.
Liberal insiders, however, are deeply unsettled by his statement. Who knows, they ask, what could happen if Ms. May adroitly exploits that free public platform during the campaign? Perhaps Liberal support could erode, too. Mr. Dion's gesture may come back to haunt him.
22/01/07, Brent Jang, Why WestJet's culture guru chooses to fly under the radar, (Back).
WestJet Airlines Ltd. co-founder Donald Bell quietly walks through Calgary's airport and enters the cockpit of a Boeing 737 for a reality check on the front lines.
Unbeknownst to WestJet passengers, the unassuming captain happens to be the wealthiest commercial pilot in Canada. Mr. Bell, WestJet's executive vice-president of corporate culture, owns nearly one million WestJet shares worth $14.5-million. "It's only on paper," he said in a phone interview, confirming his WestJet stake. His WestJet shares are in his own name, a family trust and a numbered Alberta company.
Mr. Bell, 51, tries to pilot a round-trip WestJet flight whenever he can, on average once a week. In doing so, he gains first-hand feedback from staff. "It's mostly to stay current and get a chance to be out on the line, watching what's going on."
WestJet chief executive officer and co-founder Clive Beddoe has been the brains behind the carrier's business plans since its launch in 1996. He has developed a high public profile after overseeing Calgary-based WestJet's expansion strategy, including aircraft orders and new routes.
By contrast, Mr. Bell has been low key over the years, and is able to walk in public unrecognized by passengers, even at WestJet's home base of Calgary International Airport. But internally, he is widely considered WestJet's spiritual leader, the "culture guru" who champions teamwork while emphasizing an upbeat mood.
He said WestJet's challenge is to maintain its reputation for peppy staff, even as the carrier plans to hire another 1,500 workers over the next three years, adding to the existing roster of 6,000 employees.
WestJet has a fleet of 63 Boeing planes, and expects to introduce another 20 aircraft by the end of 2009, Mr. Bell said.
In WestJet's lingo, employees are called "people" or "WestJetters," while passengers are known as "guests" -- words that pop up in daily conversations among airline management and staff.
"Clive has the business sense, and I focus on the people and the guest experience. It has been a good mixture of capabilities," said Mr. Bell, who also serves as chairman of the Air Transport Association of Canada.
He said WestJet has survived and prospered, despite four notable setbacks over the past 11 years: Grounding planes for 17 days during a dispute with Transport Canada in 1996, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the SARS outbreak in 2003, and a two-year court fight against Air Canada that ended in 2006.
The two airlines reached an out-of-court settlement last May, as WestJet apologized for spying on Air Canada's password-protected employee website for booking flights. "That was an unfortunate chapter in our history," Mr. Bell said.
He doesn't want to dwell on the past, saying WestJet's recovery from the court fight can be seen in its strong financial showing. WestJet's gross profit-sharing payments issued in November averaged $2,500 an employee. And 85 per cent of workers own WestJet shares.
"The more successful the company is, the more successful our people are," Mr. Bell said.
He said there are skeptics who liken WestJet's nurturing of its culture to throwing "pixie dust" at people to make them think happy thoughts. WestJetters aren't "drinking the Kool-Aid" to join some cult-like following of the carrier's feel-good attitude, but are true converts to management's mantra that friendly service translates into a profitable airline, he said.
Travel industry consultant Debra Ward said WestJet workers are "empowered" to respond to customer complaints, noting that the carrier doesn't carry the historical baggage of Air Canada, where union leaders have repeatedly clashed with management after a series of layoffs and wage cuts. She said Mr. Bell recognizes the importance of nourishing WestJet's non-union culture amid turnover in the executive suite.
There are four WestJet co-founders: Mr. Bell and Mr. Beddoe are the two remaining, in the wake of the departures of Mark Hill in 2004 and Thomas (Tim) Morgan in 2005. Mr. Beddoe, a former real estate developer who holds a private pilot's licence, controls 6.2 million WestJet shares worth almost $90-million.
A former co-owner of a software business, Mr. Bell invested seed capital in WestJet at pennies a share when it was still a private company in 1995. He also received stock in lieu of working long hours at low pay, preparing for WestJet's launch in February, 1996. The carrier's initial public offering in 1999 was priced at $2.96 a share, adjusted for three stock splits since then.
Mr. Bell's WestJet stake was once as much as 1.2 million shares, but he gradually sold down his holdings in recent years, including 123,000 shares in 2006, according to filings with securities regulators.
