Harper Is Lying Again

Ok, he may not be technally lying, but he sure is tap-dancing on the line. Harper said this as almost a throw away at the end of his speech yesterday:

I have no doubt there are those who will say we are not doing enough.

That these steps don’t go far enough or fast enough.

But that is what they said when the acid rain treaty was signed in 1991.

In fact, that is what they said generally about the last Conservative government – until, earlier this year, they finally acknowledged it to be the greenest in Canada’s history.

The implication was, of course, that there just isn't any pleasing those damn environmentalists. This is the typical self-pitying refrain of the base and Harper is not only their leader, but a true believer. But is it true? This had such an air of "truthiness" to it that I just had to check it out. Here is the headline from the Kitchener Record, from February 23, 1991: Acid rain victories prompt group to fold In that article, we get reaction of the acid rain accord from Michael Perley of the Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain:

Perley and Hurley are taking a break from full-time lobbying to concentrate on an environmental consulting firm they established a few years ago.

"We're downscaling the coalition very substantially," said Perley, a one-time fundraiser for the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

"Big activism is no longer necessary," he said in an interview this week.

More than 50 groups - including the Canadian Auto Workers, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and Pollution Probe - belong to the coalition, giving it a membership of more than two million.

"We understand and agree with the coalition that major strides have been made," said Terry Quinney, a spokesman for the anglers and hunters group, which has about 70,000 members.(Kitchener Record p.A4)

Wow, that is pretty damning criticism of the accord. They declared victory and downsized. It sure sounds like they were pretty pleased with the accord to me. I guess with Harper and the Conservatives, there is no reason to let the truth get in the way of self-serving revisionist history.

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