A few days ago I signed up at Facebook and wondered here how I might find it useful. Well, here’s one useful reason to be there: Many of the people I cover are there. Here’s Liberal MP Mark Holland, for example, writing on Facebook live from the C-30 (Clean Air Act) committee meeting room with his thoughts on how work on that bill is going; how the Conservatives might engineer their own defeat on it; and how it seems the Bloc might be caving a bit …
Some people were unclear about why C-30 would lead to an election – I should be clearer. We will amend the act in committee with the support of other opposition parties – make it pro-Kyoto and basically totally rewrite it. The Conservatives will then declare it an 'economy killer' and say that if the House passes it, it is a vote of no-confidence in the government. We and the other opposition parties can't give up our commitment to Kyoto so we will have to support it – down goes the government. Just my theory…however in a new development, the Bloc are refusing to work with any of our or the NDP amendments. I think they are avoiding strengthening C-30 so that it stays the government bill. They will then support it as a first step, saying that they want more but can accept C-30 as a start. They are using the argument of territoriality as shielding. In short – they are letting the Conservatives have their weak and meaningless C-30 generally as it was presented to avoid them using it as an election starter. I still think we will go to the polls in spring but maybe not on C-30 now… we’ll have to see how the week plays out and if the Bloc turn around to working with us to make C-30 a real plan to deal with climate change.
UPDATE: Holland has updated his Facebook comment, removing the section above about the Bloc Quebecois. He now says the Bloc Quebecois seems to co-operating more fully with the other Opposition parties. His comment from committee now reads:
Some people were unclear about why C-30 would lead to an election – I should be clearer. We will amend the act in committee with the support of other opposition parties – make it pro-Kyoto and basically totally rewrite it. The Conservatives will then declare it an 'economy killer' and say that if the House passes it, it is a vote of no-confidence in the government. We and the other opposition parties can't give up our commitment to Kyoto so we will have to support it – down goes the government. Just my theory…C-30 sits until 9:30pm tonight so we should have a better sense of things by the time the night is out.