WestJet shares closed at $14.50 on Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange, soaring from a split-adjusted valuation of 63 cents in 1996.
24/01/07, Richard Blackwell, Nuclear has crucial role in power supply: Lunn, (Back).
Resources minister points to Ontario, which gets half its energy from that source.
TORONTO -- Nuclear energy will have an important place in Canada's future power mix, especially if new technology can help reduce the amount of radioactive waste the industry generates, federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said yesterday.
In a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto, Mr. Lunn said that "purely from an environmental perspective, we must look at nuclear energy as a key source of energy in Canada. We know it's clean, it produces zero emissions, [and] it produces no greenhouse gases."
He noted that Ontario has been using nuclear energy for more than 40 years, and the province now generates more than half its power from that source.
"As a nation of energy consumers we must be prepared to have an open discussion about nuclear power," he said, adding that a "fourth generation" of reactors will extract more energy out of nuclear fuel to minimize the storage of radioactive waste.
Mr. Lunn emphasized the provinces will have to make the individual decisions on whether to expand or adopt nuclear technology, "but we will be there to support them."
After his speech, Mr. Lunn was challenged by Greenpeace Canada's energy co-ordinator Dave Martin, who asked the minister how he can define nuclear as a "zero emission" energy source, and where he proposed to dispose the waste it generates.
Mr. Lunn said he was impressed with how carefully the industry currently stores its waste, and said there will be federal help to conduct research into new storage technologies, although he offered no details. "There will be specifics of the exact storage. . . but you're going to have to wait."
Later, Mr. Martin deemed Mr. Lunn's comments "pie in the sky," because the nuclear industry is only now developing a third generation of nuclear reactors, and the fourth generation is years down the road.
"To suggest that [a fourth generation of reactors] are any kind of solution to any of our energy problems, even in the medium term, is wishful thinking at best," Mr. Martin said.
He described the Conservative's approach to nuclear power as a "major change in federal climate-change policy." The previous Liberal government excluded nuclear power from its approach to dealing with climate change, but the environmental initiatives announced by the government in the past week clearly embrace nuclear as an option, he said.
Mr. Lunn told reporters after his speech that he also supports the idea of using a nuclear reactor to replace the natural gas that is currently required to generate power and steam used in the extraction of petroleum from the Alberta oil sands.
24/01/07, Neil Reynolds, Let's avoid ethanol's bridge to nowhere, (Back).
OTTAWA — Newt Gingrich has devised an innovative approach to dealing with American dependence on imported oil. The government, he says, need not prescribe the solution. Rather, the government should establish a $1-billion (U.S.) prize "for the first affordable car to get 500 miles per gallon of gasoline."
At the same time, he says, a second prize -- $2-billion -- should be created "for the first affordable car to get 1,000 miles per gallon." These are astute proposals. Lucrative prizes engage the human imagination with extraordinary force. They speed discovery and invention. They invite participation from people around the world, removing institutional and bureaucratic barriers to competition. They work.
It was the $25,000 Orteig Prize that induced Charles Lindbergh, the American barnstormer, to make the first transatlantic flight, New York to Paris, in 1927. (Why Paris? The patron, French-born Raymond Orteig, had moved to New York at age 12 in 1888, got a job as a bus boy, worked hard, got rich -- and bought, among other things, the Lafayette Hotel in Greenwich Village.) It was Lindbergh's flight that inspired the $10-million Ansari X Prize for the first private spacecraft to make repeated suborbital flights. (Microsoft's Paul Allen, who didn't need the money, financed SpaceShipOne, the craft that won the prize in 2004.) In the beginning, of course, it was Jules Verne's fictional English gentleman, Phileas Fogg, who first circled the world in 80 days to win £20,000 .
It was Newt Gingrich who wrote the Republican Party's Contract with America in 1994 and who used this manifesto to end 40 years of Democratic control of Congress. For this, Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1995. He went into self-imposed exile in 1999 amid an ethics controversy, but he's back now, preparing for a presidential candidacy. He would make a formidable challenger because of his enthusiasm for ideas and his Reaganesque optimism.
Here's his energy platform: Create lavish financial prizes for cars "that will return the Middle Eastern oil supply to being a petrochemical feedstock." These cars, he says, will probably run more on ethanol than gas. They will probably have electric motors -- to plug into chargers overnight, capturing the 40 per cent of electricity production lost from the grid at night. And they will probably incorporate the technology of the next-generation Boeing 787 airliners. To win the billion-dollar prize, the car would cost less than $30,000 to manufacture and would equal gasoline-powered cars in performance.
