In the past, it wasn't very often that the NDP would get to declare a clear legislative win. The numbers just didn't work for the smallest party in the House.But following the NDP budget amendment, that appears to be changing in these minority parliaments.
The party's latest victory is the new environment bill that has emerged from the ashes of Stephen Harper's "Clean Air Act" (bill C-30). The bill is everything Jack Layton said it would be: the NDP got no fewer than 11 of its 12 amendments adopted in this new bill.
The NDP took a lot of heat for calling for this bill to be rewritten in an all-party committee. Mostly from Liberals who claimed the NDP was a bit player in "the vast right-wing conspiracy." Chief among the flames thrown was Michael Ignatieff's over-the-top rant to the Toronto Star in which he famously declared:
There's something nauseating going on which Canadians have to notice," Ignatieff told the Star. "Layton gets up and pretends to oppose a government that he's propping up. He's got to decide what the hell he's doing here.Nauseating indeed and as evidenced by today's result, totally baseless.
But where the slinging of political heat has become far too common in politics, cleaning up the environment has become totally uncommon.
Here's to Jack Layton and Nathan Cullen for showing some leadership, and the other parties for coming to the table.
1 comment:
It's mean-spirited and unworkable, and will cost Canadians their jobs in the short term as industry stops investing and closes down to go to China or back to the USA.
Besides the bill will die on the order papers when the election is called and when the Conservatives win a majority government, we will have something sensible ... considering that the targets Chretien and Dion set and signed on for in the Kyoto Accord are unrealistic and unattainable ... making Kyoto a flawed treaty that Canada must reject.
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