NDP sells out environmentalists for politics, labour movement

Now that the election is officially under way and the NDP has released their platform, it’s hilarious watching them try to skate out of the fact that their environmental policies are so wrong that former friends in the environmental movement are dissing the NDP from every corner.

First Tzeporah Berman, one of the most respected environmentalists in this country, let alone this province, said the NDP were off their rockers denouncing green power production. Then John Horgan of the NDP tried to deny that his party would kill all run-of-river power projects, in one of the funniest radio flip flops ever.

And now a whole group of major BC environmentalists, including the prestigious David Suzuki Foundation, get together to say that eliminating the carbon tax was a daft idea. Oh, and did you read the report from Mark Jaccard of SFU who says the NDP’s climate change policies would exempt about 65 per cent of BC’s emissions, and would cause company closings and the loss of 30,000 direct and 60,000 indirect jobs.

Media and blogger coverage of this has been everywhere. But perhaps our favourite article was from the Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason, who called the NDP’s policies “shortsighted,” “uninspiring,” “wrongheaded” and “dangerous.” As Mason says:

“So what if it was a position fundamentally at odds with the views held by a vast swath of their supporters? Or that it made a mockery of the NDP's core values?

Was this the best the New Democrats could do to distinguish themselves from the provincial Liberals? …it might gain the NDP a few votes in the north, they will come at a terrible cost elsewhere.”

Why are the NDP against environmentalists? Because their public union backers don’t want any energy, green or otherwise, developed in BC unless it is under their control. So they chose labour over green and over youth who see the future in environmentalism.

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.