There's nothing wrong with Mr. Gingrich's premise that the technology now exists for more efficient cars. Competitions of this kind abound -- from NASA to the Discovery Channel. Yet his assumptions show why it's better that Washington sponsor contests than design automobiles. He may be right on electric motors. He may be right on Boeing's titanium-enhanced 787 Dreamliners -- which eliminate millions of rivets and screws, lighten the aircraft by 40 tons and reduce fuel consumption by 20 per cent.
But, along with almost every other politician in North America, Newt Gingrich is wrong on ethanol. Why? Fill the tanks of U.S. cars and trucks with ethanol and you'll increase -- not decrease -- the consumption of Middle Eastern oil.
Writing in the January issue of Scientific American, New York Times science writer Matthew Wald calls ethanol "a bridge to nowhere." You can't produce ethanol in North America, he says, "without increasing natural gas imports from outside North America." (It takes 36,000 BTUs of natural gas to produce a gallon of ethanol.) U.S. and Canadian natural gas production combined, he says, can't meet the current demand for subsidized ethanol. For every million BTUs of ethanol, he says, you need 740,000 BTUs of oil, natural gas or coal.
"Ethanol," he says, "is largely a product of fossil fuels." And greenhouse gases? Ethanol delivers as many pollutants as fossil fuels.
This assessment of ethanol goes beyond the simple calculation of BTUs. People know that a gallon of ethanol moves cars only two-thirds as far as a gallon of gasoline. The U.S. has set off a boom in ethanol production, Mr. Wald says, equivalent to the Pennsylvania oil rush of the 1850s. Canada is now setting off its own boom. It will be ironic indeed if, in our rush to ethanol, we increase North America's reliance on oil reserves of foreign dictators.
You rarely solve epochal challenges with conventional wisdom -- a fact that recalls the words of Henry Ford, a radical innovator, who once said that if he had given people what they wanted, he would have given them faster horses.
25/01/07, Bill Curry, British MP puts Ottawa on climate hot seat, (Back).
Blair's envoy urges Canada to help craft post-Kyoto plan in time for G8 meeting.
OTTAWA — Canada and the other major sources of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions must lead the way toward a new, post-Kyoto climate-change deal or risk economic and environmental disaster, says British Prime Minister Tony Blair's special envoy on global warming.
Elliot Morley met with Environment Minister John Baird in Ottawa Wednesday to encourage Canada to do more at home and internationally. Specifically, the Labour MP and former British environment minister is pushing for Canada and 11 other countries that join Britain in a group known as “G8 plus five” to craft a climate-change plan for this year's G8 meeting in Germany. The plan would then be finalized at the next meeting in Japan for 2008.
It would include the G8 countries as well as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, which combined account for 75 per cent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.
Representatives from all 13 countries will meet next month in Washington to discuss the plan with senior U.S. senators and congressmen.
Progress at the United Nations is moving too slowly, and without leadership from countries such as Canada and the United States, Mr. Morley said, the Kyoto-based climate-change battle will fall apart.
“There is a real danger of failure,” he said. “It will be a complete disaster for the global economy and the global environment if that was the case, and that's why there has to be a step change in progress from the major powers.”
Several of the countries, such as the U.S., China, India and Brazil, are not part of the international Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The eventual plan, which calls for each country to commit to legislating domestic limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, could become the basis of a second phase of the Kyoto plan. Mr. Morley said the plan would bring all major emitters into the international fold without “looking backward” at records on climate change.
The senior British parliamentarian has been travelling constantly to each of the 12 countries and delivered a blunt assessment of how Canada's new government is doing on the issue.
“I think when the Canadian government was elected, the present one, their intention was to kick the whole climate-change issue into the long grass, basically,” Mr. Morley said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail. “And I think they underestimated Canadian public opinion, the strength of the opposition parties, who kind of united around this particular issue, and I think they've now come to the conclusion that they've really got to do something.”
In changing environment ministers earlier this month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canadians expect his government to do “a lot more” on climate change, but he continues to draw fire from the opposition for saying Canada's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol are out of reach.
Canada has committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels when emissions from the years 2008 to 2012 are averaged out.
Mr. Harper's position on Kyoto is shaping up as a major battleground in the coming weeks, as opposition MPs seek to turn the government's Clean Air Act into a law forcing industry to comply with Kyoto beginning next year.
