NDP Senses Changing Environment in the Polls

To put it bluntly, the NDP has not offered a climate change plan at all. It has merely expressed a preference for cap and trade. I suppose that's really enough for a party that knows it cannot form government.

Without details, it's just not a plan. It took almost a decade of negotiation for the EU to devise a cap and trade system. That's why the Liberals are proposing a carbon tax: it can be done immediately. They support cap and trade, too, eventually. But we need to start making progress now.

With the Liberals, we have (or had, maybe it's too late now) an established, electable party with a climate change plan and a sincere commitment to the issue. This is the chance for those of us who care about the environment to make a difference. Our failure to rally behind them so far has been appalling. If they do poorly on election day, Dion will be out and the Liberals will be looking for a new direction. The environment will be politically toxic -- no one in the mainstream will want to touch it again.

"The NDP plan is disappointingly vague and lacks a detailed document. It amounts to a bunch of speaking points ..."

No kidding. Because, as Jeffrey Simpsons says so well, the NDP isn't held to the same standards as the Liberals or Conservatives. They can (and do) promise anything and everything under the sun without regard to reality and they get a pass.

Worse, the NDP has to balance its manufacturing-union base against its environmental base. That results in crappy compromises on both fronts (see: cap and trade instead of a carbon tax).

The Green's and the Liberal's are better for the environment than the empty-rhetoric NDP. The possibility that they may end up holding more than a token number of Toronto seats is embarassing.

C'mon. "Promise anything and everything... without regard to reality" is a charge more fairly leveled against the Green Party than the NDP. The idea that the NDP aren't held to the same standard as the other parties is laughable coming from a columnist for a newspaper which has marginalized and ignored the NDP for many years and is only resentfully paying them attention now that many Canadians are looking for an alternative to the scandal-ridden parties that have taken their power for granted for so many years.

The Liberals, of course, promise many things but never actually get around to implementing them (see Nat'l Daycare for an example). Their "sincere commitment" never seems to become action, and they've had many years in majority to walk the talk. Jack Layton and the NDP have excellent environmental credentials and I for one trust them FAR above the other parties to do the right thing for Canadians and the environment.

Did you even read the platform that was unveiled today? Because the link you provided isn't the NDP platform - this is - http://www.ndp.ca/xfer/campaign2008/Platform_2008_EN.pdf

Pages 24 to 29 spell out the party's environmental plank. Its much more detailed than Greg describes.

I like the NDP, I think I've voted for them in every election at every level so far. But not this time. Dion has wed himself to one issue, global warming, and because of his focus he's the only person I'd trust to actually change anything.

@Paul: Yeah the libs have promised stuff before and never gotten around to it, but I hope you see that Dion is so tied to the green shift that he cannot avoid implementing it. He's researched it, chaired the 2005 Kyoto Conference on Climate Change in Montreal, and even named his dog Kyoto. I cannot help but believe that if given a mandate, even a minority, he'd push the green shift through as the first order of business.

As a counterpoint though, I have to praise the NDP for being democratic. I sat in on a candidate selection meeting for the NDP a few years back (York South-Weston) and I was shocked that there were ballots and a vote was held to determine who would represent the NDP in the riding. It may have been more for show or just a formality but the speeches of the potential candidates seemed genuine.

"Did you even read the platform that was unveiled today?...Pages 24 to 29 spell out the party's environmental plank. Its much more detailed than Greg describes."

From that platform, here are the "details" of the NDP cap and trade "plan":

- Make big polluters pay. We will put a price on carbon through a "cap-and-trade" carbon pricing system which establishes hard limits on pollution and a tough charge on polluters who exceed the limits.
- All revenue will be applied to environmental solutions.

What are the limits? What is the charge for exceeding the limits? How does the trading market work?

These are the issues that took the EU almost a decade to figure out. The NDP doesn't even have suggestions. Like I said, their "plan" is merely the expression of a preference for cap and trade.

Sorry guys this post had to be edited I rushed it out not realizing they had the written document coming out. Please re-read with edits.

Do the Cons get a pass for all the promises they made in 2006 and didn't fulfill, or downright contradicted when it suited them? (Free votes? Fixed election dates? Open discussion of proposed international treaties?)

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