Liberals Silent on Climate Change

The total absence of environmental issues from Tuesday’s Leaders’ Debate is the latest symptom of this election campaign’s moral and intellectual vacuity, with the tone and tenor set from day one by Jean Charest himself. Rather than addressing what has become one of the province’s signature issues, the Liberal party’s campaign platform features a near total silence on the pressing issue of our time: the climate crisis.
This absence of environmental focus is incomprehensible, and for no greater reason than that it is a night-and-day departure from Charest’s first two terms. During his first term, the Charest Liberals were accosted on all fronts by environmental groups, which managed to eventually wring out new concessions. Upon his minority re-election, Charest finally gave Canada its first carbon tax. The Liberal government’s 2006 climate change plan promised billions of new dollars for public transit and associated capital investments over a six-year period. And Charest’s agreement with Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty to go it alone on an inter-provincial cap-and-trade program in response to Ottawa’s persistent inaction was both principled and bold.
Rather than rising to the imposing challenge still at hand, however, the Liberals now appear content to rest on their laurels and simply change the subject. And yet, economic crisis or not, the climate crisis has not gone away, and Quebec is far from the virtuous green champion which we often portray ourselves as.
The myth of environment-friendly Quebec hides a blunter and less flattering truth: that Quebec’s environmental credibility depends more on the happenstance of our geography – infinite rushing waterways and hydroelectric potential – than to altruism. Behind the green fa