Business leaders warn the opposition's approach would wreak economic havoc and force them to spend billions on overseas Kyoto credits.
Conservative MP Bob Mills and Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert have been representing Canada at the G8-plus-five legislative talks, which are expected to gather momentum at a major meeting next month in Washington.
The work of the politicians from the 13 countries flows into separate meetings among the country's cabinet ministers, and ultimately the meetings of G8 leaders.
Before entering Wednesday's meeting with Mr. Baird and Mr. Morley, Mr. Mills predicted that Canada will be playing a bigger role in the talks.
“You must involve China, India, Brazil, Mexico,” Mr. Mills said. “You must involve those countries. They are part of G8-plus-five dialogue, and the British of course are putting the big push on that and I see us playing a much bigger role in that.
“I'm opposed to Kyoto because I don't see it doing much. It's not a matter of opposing action on climate change. I just think we need to do a lot more than Kyoto ever would have accomplished.”
The G8-plus-five dialogue was launched by Mr. Blair in July, 2005, when the G8 met at the Gleaneagles Hotel in Scotland. It will be taken up this year by Germany, which is expected to make climate change a priority.
Mr. Wilfert, who has attended meetings in London and China at the expense of the British-led group, said Canada should start by paying the cost of participation, such as travel expenses, for MPs.
“The first thing they could do is ante up with a cheque,” he said. “It's pretty embarrassing.”
The G8-plus-five legislators are scheduled to present “initial policy papers” when they meet Feb. 14 in Washington.
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz will speak at the event, as will Republican senator and presidential hopeful John McCain.
25/01/07, Gloria Galloway, Environment, Afghan war to lead Tories' caucus agenda, (Back).
Issues pose both 'threat and opportunity' as party meets to talk policy, pollster says.
OTTAWA -- Afghanistan and the environment are the priorities today as Conservative members of Parliament gather in Ottawa to chart their government's course for the coming session.
Although the three-day caucus meeting opened last evening with regional conclaves, an agenda obtained by The Globe and Mail suggests the real work begins this morning when the Conservatives will split into two groups: one to discuss guaranteed limits on health-care waiting times and the other to debate the Wheat Board -- a potentially explosive issue for western politicians.
At midmorning, new talks will begin on telecommunications and the gun registry, which the party has been unable to abolish in its entirety. The early afternoon meetings will focus on aboriginal issues and rural mail delivery.
Then the Conservatives gather in one room to deliberate where to take their government on climate change and the war in Afghanistan that cost the lives of 37 Canadians last year.
Conservative MPs say the mood in their caucus meetings is overwhelmingly collegial and it is rare for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to hear vigorous dissension. But there could be divisions, particularly on the environment, which pits the government directly against the Liberals and their new leader, Stéphane Dion.
The party will also have to handle the Afghanistan file with delicacy, trying not to lose much-needed support in Quebec where participation in the war is less popular than it is in other parts of Canada.
Afghanistan and the environment "are two areas of both threat and opportunity" for the Conservatives, said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel, a research firm that does polling for The Globe and Mail.
The Conservatives were not prepared for the sudden interest that Canadians have taken in the environment, Mr. Gregg said. And although Mr. Harper will not commit Canada to achieving the greenhouse-gas emissions called for in the Kyoto agreement on climate change, the party must be seen to be taking some action, he said.
On Afghanistan, Mr. Gregg said, the Conservatives will also lose support if they don't have a firm direction.
But Canadians are divided over the conflict and "I don't think that Afghanistan is as huge a loser for Harper as a lot of the conventional wisdom has suggested."
The Conservatives declined to comment on the agenda for today's meeting.
But Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said it is not surprising that government MPs will be discussing Afghanistan.
"There are a whole lot of questions here about what appears to be the total lack of balance between the military component of the mission versus the development aid component of the mission versus the diplomacy component of the mission," Mr. Goodale said.
As for the environment, he said: "I think they will need to discuss among themselves and then explain to Canadians why they have suddenly had this remarkable epiphany. It was only in December when Mr. Harper was referring disparagingly to 'so-called climate change.' "
Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the NDP caucus chair, said the agenda for the Conservative meeting seemed like "damage control."
"They are clearly having to rethink a number of issues where their original strategies are just not working and I would consider Afghanistan to be clearly front and centre on that score. What they said could be achieved is not being achieved," Ms. Wasylycia-Leis said.
And "on the environment," she added, "I wish I was a fly on the wall in that caucus room. Here this group has gone from being representatives of the Flat Earth Society to suddenly understanding climate change.
"So I think they have a lot of explaining to do to each other."
26/01/07, Brian Laghi, Climate concerns now top security and health, (Back).
OTTAWA — Anxiety about environmental change has climbed so quickly within Canadians' consciousness that it now overwhelms terrorism, crime and health care as society's greatest threat, says a poll that kicks off a major Globe and Mail examination of the issue.
The Globe and Mail/CTV News survey delivers a number of messages for politicians, including a warning that the government not abandon Kyoto and a desire that Canada make a significant contribution to resolving global warming.
But the overarching finding is the speed with which Canadians have accepted that global warming is a large problem. The issue will also have a profound effect on the next election, as voters decide which party has the best plan to fix the problem.
“It's developed a top-of-mind salience the likes of which we've never seen before,” said Allan Gregg, chair of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the survey. “In 30 years of tracking, we've never had over 20 per cent saying they think this is the most important issue.”
According to the poll, 26 per cent of Canadians say the environment is the most critical issue facing the country, up from 12 per cent in July, and up from 4 per cent one year ago. By contrast, health care was chosen by 18 per cent of voters, terrorism by 6 per cent and crime by 3 per cent. Other issues of great importance in the past also place well below the environment. Government corruption, for example, was chosen by 1 per cent of respondents, down from 8 per cent.
“Canadians are convinced that it's real because they touch it,” Mr. Gregg said. “Secondly, people know that the life of conspicuous consumption is out of control. They've been hearing it long enough.”
The results foreshadow an election in which global warming will be a deeply contested issue that could end up realigning the left-of-centre vote.
The poll finds, for example, that 20 per cent of Canadians are very likely or somewhat likely to vote for their local Green Party candidate when the next election rolls around, compared with 4.5 per cent who voted Green last time. Another 27 per cent believe the Greens have the best plan for the environment, compared with 16 per cent for the Liberals, 12 per cent for the Conservatives and 9 per cent for the NDP.
Ironically, potential support for the Greens could end up benefiting the Tories, depending upon who the Greens steal support from.
Currently, 30 per cent of New Democrats and Liberals surveyed say the Greens have the best plan for the environment, said Mr. Gregg, while 36 per cent of Bloc voters pick the Greens. The Tories appear to have the least to lose to the Greens, with only 20 per cent saying they have the best program.
“It has the potential to split the vote of everyone but the Conservatives,” Mr. Gregg said. “In a perverse way, lots of activity on this issue may not hurt the Tories, even though they're the least competitive on it.”
The rising importance of the Greens may also mean that denying Green Party Leader Elizabeth May a spot in the national election debate will be extremely difficult.
The poll may also be somewhat troublesome for Mr. Harper's decision to separate his government from the Kyoto Protocol.
On that issue, 63 per cent of respondents say the country should continue to try to achieve targets under the accord, to which Canada is a signatory. Another 30 per cent say the government should stick with the Tory promise to pursue a “made-in-Canada” plan that the Tories promoted in last year's election.
“I think that what this is picking up is that it's wrong for us to turn our backs on targets,” Mr. Gregg said.
Given the figures, opposition parties would do well to support Kyoto on the election trail while “pillorying these guys for being quitters.”
Mr. Gregg said it may be difficult for Mr. Harper to re-embrace Kyoto lest it appear an insincere effort to win votes.
But the Prime Minister might have some success by fixing on other methods to reduce greenhouse gases in an effort to convince Canadians that he cares about the issue. It is a tactic he has already begun to employ.
It's still unclear, however, whether Mr. Harper's appointment of John Baird as Environment Minister is part of a plan to fix the issue, or whether the Prime Minister has appointed the intensely partisan Mr. Baird to undermine the credibility of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, a former environment minister.
Canadians are also surprisingly bullish on the size of the contribution their country can make toward reducing global warming, Mr. Gregg said. The poll found that 44 per cent believe the country could play a significant role, while 46 per cent said it would be a minor one.
“One of the hallmarks of Canada, historically, was the belief that not only does the world not affect us very much, we didn't affect the world,” he said.
He said the numbers suggest that, even if larger nations such as the United States and China aren't part of Kyoto, Canada must take an international role.
The poll surveyed the opinions of 1,000 Canadians between Jan. 11-14 and is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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